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Companies have to continually increase their revenue or profits out of fear of their competitors becoming larger and taking over the market. The internet has a

Companies have to continually increase their revenue or profits out of fear of their competitors becoming larger and taking over the market. The internet has allowed almost everything in physical space to become commoditized. You also have a society that does not appreciate quality. Combining all this together I don't see how things don't keep getting worse.

Ancalagon 4y ago
> You also have a society that does not appreciate quality. This really resonates with my experience as well. But I can't tell if its society at large that appreciates quality less, or that the relative purchasing power of recent generations has decreased so much that your average-Joe no longer has a say in whether they can get a quality purchase or not. Or perhaps the issue is planned obsoletion. Taking a page from appliance manufacturers these days, literally all the major manufacturers appear to have planned obsolecscence built into their appliances these days. Contrasted with the 45 yo Maytag refrigerator in my garage still running as well as the day it was purchased.
jfalcon 4y ago
There is a difference between a company making good products and a company that is making bad ones yet only by proxy of the revenue generated making something else. Look at GE - it just recently spun off it's healthcare business from the parent and now only has the Jet Engines division left under the parent company. It used to make just about everything and did massive testing at one point - what changed? The company itself. It was in so much competition by others who stepped up their game or the company got into places it never should have been and lost. A long way from being the offspring of Thomas Edison and JP Morgan. Hell, did you know that GE was even an on-line service at one time? GEnie. Who beat them? H&R Block for some weird reason (CompuServe). But not by much because Time magazine - the most read magazine in the world for almost 75 years at that point - thought it could do it all (AOL). The only problem: Warner Communications (Warner Brothers) - who seem to not have learned their lesson from Atari. But it was on top for a while. Now it's back to Bell and those who competed with them (Verizon).

Ancalagon 4y ago

> You also have a society that does not appreciate quality. This really resonates with my experience as well. But I can't tell if its society at large that appreciates quality less, or that the relative purchasing power of recent generations has decreased so much that your average-Joe no longer has a say in whether they can get a quality purchase or not. Or perhaps the issue is planned obsoletion. Taking a page from appliance manufacturers these days, literally all the major manufacturers appear to have planned obsolecscence built into their appliances these days. Contrasted with the 45 yo Maytag refrigerator in my garage still running as well as the day it was purchased.

jfalcon 4y ago

There is a difference between a company making good products and a company that is making bad ones yet only by proxy of the revenue generated making something else. Look at GE - it just recently spun off it's healthcare business from the parent and now only has the Jet Engines division left under the parent company. It used to make just about everything and did massive testing at one point - what changed? The company itself. It was in so much competition by others who stepped up their game or the company got into places it never should have been and lost. A long way from being the offspring of Thomas Edison and JP Morgan. Hell, did you know that GE was even an on-line service at one time? GEnie. Who beat them? H&R Block for some weird reason (CompuServe). But not by much because Time magazine - the most read magazine in the world for almost 75 years at that point - thought it could do it all (AOL). The only problem: Warner Communications (Warner Brothers) - who seem to not have learned their lesson from Atari. But it was on top for a while. Now it's back to Bell and those who competed with them (Verizon).