> 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" shoul

> 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%