7 ms·

We are well beyond material scarcity. If you need something, you can buy it on Amazon, made in China, and it will do a great job of brushing your teeth, boiling

We are well beyond material scarcity. If you need something, you can buy it on Amazon, made in China, and it will do a great job of brushing your teeth, boiling your tea, or whatever. But it will not be unique. And so, every need met, our lives are hollow. Hollow and without objects of meaning and power - nothing that your distant offspring will inherit, that will make them think, “holy shit, my ancestors WERE INTERESTING PEOPLE!!!” No totems. Just disposable Apple ear buds with dead batteries glued forever into plastic shells. No diaries. Just tweets that were lost in the great lizard war of 2031, when the data centers were turned into lizard egg incubators. So, people hunger for robust, interesting wares. Maybe most don’t know it, but they’ll buy those things anyway. Based on this lizard-apocalypse thesis, I listed stuff on Etsy: custom CNC titanium pistol grips, solid metal wood keys, childproof jewel boxes milled from scrapped train knuckles, and etc. I listed all kinds of stuff I made when I wasn’t filling “normal” orders for big industry titans like Boeing. Just whatever the hell I felt like making, as long as it’s something I would be proud to own. And it all sold. Every weird thing I make eventually sells on Etsy. Etsy has featured my stuff in big advertisements, because my thesis is correct. There is a new kind of scarcity, because of the upcoming lizard war. https://www.etsy.com/shop/HenryVIIIdotSpace https://www.etsy.com/shop/HenryVIIIdotSpace

p1necone 6y ago
You're living in a very sheltered bubble if you think that any more than a very small minority of people are "well beyond material scarcity". That titanium switch plate is cool though.
- walrus01 6y ago
  I am fairly certain from context that by "we", he means "white collar professionals in the US/Canada/Europe who make a very comfortable salary and have all of their essential material needs already met by an overabundance of choice" But I also wouldn't say that shopping for cute handmade weird custom things is essentially an activity of some extreme elite. Once people in any culture have lots of disposable income they'll do it. Here's a video from a few days ago of shopping for traditional hand made jewlery in Kabul, Afghanistan. Language is Dari. Farsi/Persian speakers should understand it OK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LelKUITywE&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LelKUITywE&feature=emb_titl... If there were a sufficiently large population of Afghans with a reliable, secure online payment method, and HSPA+/HSDPA/LTE data services on their android phones, I have no doubt that those products would show up on the Dari language version of Etsy. At present probably less than 1% of people nationwide have any form of credit or debit card.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    Ecommerce is exploding across Asia, across populations where not only do most people not have credit/debit cards, but they may not have bank accounts either. Various forms of electronic money and good old cash on delivery are bridging the gap quite rapidly.
- balola 6y ago
  Americans just love to spend, I heard drone makers in China say Americans have money and leisure, they buy anything.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Seems like you haven't been to South Korea for example. I see makeup shops literally on every corner, tremendous mall culture (which is sort of dying in America) and highend stores are jam-packed with newly minted millionaires. Here is how Costco in China opened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UfO4gpML4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UfO4gpML4g Not to say Americans don't love to spend, I think America has exported this culture to the rest of the world which is that every holiday is an opportunity for sale, put debt on credit card and get addicted to the dopamine rush of shopping. I don't think its unique to America anymore.
    - balola 6y ago
      I think the difference here is that is this of "everyday people" or just high-earners, Costco only has several stores in China and remains a high-end exotic market, drones are still expensive "toys" here, new iphones often cost a month's salary or more. The drone makers have a reason to be amused at how much Americans love their products.
    - nickpp 6y ago
      There is no need for the shopping culture to be imported anywhere, it already existed pretty much everywhere. Just check out the malls in the first world and the local markets in the less developed places
- globular-toast 6y ago
  I'm usually one to call out HNers for being in a sheltered bubble, but in this case I'm not sure it's far from the truth, as long as you only include those in developed countries. I grew up in one of the most deprived areas of the UK. My own parents and my friends' parents were all earning barely above minimum wage. But nobody really even struggled to own essential items like pots and pans, bedsheets, shoes etc. Most can even afford their own car if they want to. Even the poorest are well beyond material necessity. I think maybe you just set the bar between necessity and luxury a bit too high.
saiya-jin 6y ago
For us etsy filled the need for a cheaper, scarce alternative to an item for our baby that wasn't available where we live. Import fees and taxes would make price jump to ridiculous levels if sent from abroad. Its kind of busy house made from wood, having tons of small trinkets to play with, ie switches, velcro, rubber bands, windows etc. All the stuff kids find in the house and spend so much time playing with compared to actual toys. The stuff we found and ordered is hand-made in Lithuania, costs 50% of the 'original' montessori one (not sure if that's their idea though), looks much more solid since its made from much thicker actual wood. Same for a ring I bought few years back for my wife - she found it, unique and appealing to her like no local could. Didn't cost much. I guess what you describe - something unique, that someone skilled' time and effort went into, compared to machined mass production. This has a lot of value, ie carpenters are very well paid where I come from. If they are business savvy, they easily trump some software consulting in income.
balola 6y ago
I recently learned that Etsy actively terminates sellers based in China, seemingly indiscriminately, the message is quite clear that they just don't want to do this kind of business, unlike Amazon.
- hoseja 6y ago
  If only they had let me access their images normally, I might not have developed hatred for them.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  And for good reason; a big, if not THE biggest problem that Etsy has at the moment is that people's designs are blatantly getting stolen and reproduced at a fraction of the creators' price. There's a lot of pressure on Etsy to combat that. This is where copyright and (?) design patent laws come into effect as well. People are trying to make a living by crafting things, and the free market is swooping in by undercutting them with a race to the bottom.
  - skohan 6y ago
    I feel like there could be a better version of this. Like an Etsy, but with support for creators, so that when demand reaches a certain threshold, the platform could offer support with scaling and industrializing the product, for a share of the profit. Essentially the same process, but actually rewarding the market-maker.
skohan 6y ago
> people hunger for robust, interesting wares The "robust" part of this is really important, and I would add "niche" to the list. Recently I've been working on a DIY whole-home audio system, and there was nothing in the market which could meet the specs I need in terms of latency, and was sufficiently accessible at the software level. So I decided to build them myself, and in addition to getting the specs I want, I can also use high-end materials and get a design which fits in my home perfectly. So what I'm ending up with is totally over-engineered, and quite expensive when you add up all the parts and labor, and it would make not be economically feasible for any company to produce these at scale. There are not going to be 100k people who want these, but there could potentially be a couple hundred. I think the really cool thing about operating on that smaller scale is that the incentives really are aligned with creating the best possible user-experience from end-to-end. When the user-base you are serving is a nameless, faceless multitude, it's easier to decide to make a product which, for instance, will fall apart sooner, so the consumer has to replace it more often. But at the smaller scale, it actually is feasible to really truly prioritize making the best possible product for the user.
- ehvatum 6y ago
  Very nice! It might well be possible to produce economically at scale, just by growing your sales and production, over time. Then, when you eventually retire and sell the company to some boring company that cuts costs and quality, the cycle can begin again, with a guy who realizes there's a niche...
edem 6y ago
Where did you write about this lizard war (your thesis)?
tomcooks 6y ago
I fail to understand how your CNC production is different from any industrial production which you seem to be against. This possibly stems from the idea that that you don't work the materials yourself, correct me if I'm wrong.

p1necone 6y ago

You're living in a very sheltered bubble if you think that any more than a very small minority of people are "well beyond material scarcity". That titanium switch plate is cool though.

walrus01 6y ago
I am fairly certain from context that by "we", he means "white collar professionals in the US/Canada/Europe who make a very comfortable salary and have all of their essential material needs already met by an overabundance of choice" But I also wouldn't say that shopping for cute handmade weird custom things is essentially an activity of some extreme elite. Once people in any culture have lots of disposable income they'll do it. Here's a video from a few days ago of shopping for traditional hand made jewlery in Kabul, Afghanistan. Language is Dari. Farsi/Persian speakers should understand it OK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LelKUITywE&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LelKUITywE&feature=emb_titl... If there were a sufficiently large population of Afghans with a reliable, secure online payment method, and HSPA+/HSDPA/LTE data services on their android phones, I have no doubt that those products would show up on the Dari language version of Etsy. At present probably less than 1% of people nationwide have any form of credit or debit card.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Ecommerce is exploding across Asia, across populations where not only do most people not have credit/debit cards, but they may not have bank accounts either. Various forms of electronic money and good old cash on delivery are bridging the gap quite rapidly.
balola 6y ago
Americans just love to spend, I heard drone makers in China say Americans have money and leisure, they buy anything.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Seems like you haven't been to South Korea for example. I see makeup shops literally on every corner, tremendous mall culture (which is sort of dying in America) and highend stores are jam-packed with newly minted millionaires. Here is how Costco in China opened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UfO4gpML4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UfO4gpML4g Not to say Americans don't love to spend, I think America has exported this culture to the rest of the world which is that every holiday is an opportunity for sale, put debt on credit card and get addicted to the dopamine rush of shopping. I don't think its unique to America anymore.
  - balola 6y ago
    I think the difference here is that is this of "everyday people" or just high-earners, Costco only has several stores in China and remains a high-end exotic market, drones are still expensive "toys" here, new iphones often cost a month's salary or more. The drone makers have a reason to be amused at how much Americans love their products.
  - nickpp 6y ago
    There is no need for the shopping culture to be imported anywhere, it already existed pretty much everywhere. Just check out the malls in the first world and the local markets in the less developed places
globular-toast 6y ago
I'm usually one to call out HNers for being in a sheltered bubble, but in this case I'm not sure it's far from the truth, as long as you only include those in developed countries. I grew up in one of the most deprived areas of the UK. My own parents and my friends' parents were all earning barely above minimum wage. But nobody really even struggled to own essential items like pots and pans, bedsheets, shoes etc. Most can even afford their own car if they want to. Even the poorest are well beyond material necessity. I think maybe you just set the bar between necessity and luxury a bit too high.

saiya-jin 6y ago

For us etsy filled the need for a cheaper, scarce alternative to an item for our baby that wasn't available where we live. Import fees and taxes would make price jump to ridiculous levels if sent from abroad. Its kind of busy house made from wood, having tons of small trinkets to play with, ie switches, velcro, rubber bands, windows etc. All the stuff kids find in the house and spend so much time playing with compared to actual toys. The stuff we found and ordered is hand-made in Lithuania, costs 50% of the 'original' montessori one (not sure if that's their idea though), looks much more solid since its made from much thicker actual wood. Same for a ring I bought few years back for my wife - she found it, unique and appealing to her like no local could. Didn't cost much. I guess what you describe - something unique, that someone skilled' time and effort went into, compared to machined mass production. This has a lot of value, ie carpenters are very well paid where I come from. If they are business savvy, they easily trump some software consulting in income.

balola 6y ago

I recently learned that Etsy actively terminates sellers based in China, seemingly indiscriminately, the message is quite clear that they just don't want to do this kind of business, unlike Amazon.

hoseja 6y ago
If only they had let me access their images normally, I might not have developed hatred for them.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
And for good reason; a big, if not THE biggest problem that Etsy has at the moment is that people's designs are blatantly getting stolen and reproduced at a fraction of the creators' price. There's a lot of pressure on Etsy to combat that. This is where copyright and (?) design patent laws come into effect as well. People are trying to make a living by crafting things, and the free market is swooping in by undercutting them with a race to the bottom.
- skohan 6y ago
  I feel like there could be a better version of this. Like an Etsy, but with support for creators, so that when demand reaches a certain threshold, the platform could offer support with scaling and industrializing the product, for a share of the profit. Essentially the same process, but actually rewarding the market-maker.

skohan 6y ago

> people hunger for robust, interesting wares The "robust" part of this is really important, and I would add "niche" to the list. Recently I've been working on a DIY whole-home audio system, and there was nothing in the market which could meet the specs I need in terms of latency, and was sufficiently accessible at the software level. So I decided to build them myself, and in addition to getting the specs I want, I can also use high-end materials and get a design which fits in my home perfectly. So what I'm ending up with is totally over-engineered, and quite expensive when you add up all the parts and labor, and it would make not be economically feasible for any company to produce these at scale. There are not going to be 100k people who want these, but there could potentially be a couple hundred. I think the really cool thing about operating on that smaller scale is that the incentives really are aligned with creating the best possible user-experience from end-to-end. When the user-base you are serving is a nameless, faceless multitude, it's easier to decide to make a product which, for instance, will fall apart sooner, so the consumer has to replace it more often. But at the smaller scale, it actually is feasible to really truly prioritize making the best possible product for the user.

ehvatum 6y ago
Very nice! It might well be possible to produce economically at scale, just by growing your sales and production, over time. Then, when you eventually retire and sell the company to some boring company that cuts costs and quality, the cycle can begin again, with a guy who realizes there's a niche...

edem 6y ago

Where did you write about this lizard war (your thesis)?

tomcooks 6y ago

I fail to understand how your CNC production is different from any industrial production which you seem to be against. This possibly stems from the idea that that you don't work the materials yourself, correct me if I'm wrong.