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Airplane tickets used to cost a lot more for economy class, even adjusted for inflation and fees. To get the equivalent service and quality today you simply hav

Airplane tickets used to cost a lot more for economy class, even adjusted for inflation and fees. To get the equivalent service and quality today you simply have to pay more, you just have the choice of paying very little for very low quality because there’s more flights and more planes. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/even-with-fees-the-miracle-of-flight-remains-a-real-bargain-cost-of-air-travel-per-mile-has-fallen-by-50-since-1980/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/even-with-fees-the-miracle-of... Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I’m not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. There’s now cheap and expensive Nike ranges, for example, where there used to be only the quality expensive tier. But if you look at the cost of, say, quality furniture today and adjust for inflation, it’s going to be around the same as quality furniture 50 years ago. We just have the choice to pay a lot less for much worse now.

elaus 1y ago
> Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I wish that were my experience as well. However, I've found that most brands simply add a huge markup for their name while investing very little into quality. As a result, you end up paying three times the price for just 20% better quality. When it comes to electronics, I feel like I can judge that for myself, and my gut feeling about clothing was confirmed after falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of "clothing teardowns."
JKCalhoun 1y ago
I don't disagree with your point, but I suppose my wish then is that there were not low-quality (low-cost) everything in the world right now. <ramble> I'm not unsympathetic regarding the poor, I grew up poor myself. And my single working mother raising two kids got by on hand-me-down furniture from her mother (probably, as you and the article suggest, of decent quality though). Having the option for (new) inexpensive everything allows us to accept low-quality; even encourages it (as has been pointed out, there's a Dopamine hit from purchasing a new thing … I don't know if the same rush comes from purchasing a used piece of furniture from a Goodwill — I suspect though it does somewhat). And, as we know, the landfills, oceans, become the destination for all this consumption. I admit that I am surprised that I am finding myself wishing that we, the Western world, were poorer again. It seems though that manufacturing has caught up to (down to?) the ability to provide new crap for us even if we were poorer. One wonders what the Great Depression would resemble in the 21st Century. Would we still have the latest, but crappy, gadgets and such? I sure can't imagine new car sales would not be seriously impacted. </ramble>
- nradov 1y ago
  It's great having the option for cheap, low-quality stuff. If I need some oddball tool for a home improvement project then I can just buy the crap at Harbor Freight. If it breaks after a few uses then so what, I won't need it again anyway.
  - bamboozled 1y ago
    Yeah, fuck the externalities
    - nradov 1y ago
      What are you proposing as an alternative? Spend a fortune on a high quality tool, and then either have it sitting in my garage unused for years or waste a bunch of time trying to sell it online?
      - JKCalhoun 1y ago
        Tool rental is a thing (I don't imagine many people own their own cement mixer for example.) I recall my grandfather having (decent) tools sitting in his garage. Neighbors/relatives often borrowed tools in those days. To be a little more nuanced though, some tools don't benefit from "quality" versions. Perhaps an angle grinder is a good example. (The consumable grinding disk is probably the place not to cheap-out.) Maybe the cheap one is fine. But other tools, like a wood plane, you're going to have a bad time if you cheap out on those and wind up with steel that doesn't hold an edge for example. (Though I kind of wouldn't want to loan out a nice hand plane of mine to someone that might not worry as much as me about hitting a nail in a board they're planing.)
        nradov 1y ago
        Tool rental is barely a thing. And then only for larger tools. I've done that before for larger items like extension ladders and air compressors but for smaller stuff no one actually rents those. If I need to plane one piece of wood then I'll buy the cheap tool. Good enough.
nfriedly 1y ago
> I'm not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. I think this needs to be repeated. People tend to think more expensive equals higher quality (I want this to be true!), and I think brands frequently take advantage of that to increase margins without significantly increasing quality. For example: I've been through three or four pairs of my $180 Sony link buds hitting various issues before giving up on them entirely. Meanwhile, my $5 Auki bluetooth earbuds keep on chugging.
- moffkalast 1y ago
  Along that line of thought I've noticed this recently: I can buy an expensive tool for say $200 that will last me 10 years. Or I can buy a cheap tool that costs $20 but will only last me two years. But if I want to use that tool for the duration of 10 years it then makes more sense to buy five of the cheap tool and save half in costs. Which one is really providing more quality over time? For some things this doesn't hold at all, the cheap entry level offerings just don't get the job done or break relatively immediately, but for others the premium offer doesn't really improve a whole lot over the cheapest.
  - ptsneves 1y ago
    Very good perspective but I think that there is also a cost or loss of value in the inconvenience of a tool of good stopping its function at the wrong time. The opposite can also be true, that it is sometimes convenient that something breaks down because I actually wanted this new model anyway but could not justify throwing away a perfectly fine good.
    - Matumio 1y ago
      That, and the cognitive load. You need to buy the right amount, remember where you stored the $5 replacements, or else spend $100 worth of your time to figure out where you ordered from five years ago. And if they are no longer available you need time to figure out which of the replacements isn't total crap.
  - 1y ago
csomar 1y ago
This is true but flawed. Think about the iPhone. If you wanted the model of today but 5 years ago, it would have cost you millions? If that’s even possible. What you are saying will be correct if we had no technological advancement whatsoever. But we had significant advancement. Everything should, must, be better if we applied the same cost. But while that’s the case in some things, lots of things have degraded in different ways.
shakna 1y ago
> Airplane tickets used to cost a lot more for economy class, even adjusted for inflation and fees. To get the equivalent service and quality today you simply have to pay more, you just have the choice of paying very little for very low quality because there’s more flights and more planes. I don't think you actually can get the same quality, today. Even if you are paying more. The spacing of seats has changed. [0] You can pay more and get something more than you had by going up classes, but the same experience no longer exists. [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/airline-seats-are-too-small-what-should-we-do-about-it/ https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/airline-seats-are-t...
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  I think it might in other countries. JAL is an example where I felt they had a great economy class experience. Excellent food and service. Great legroom. I am average height male and can fully stretch out my legs.
- fastball 1y ago
  Yes, basically nothing stays the exact same quality over time. But if you can get better quality and worse quality that kinda obviates the OP's point.
- fragmede 1y ago
  http://jsx.com http://jsx.com is a tiny carrier flying out of only a handful of cities in the US, but it's basically a quarter step towards during private. They have their own terminals and all of their planes are smaller but the seats themselves are bigger.
terminalshort 1y ago
But I don't want the equivalent service. I want the cheapest ticket possible to get me from A to B. And apparently most people agree with me, or that's not what they would be selling. This is the opposite of a problem.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  That’s why there’s now a broader quality spectrum of plane tickets. I travel seldomly, but when I do I tend to buy business class, because I value the comfort of the journey more than the frequency of journeys. But most other people, including you, have other priorities. Which is why at least in this example I think it’s a market working well based on supply and demand.
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    Yeah, I agree, but what's the difference between that and any other product?
bravesoul2 1y ago
Key point is for many their real wages have decreased, adjusted for inflation.
jorams 1y ago
> I’m not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality I think that hints at part of the real problem: humans have very little ability to judge the quality of products. Marketing departments are very good at cosplaying quality. "Awards" on things like wine only tell you the manufacturer paid the owner of the trademark some money. Reviews are often fake or at least paid for by the manufacturer. With price also not being a meaningful quality signal you're left with a choice: Buy the expensive product hoping the quality reflects the price, or buy the cheap product knowing the quality is probably not great, but at least you didn't spend a lot of money on something that isn't worth it.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  I’ve just learned to discern quality better. For clothes, I learned from a friend who designs them how to tell fabric quality and seam quality. But there’s online resources to learn that as well. For electronics it can be hard but if I can’t tell from first principles and my knowledge of electronics design I’ll research brands via online reviews and tear-downs. Eventually you get a pretty good “instinct” that makes it less tedious.
caominhtuong 1y ago
[flagged]
- caominhtuong 1y ago
  [flagged]
lll-o-lll 1y ago
> Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I’m not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. Electric Kettles - Microwaves. The components that make up the actual boiling of water are now standard and all come from the same chinese manufacturer. You can pay $20 to $1000 for the same thing. The expensive one will look much better. Microwaves are the same - large numbers of manufacturers to all the same guts just different skins. Retail clothing is the most obvious example. There used to be mid market clothing manufacturers that would produce clothing locally and try to compete on quality. That’s almost gone now. There’s just not enough demand.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  My electric kettle may use the same basic heating components as most cheaper ones, but I paid extra to get one where the entire container is one piece metal — practically a tall cooking pot with a heater element built in under it, a water safe connector to a base station that’s connected to power, and a handle and lid. It’s easier to clean, has no plastic in contact with the water, and has so far lasted me 14 years. It cost 800 NOK instead of the ~400 for a typical plastic one. But due to my experience with those in the past, I’d say absolutely worth it.
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  Disagree. Panasonic's Inverter technology is definitely superior in my book. Everybody else's units only operate at full power no matter what you select--20% power is really 100% power with a 20% duty cycle. This can produce uneven heat for short runs and means that the load on the circuit is the full draw of the machine--doesn't share a circuit with other power-hungry devices very well. But at low power the Panasonic is much more friendly with other devices.
ikekkdcjkfke 1y ago
That is where they get you, higher priced goods with better wrapping but marginaly higher quality

elaus 1y ago

> Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I wish that were my experience as well. However, I've found that most brands simply add a huge markup for their name while investing very little into quality. As a result, you end up paying three times the price for just 20% better quality. When it comes to electronics, I feel like I can judge that for myself, and my gut feeling about clothing was confirmed after falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of "clothing teardowns."

JKCalhoun 1y ago

I don't disagree with your point, but I suppose my wish then is that there were not low-quality (low-cost) everything in the world right now. <ramble> I'm not unsympathetic regarding the poor, I grew up poor myself. And my single working mother raising two kids got by on hand-me-down furniture from her mother (probably, as you and the article suggest, of decent quality though). Having the option for (new) inexpensive everything allows us to accept low-quality; even encourages it (as has been pointed out, there's a Dopamine hit from purchasing a new thing … I don't know if the same rush comes from purchasing a used piece of furniture from a Goodwill — I suspect though it does somewhat). And, as we know, the landfills, oceans, become the destination for all this consumption. I admit that I am surprised that I am finding myself wishing that we, the Western world, were poorer again. It seems though that manufacturing has caught up to (down to?) the ability to provide new crap for us even if we were poorer. One wonders what the Great Depression would resemble in the 21st Century. Would we still have the latest, but crappy, gadgets and such? I sure can't imagine new car sales would not be seriously impacted. </ramble>

nradov 1y ago
It's great having the option for cheap, low-quality stuff. If I need some oddball tool for a home improvement project then I can just buy the crap at Harbor Freight. If it breaks after a few uses then so what, I won't need it again anyway.
- bamboozled 1y ago
  Yeah, fuck the externalities
  - nradov 1y ago
    What are you proposing as an alternative? Spend a fortune on a high quality tool, and then either have it sitting in my garage unused for years or waste a bunch of time trying to sell it online?
    - JKCalhoun 1y ago
      Tool rental is a thing (I don't imagine many people own their own cement mixer for example.) I recall my grandfather having (decent) tools sitting in his garage. Neighbors/relatives often borrowed tools in those days. To be a little more nuanced though, some tools don't benefit from "quality" versions. Perhaps an angle grinder is a good example. (The consumable grinding disk is probably the place not to cheap-out.) Maybe the cheap one is fine. But other tools, like a wood plane, you're going to have a bad time if you cheap out on those and wind up with steel that doesn't hold an edge for example. (Though I kind of wouldn't want to loan out a nice hand plane of mine to someone that might not worry as much as me about hitting a nail in a board they're planing.)
      - nradov 1y ago
        Tool rental is barely a thing. And then only for larger tools. I've done that before for larger items like extension ladders and air compressors but for smaller stuff no one actually rents those. If I need to plane one piece of wood then I'll buy the cheap tool. Good enough.

nfriedly 1y ago

> I'm not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. I think this needs to be repeated. People tend to think more expensive equals higher quality (I want this to be true!), and I think brands frequently take advantage of that to increase margins without significantly increasing quality. For example: I've been through three or four pairs of my $180 Sony link buds hitting various issues before giving up on them entirely. Meanwhile, my $5 Auki bluetooth earbuds keep on chugging.

moffkalast 1y ago
Along that line of thought I've noticed this recently: I can buy an expensive tool for say $200 that will last me 10 years. Or I can buy a cheap tool that costs $20 but will only last me two years. But if I want to use that tool for the duration of 10 years it then makes more sense to buy five of the cheap tool and save half in costs. Which one is really providing more quality over time? For some things this doesn't hold at all, the cheap entry level offerings just don't get the job done or break relatively immediately, but for others the premium offer doesn't really improve a whole lot over the cheapest.
- ptsneves 1y ago
  Very good perspective but I think that there is also a cost or loss of value in the inconvenience of a tool of good stopping its function at the wrong time. The opposite can also be true, that it is sometimes convenient that something breaks down because I actually wanted this new model anyway but could not justify throwing away a perfectly fine good.
  - Matumio 1y ago
    That, and the cognitive load. You need to buy the right amount, remember where you stored the $5 replacements, or else spend $100 worth of your time to figure out where you ordered from five years ago. And if they are no longer available you need time to figure out which of the replacements isn't total crap.
- 1y ago

csomar 1y ago

This is true but flawed. Think about the iPhone. If you wanted the model of today but 5 years ago, it would have cost you millions? If that’s even possible. What you are saying will be correct if we had no technological advancement whatsoever. But we had significant advancement. Everything should, must, be better if we applied the same cost. But while that’s the case in some things, lots of things have degraded in different ways.

shakna 1y ago

> Airplane tickets used to cost a lot more for economy class, even adjusted for inflation and fees. To get the equivalent service and quality today you simply have to pay more, you just have the choice of paying very little for very low quality because there’s more flights and more planes. I don't think you actually can get the same quality, today. Even if you are paying more. The spacing of seats has changed. [0] You can pay more and get something more than you had by going up classes, but the same experience no longer exists. [0] https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/airline-seats-are-too-small-what-should-we-do-about-it/ https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/airline-seats-are-t...

bravesoul2 1y ago
I think it might in other countries. JAL is an example where I felt they had a great economy class experience. Excellent food and service. Great legroom. I am average height male and can fully stretch out my legs.
fastball 1y ago
Yes, basically nothing stays the exact same quality over time. But if you can get better quality and worse quality that kinda obviates the OP's point.
fragmede 1y ago
http://jsx.com http://jsx.com is a tiny carrier flying out of only a handful of cities in the US, but it's basically a quarter step towards during private. They have their own terminals and all of their planes are smaller but the seats themselves are bigger.

terminalshort 1y ago

But I don't want the equivalent service. I want the cheapest ticket possible to get me from A to B. And apparently most people agree with me, or that's not what they would be selling. This is the opposite of a problem.

simianparrot 1y ago
That’s why there’s now a broader quality spectrum of plane tickets. I travel seldomly, but when I do I tend to buy business class, because I value the comfort of the journey more than the frequency of journeys. But most other people, including you, have other priorities. Which is why at least in this example I think it’s a market working well based on supply and demand.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  Yeah, I agree, but what's the difference between that and any other product?

bravesoul2 1y ago

Key point is for many their real wages have decreased, adjusted for inflation.

jorams 1y ago

> I’m not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality I think that hints at part of the real problem: humans have very little ability to judge the quality of products. Marketing departments are very good at cosplaying quality. "Awards" on things like wine only tell you the manufacturer paid the owner of the trademark some money. Reviews are often fake or at least paid for by the manufacturer. With price also not being a meaningful quality signal you're left with a choice: Buy the expensive product hoping the quality reflects the price, or buy the cheap product knowing the quality is probably not great, but at least you didn't spend a lot of money on something that isn't worth it.

simianparrot 1y ago
I’ve just learned to discern quality better. For clothes, I learned from a friend who designs them how to tell fabric quality and seam quality. But there’s online resources to learn that as well. For electronics it can be hard but if I can’t tell from first principles and my knowledge of electronics design I’ll research brands via online reviews and tear-downs. Eventually you get a pretty good “instinct” that makes it less tedious.

caominhtuong 1y ago

[flagged]

caominhtuong 1y ago
[flagged]

lll-o-lll 1y ago

> Same can be said for most electronics and even clothes. I’m not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. Electric Kettles - Microwaves. The components that make up the actual boiling of water are now standard and all come from the same chinese manufacturer. You can pay $20 to $1000 for the same thing. The expensive one will look much better. Microwaves are the same - large numbers of manufacturers to all the same guts just different skins. Retail clothing is the most obvious example. There used to be mid market clothing manufacturers that would produce clothing locally and try to compete on quality. That’s almost gone now. There’s just not enough demand.

simianparrot 1y ago
My electric kettle may use the same basic heating components as most cheaper ones, but I paid extra to get one where the entire container is one piece metal — practically a tall cooking pot with a heater element built in under it, a water safe connector to a base station that’s connected to power, and a handle and lid. It’s easier to clean, has no plastic in contact with the water, and has so far lasted me 14 years. It cost 800 NOK instead of the ~400 for a typical plastic one. But due to my experience with those in the past, I’d say absolutely worth it.
LorenPechtel 1y ago
Disagree. Panasonic's Inverter technology is definitely superior in my book. Everybody else's units only operate at full power no matter what you select--20% power is really 100% power with a 20% duty cycle. This can produce uneven heat for short runs and means that the load on the circuit is the full draw of the machine--doesn't share a circuit with other power-hungry devices very well. But at low power the Panasonic is much more friendly with other devices.

ikekkdcjkfke 1y ago

That is where they get you, higher priced goods with better wrapping but marginaly higher quality