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Oh, I'm not being defeatist about it, just trying to offer the best practical advice I have. > Like, in america, it's absolutely degrading how the wealthiest s

Oh, I'm not being defeatist about it, just trying to offer the best practical advice I have. > Like, in america, it's absolutely degrading how the wealthiest society ever on this planet is basically made real in plastic, disposable, malfunctioning shit. For my own sanity, I have to reject that this state of affairs is the expression of our collective wishes through the workings of the market. I agree with you. People in this society are making the best choices they can from a selection of poor or harmful options. We're programmed from birth to place value on things that have no inherent value. Our society in the USA is rich but ungenerous, which is awfully strange. The country as a whole generates vastly more resources than necessary to keep everyone in it safe, healthy, and fed, and yet we allocate those resources towards other things (e.g., entertainment, over-consumption, concentration of resources in the hands of a few). That's all a much bigger problem than coffee makers, but they're inextricably tied. Personally I don't think we can solve the coffee maker problem without solving the legalized political bribery / "campaign finance" problem first; that blocks progress on many obviously humane ideas.

trgn 4y ago
> just trying to offer the best practical advice I have It's good advice. But imho it doesn't scale in the way it should, in the way the "invisible hand" should work. The main thing is that imho consumers have too little leverage to really make meaningful impact. e.g. I have a microwave form '82 that still works flawlessly. That was a bargain model at the time. More recent "luxury" appliances have broken within 10 years of ownership on me. How can a consumer, today, possibly be certain they're getting the high quality thing that will last decades? It's absolutely impossible, standing in a store, choosing a thing based on price/feature-set to get the durable vs disposable. That trade-off just cannot be made for the majority of material things in stores. The same with feature-less vs feature-full. Once you go feature-less, options completely dwindle. That's the curse. If the market does work, it flattens everything not to best-of-breed or bang-for-buck but instead to lowest-common-denominator, sub-optimal. > Our society in the USA is rich but ungenerous, which is awfully strange. 100% > I don't think we can solve the coffee maker problem without solving the legalized political bribery also, 100%

trgn 4y ago

> just trying to offer the best practical advice I have It's good advice. But imho it doesn't scale in the way it should, in the way the "invisible hand" should work. The main thing is that imho consumers have too little leverage to really make meaningful impact. e.g. I have a microwave form '82 that still works flawlessly. That was a bargain model at the time. More recent "luxury" appliances have broken within 10 years of ownership on me. How can a consumer, today, possibly be certain they're getting the high quality thing that will last decades? It's absolutely impossible, standing in a store, choosing a thing based on price/feature-set to get the durable vs disposable. That trade-off just cannot be made for the majority of material things in stores. The same with feature-less vs feature-full. Once you go feature-less, options completely dwindle. That's the curse. If the market does work, it flattens everything not to best-of-breed or bang-for-buck but instead to lowest-common-denominator, sub-optimal. > Our society in the USA is rich but ungenerous, which is awfully strange. 100% > I don't think we can solve the coffee maker problem without solving the legalized political bribery also, 100%