5 ms·

> Without being a super eco-conscious person, I am wondering if those ultra-fast-fashion is sustainable. I am sure some of those products are great. But the amo

> Without being a super eco-conscious person, I am wondering if those ultra-fast-fashion is sustainable. I am sure some of those products are great. But the amount of trash that it would generate is staggering. It isn't. If you want to dress sustainably, you should be primarily buying second-hand clothes (and ideally ones that are made from textiles that survive years of wear and wash). Fast-fashion is an ecological disaster, both in terms of the sheer volume of low-quality material produced and its byproducts (e.g. dye discharges in water from factories).

MivLives 3y ago
I've been thrifting a bunch recently and it's amazing how different even a 90s tshirt feels compared to a modern one. There's a heft and thickness to it that just doesn't seem to be the priority anymore. Also everything now seems to not be just cotton but blend in something that lets it stretch.
neom 3y ago
I mentioned to a colleague today the sweater I was wearing was 12 years old (discussing this exact fast fashion subject). He said "you just kept it in the closet for 12 years?" - Nope, it's my fav sweater to wear. I handwash it and hang dry it, as I do all my clothes, and it was made in Portugal from quality materials, works out to $35 a year (~$400 sweater).
- reaperman 3y ago
  You handwash all your clothes? Your underwear, your workout clothes, your socks, your T-shirts?
  - pmontra 3y ago
    Not the person you asked the question to but in my case the answer is yes, except for my underwear. That goes in the washing machine at 30 C (86 F). Workout clothes are plastic, some T-shirts are plastic too, some are cotton. Socks are cotton or wool. I put them in a bucket of cold water with a detergent made for that (sorry, I don't know the English word for that.) Liquid for wool and socks, powder for the other clothes. Five minutes are enough. Up to here is not worse that putting everything into a washing machine and you can do it in any house. The tedious part is washing away the soap with cold water. That takes time. I hang the T-shirts and the large clothes and wash them with a hand shower. You need a place to do it without flooding the house. For small clothes and socks, the bathroom sink. Squeeze out water gently by compression, don't twist. Then I hang them to dry. From here on is the same as with a washing machine. Once they stop dripping water you can put them anywhere. In winter you need either a window in the sun or a source of heat or it will take forever and they'll smell. Don't put them directly on a heater, that would destroy anything plastic quickly. Leave a span. This is not something that can be done in every house but if you can then clothes will last much longer especially the workout plastic ones. Check the detergents for water temperature, colors, type of fabric, time etc. Edit: make sure to let air flow somehow because that water in the clothes must get out of the house or you'll get mold especially in some climates.
    - R0flcopt3r 3y ago
      How is this any different from a washing machines handwash/delicate program? It soaks in soap with no movement, cold temperatures, then rinse it gently with water.
      - neom 3y ago
        I wish that's how mine did it, even on the hand wash/delicate setting, it still does 3 spin cycles (although I'd guess not as fast as the other modes). But more importantly, I hand wash so I can spot clean. Easiest way to spot deep stains etc is when the clothes are wet and you can hand inspect them. I'm so obsessive about this stuff i won't even accept any fade in the blacks, and no yellowing in my whites.
- forgotmypw17 3y ago
  I wear mostly swag T-shirts, but they are dear to me because of what they represent, so I split between hand-washing and washer with bronners, and always hang-dry. I have not seen any significant wear in years. I think dryers are the big destroyers of clothes. If you look at the lint, it makes sense, since that's all clothes material worn away by friction.
  - neom 3y ago
    Heat is particularly bad, so is drying in the sun. I handwash in cold with baby shampoo. I have a "drying closet" I've built. I must confess... figuring out stuff that will last 100 years is a bit(coughhugecough) of a hobby of mine. I get very into who designed something, why they did it, what materials they selected, what factory they used. It's a bit weird I guess as I'm obsessive about it, but I really enjoy it. Nice to see someone else taking care of their clothes!
    - jkestner 3y ago
      Pretty sure you’re a character in Gibson’s Zero History.
    - nanomonkey 3y ago
      > I have a "drying closet" I've built. Interesting, is there some sort of desiccant, or active drying method involved?
      - eloisius 3y ago
        Not sure about GP’s setup by I accidentally have a drying closet too. It’s quite common where I live. There is a cold water clothes washer next to my bathroom. In the bathroom there is a retractable clothes line (just a wire in a spring reel and hook on the opposite wall). I have a dehumidifier in there which must run 24/7 anyway or the house will mould. Just put to wet clothes on the line, put the dehumidifier on clothes drying mode, and close the door. Doesn’t take long for the clothes to dry, and my things last much longer than when I was in the US and used a tumble drier. Not to mention my t-shirts don’t get all misshaped.
- twright0 3y ago
  > (~$400 sweater). From Terry Pratchett: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    What kinda pisses me off with these things is that cost isn't a reliable indicator of quality. A lot of luck seems to be involved. I've worn a 15 € supermarket-brand hoodie around the house for about ten years before it started showing any signs of fatigue at the elbows. I've had more expensive, "name brand" articles of clothing wear out after much shorter and lighter use. In between, the absolute worst was a 30-40 € H&M blouse which became two sizes too big after a month.
    - rob74 3y ago
      That's true, unfortunately. OTOH, I have several Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts bought in an outlet that lasted for 10+ years and still look Ok. I would say you're more likely to get quality out of "actual" brands than own-brands of stores such as H&M (which follow the fast-fashion trend too), but that's still not really reliable I'm afraid...
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > you're more likely to get quality out of "actual" brands than own-brands of stores such as H&M (which follow the fast-fashion trend too) Fashion brands aren't build for quality. They're built for aesthetic. If given a trade-off between ruggedness and something more frivolous and daring, a fashion brand should pick the latter. That's how they differentiate.
- carlmr 3y ago
  >I handwash it and hang dry it, as I do all my clothes For those curious. Hang drying alone is a much smaller part of effort and gets you a lot closer to having your clothes not wear out prematurely.
- Accacin 3y ago
  I bought a wool jumper from Next about 7 years ago for probably around £30, and it's lasted me until now, and will probably last another 7 years. I don't really take any special care, just put it in the washing machine every now and again.
  - neom 3y ago
    Yeah Next are pretty good if you know what to look for, lots of their stuff isn't great but their 100% wool products are not bad at all. They use cheap dyes so their stuff isn't particularly colour fast, but if you take care of it, it will last a long time. They use Merino wool, however not very much of their wool is sourced through the Responsible Wool Program(4% as of 2022), so there is a lot of wool in their cloths come from places you may not like how the sheep are treated. Their cotton is around 60% slave free(not bad for a fast fashion brand).
- sgu999 3y ago
  Overall clothes made in Portugal are very good quality, and they aren't all that expensive for what they are. [0][1] A good heuristic is to go for boring looks. I recently got into sewing, turns out it's a very good way to learn how to recognise good quality clothes. It's also a very good way to recycle old adult clothes into brand new clothes for children. Highly recommend to any nerd wanting to do some manual labour away for the computer. [0] French brand, all sorts https://www.loom.fr/ https://www.loom.fr/ [1] British brand, underwear for men https://bluebuck.net/ https://bluebuck.net/
  - angmarsbane 3y ago
    I often wonder if we've done consumers, at least in the USA, a significant disadvantage by retiring hard skills like sewing, woodshop, auto repair, cooking etc from middle and high schools. When you understand how to do something, you are more aware of when you're being ripped off, what is quality, and what truly you'd rather pay for someone else to do or provide for you. When you don't have any of those skills or knowledge, you don't know when you're being ripped off OR once you begin to feel you're being ripped off you have to develop the skills to provide what you're not willing or able to buy right in that moment where you have an immediate need.
  - neom 3y ago
    Never heard of loom but their stuff is great, love they list their factories. Interesting they only guaranteeing 90% of the Portugal work is done to minimum wage, first time I've seen that level of honesty from a designer, good for them!
- adql 3y ago
  Every single shirt I ever bought lives at the very least as shop rag; but it's kinda hard to upcycle pants material
- bamboozled 3y ago
  I have some stuff like this, just let me beanie go after ten years. It cost me $200 but I wore it daily for ten winters under all kinds of circumstances. It was wool.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    I have one like those: love it, perfect for skiing and other outdoor stuff in winter. I also "loose" it once per winter, only to find it a couole days of searching later. Unfortunately, it seems to be gone for good this time, 12 years in. Cost me 30 bucks back the day, just hope they still make similar ones. And yes, I know that sounds a lot like Homer and his blue pants.
madduci 3y ago
> It isn't. If you want to dress sustainably, you should be primarily buying second-hand clothes (and ideally ones that are made from textiles that survive years of wear and wash). Fast-fashion is an ecological disaster, both in terms of the sheer volume of low-quality material produced and its byproducts (e.g. dye discharges in water from factories). Well, clothes that survive years of wear and wash are not so easy to be found. And sustainable clothes that you can buy at your local shops are incredibly expensive and the resulting quality is still meh. Fast fashion is on the rise since people don't want to spend big money on clothes that are almost comparable to the ones sold by fast fashion stores, but just with a big label on it. IMHO the big blame isn't on consumers or on fast fashion stores, but on the competition, that lowered their quality, raised their prices and expected to make profit from this strategy. To close the circle, people buy cheap things, including clothes, because their purchasing power hasn't scaled up like inflation, but in many countries the purchasing power has dropped (example: Italy, where salaries are stuck to the 1990 levels)
Sparkyte 3y ago
Technically walking into any store and buying clothes is more eco sustainable than anything Temu or Shein. Doesn't even have to be second hand as long as it was bulk delivered to that store and bought by you on that spot.
- herbst 3y ago
  To be fair. The whole concept falls apart if you drive there with your car.
  - gruez 3y ago
    Is driving a single car to the mall really that much worse than a delivery truck making deliveries?
    - herbst 3y ago
      Yes. To lazy to cite, especially as the article was German and written for Switzerland, however the point was that even a badly organized delivery route and same day delivery is in most cases more efficient than driving a 5 or 10 minute distance.
Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
The problem is that choosing clothes that will last is extremely hard for a layperson. I have €20 shirts that have lasted for more than a decade and €100 shirts that looked like crap after a few months. Brand is not a guarantee either, I have bought superficially similar products from the same brand with radically different results (I suppose they were made in different factories). Same goes for material, there is 100% cotton clothing that is great and other is absolute crap. Over the years I have found a few brands that I more or less trust, but the process involves a staggering amount of trial and error because most brands are just either bad or inconsistent. In particular, European brands seem to be the worst offenders (and I say this as an European). American brands seem somewhat more reliable, although this might be just statistical noise from small sample or selection bias from American brands that reach Europe. In general, I find the whole textile industry outraging. No other physical goods industry that I know has so little regard for the customer. What would happen if a brand sold 14" laptops that actually were 13" and short-circuited your whole home when plugged in? At the very least people would return them, and probably many would sue. But with clothes, it's very common to buy size 36 pants that turn out to be smaller than your size 34 pants (apparently, they haven't mastered the technology of measuring tape) and that bleed dye and spoil your whole laundry when you wash them. And we have somehow collectively decided that those obviously avoidable things are acceptable. Why?
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > In general, I find the whole textile industry outraging. No other physical goods industry that I know has so little regard for the customer. I'd point at software, but I guess it's not physical, so the next "best" thing would be... just about all the bottom-feeder dirt cheap stuff from Aliexpress/Temu/etc., that I'm even more apalled that they exist now that I hear they're being shipped by air. Anyway. > And we have somehow collectively decided that those obviously avoidable things are acceptable. Why? I imagine for the same reason most tech sucks: because the market is supply-driven, and doesn't get any useful feedback from the customers. Buyers choose from what is available, and the choice is only between bearing the bullshit, or doing without a category of goods - which for clothes is even harder than with smartphones... It's neat little local minimum in developed markets: even when the barrier to entry is low (much easier to launch a clothes line than build a smartphone), the most profitable move for all competitors is still to double-down on the race to the bottom. Or put another way: customers have a certain amount of dissatisfaction they're willing to tolerate. Anything more satisfying than that limit is just leaving money on the table.

MivLives 3y ago

I've been thrifting a bunch recently and it's amazing how different even a 90s tshirt feels compared to a modern one. There's a heft and thickness to it that just doesn't seem to be the priority anymore. Also everything now seems to not be just cotton but blend in something that lets it stretch.

neom 3y ago

I mentioned to a colleague today the sweater I was wearing was 12 years old (discussing this exact fast fashion subject). He said "you just kept it in the closet for 12 years?" - Nope, it's my fav sweater to wear. I handwash it and hang dry it, as I do all my clothes, and it was made in Portugal from quality materials, works out to $35 a year (~$400 sweater).

reaperman 3y ago
You handwash all your clothes? Your underwear, your workout clothes, your socks, your T-shirts?
- pmontra 3y ago
  Not the person you asked the question to but in my case the answer is yes, except for my underwear. That goes in the washing machine at 30 C (86 F). Workout clothes are plastic, some T-shirts are plastic too, some are cotton. Socks are cotton or wool. I put them in a bucket of cold water with a detergent made for that (sorry, I don't know the English word for that.) Liquid for wool and socks, powder for the other clothes. Five minutes are enough. Up to here is not worse that putting everything into a washing machine and you can do it in any house. The tedious part is washing away the soap with cold water. That takes time. I hang the T-shirts and the large clothes and wash them with a hand shower. You need a place to do it without flooding the house. For small clothes and socks, the bathroom sink. Squeeze out water gently by compression, don't twist. Then I hang them to dry. From here on is the same as with a washing machine. Once they stop dripping water you can put them anywhere. In winter you need either a window in the sun or a source of heat or it will take forever and they'll smell. Don't put them directly on a heater, that would destroy anything plastic quickly. Leave a span. This is not something that can be done in every house but if you can then clothes will last much longer especially the workout plastic ones. Check the detergents for water temperature, colors, type of fabric, time etc. Edit: make sure to let air flow somehow because that water in the clothes must get out of the house or you'll get mold especially in some climates.
  - R0flcopt3r 3y ago
    How is this any different from a washing machines handwash/delicate program? It soaks in soap with no movement, cold temperatures, then rinse it gently with water.
    - neom 3y ago
      I wish that's how mine did it, even on the hand wash/delicate setting, it still does 3 spin cycles (although I'd guess not as fast as the other modes). But more importantly, I hand wash so I can spot clean. Easiest way to spot deep stains etc is when the clothes are wet and you can hand inspect them. I'm so obsessive about this stuff i won't even accept any fade in the blacks, and no yellowing in my whites.
forgotmypw17 3y ago
I wear mostly swag T-shirts, but they are dear to me because of what they represent, so I split between hand-washing and washer with bronners, and always hang-dry. I have not seen any significant wear in years. I think dryers are the big destroyers of clothes. If you look at the lint, it makes sense, since that's all clothes material worn away by friction.
- neom 3y ago
  Heat is particularly bad, so is drying in the sun. I handwash in cold with baby shampoo. I have a "drying closet" I've built. I must confess... figuring out stuff that will last 100 years is a bit(coughhugecough) of a hobby of mine. I get very into who designed something, why they did it, what materials they selected, what factory they used. It's a bit weird I guess as I'm obsessive about it, but I really enjoy it. Nice to see someone else taking care of their clothes!
  - jkestner 3y ago
    Pretty sure you’re a character in Gibson’s Zero History.
  - nanomonkey 3y ago
    > I have a "drying closet" I've built. Interesting, is there some sort of desiccant, or active drying method involved?
    - eloisius 3y ago
      Not sure about GP’s setup by I accidentally have a drying closet too. It’s quite common where I live. There is a cold water clothes washer next to my bathroom. In the bathroom there is a retractable clothes line (just a wire in a spring reel and hook on the opposite wall). I have a dehumidifier in there which must run 24/7 anyway or the house will mould. Just put to wet clothes on the line, put the dehumidifier on clothes drying mode, and close the door. Doesn’t take long for the clothes to dry, and my things last much longer than when I was in the US and used a tumble drier. Not to mention my t-shirts don’t get all misshaped.
twright0 3y ago
> (~$400 sweater). From Terry Pratchett: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  What kinda pisses me off with these things is that cost isn't a reliable indicator of quality. A lot of luck seems to be involved. I've worn a 15 € supermarket-brand hoodie around the house for about ten years before it started showing any signs of fatigue at the elbows. I've had more expensive, "name brand" articles of clothing wear out after much shorter and lighter use. In between, the absolute worst was a 30-40 € H&M blouse which became two sizes too big after a month.
  - rob74 3y ago
    That's true, unfortunately. OTOH, I have several Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts bought in an outlet that lasted for 10+ years and still look Ok. I would say you're more likely to get quality out of "actual" brands than own-brands of stores such as H&M (which follow the fast-fashion trend too), but that's still not really reliable I'm afraid...
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > you're more likely to get quality out of "actual" brands than own-brands of stores such as H&M (which follow the fast-fashion trend too) Fashion brands aren't build for quality. They're built for aesthetic. If given a trade-off between ruggedness and something more frivolous and daring, a fashion brand should pick the latter. That's how they differentiate.
carlmr 3y ago
>I handwash it and hang dry it, as I do all my clothes For those curious. Hang drying alone is a much smaller part of effort and gets you a lot closer to having your clothes not wear out prematurely.
Accacin 3y ago
I bought a wool jumper from Next about 7 years ago for probably around £30, and it's lasted me until now, and will probably last another 7 years. I don't really take any special care, just put it in the washing machine every now and again.
- neom 3y ago
  Yeah Next are pretty good if you know what to look for, lots of their stuff isn't great but their 100% wool products are not bad at all. They use cheap dyes so their stuff isn't particularly colour fast, but if you take care of it, it will last a long time. They use Merino wool, however not very much of their wool is sourced through the Responsible Wool Program(4% as of 2022), so there is a lot of wool in their cloths come from places you may not like how the sheep are treated. Their cotton is around 60% slave free(not bad for a fast fashion brand).
sgu999 3y ago
Overall clothes made in Portugal are very good quality, and they aren't all that expensive for what they are. [0][1] A good heuristic is to go for boring looks. I recently got into sewing, turns out it's a very good way to learn how to recognise good quality clothes. It's also a very good way to recycle old adult clothes into brand new clothes for children. Highly recommend to any nerd wanting to do some manual labour away for the computer. [0] French brand, all sorts https://www.loom.fr/ https://www.loom.fr/ [1] British brand, underwear for men https://bluebuck.net/ https://bluebuck.net/
- angmarsbane 3y ago
  I often wonder if we've done consumers, at least in the USA, a significant disadvantage by retiring hard skills like sewing, woodshop, auto repair, cooking etc from middle and high schools. When you understand how to do something, you are more aware of when you're being ripped off, what is quality, and what truly you'd rather pay for someone else to do or provide for you. When you don't have any of those skills or knowledge, you don't know when you're being ripped off OR once you begin to feel you're being ripped off you have to develop the skills to provide what you're not willing or able to buy right in that moment where you have an immediate need.
- neom 3y ago
  Never heard of loom but their stuff is great, love they list their factories. Interesting they only guaranteeing 90% of the Portugal work is done to minimum wage, first time I've seen that level of honesty from a designer, good for them!
adql 3y ago
Every single shirt I ever bought lives at the very least as shop rag; but it's kinda hard to upcycle pants material
bamboozled 3y ago
I have some stuff like this, just let me beanie go after ten years. It cost me $200 but I wore it daily for ten winters under all kinds of circumstances. It was wool.
- hef19898 3y ago
  I have one like those: love it, perfect for skiing and other outdoor stuff in winter. I also "loose" it once per winter, only to find it a couole days of searching later. Unfortunately, it seems to be gone for good this time, 12 years in. Cost me 30 bucks back the day, just hope they still make similar ones. And yes, I know that sounds a lot like Homer and his blue pants.

madduci 3y ago

> It isn't. If you want to dress sustainably, you should be primarily buying second-hand clothes (and ideally ones that are made from textiles that survive years of wear and wash). Fast-fashion is an ecological disaster, both in terms of the sheer volume of low-quality material produced and its byproducts (e.g. dye discharges in water from factories). Well, clothes that survive years of wear and wash are not so easy to be found. And sustainable clothes that you can buy at your local shops are incredibly expensive and the resulting quality is still meh. Fast fashion is on the rise since people don't want to spend big money on clothes that are almost comparable to the ones sold by fast fashion stores, but just with a big label on it. IMHO the big blame isn't on consumers or on fast fashion stores, but on the competition, that lowered their quality, raised their prices and expected to make profit from this strategy. To close the circle, people buy cheap things, including clothes, because their purchasing power hasn't scaled up like inflation, but in many countries the purchasing power has dropped (example: Italy, where salaries are stuck to the 1990 levels)

Sparkyte 3y ago

Technically walking into any store and buying clothes is more eco sustainable than anything Temu or Shein. Doesn't even have to be second hand as long as it was bulk delivered to that store and bought by you on that spot.

herbst 3y ago
To be fair. The whole concept falls apart if you drive there with your car.
- gruez 3y ago
  Is driving a single car to the mall really that much worse than a delivery truck making deliveries?
  - herbst 3y ago
    Yes. To lazy to cite, especially as the article was German and written for Switzerland, however the point was that even a badly organized delivery route and same day delivery is in most cases more efficient than driving a 5 or 10 minute distance.

Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago

The problem is that choosing clothes that will last is extremely hard for a layperson. I have €20 shirts that have lasted for more than a decade and €100 shirts that looked like crap after a few months. Brand is not a guarantee either, I have bought superficially similar products from the same brand with radically different results (I suppose they were made in different factories). Same goes for material, there is 100% cotton clothing that is great and other is absolute crap. Over the years I have found a few brands that I more or less trust, but the process involves a staggering amount of trial and error because most brands are just either bad or inconsistent. In particular, European brands seem to be the worst offenders (and I say this as an European). American brands seem somewhat more reliable, although this might be just statistical noise from small sample or selection bias from American brands that reach Europe. In general, I find the whole textile industry outraging. No other physical goods industry that I know has so little regard for the customer. What would happen if a brand sold 14" laptops that actually were 13" and short-circuited your whole home when plugged in? At the very least people would return them, and probably many would sue. But with clothes, it's very common to buy size 36 pants that turn out to be smaller than your size 34 pants (apparently, they haven't mastered the technology of measuring tape) and that bleed dye and spoil your whole laundry when you wash them. And we have somehow collectively decided that those obviously avoidable things are acceptable. Why?

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> In general, I find the whole textile industry outraging. No other physical goods industry that I know has so little regard for the customer. I'd point at software, but I guess it's not physical, so the next "best" thing would be... just about all the bottom-feeder dirt cheap stuff from Aliexpress/Temu/etc., that I'm even more apalled that they exist now that I hear they're being shipped by air. Anyway. > And we have somehow collectively decided that those obviously avoidable things are acceptable. Why? I imagine for the same reason most tech sucks: because the market is supply-driven, and doesn't get any useful feedback from the customers. Buyers choose from what is available, and the choice is only between bearing the bullshit, or doing without a category of goods - which for clothes is even harder than with smartphones... It's neat little local minimum in developed markets: even when the barrier to entry is low (much easier to launch a clothes line than build a smartphone), the most profitable move for all competitors is still to double-down on the race to the bottom. Or put another way: customers have a certain amount of dissatisfaction they're willing to tolerate. Anything more satisfying than that limit is just leaving money on the table.