11 ms·

Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? I don’t think it’s ‘efficiency’ in the same way spaceX is run. Yeah they cut costs, but they got better quality resul

Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? I don’t think it’s ‘efficiency’ in the same way spaceX is run. Yeah they cut costs, but they got better quality results. With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doing it make more money than ever.

ericmay 1y ago
No - the term Late Stage Capitalism gets thrown around a bunch as a scarecrow for anything seemingly bad going on, but in this case it’s more likely a symptom of lack of education of materials and/or people not caring, and resource depletion/competition due to overpopulation and rise in living standards across the world. > With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doing it make more money than ever. Specifically this is an issue of government failure and cultural malaise - food quality anyone? We need to vote better, and vote with our dollar better. Stop buying dumb DJI drones to race around and buy a nice sweater instead.
- wiz21c 1y ago
  > resource depletion/competition due to overpopulation and rise in living standards across the world. Interesting take. Any source ?
  - ericmay 1y ago
    Nope just personal observation. There are only so many lobsters and marble quarries, and we can only raise so many sheep for high quality wool. Most of the hardwood trees are gone too. That’s why we have switched to plastic and other industrial materials to keep building suburban houses and we spend all day on Netflix.
- jfengel 1y ago
  Capitalism gives the market what it demands. You can't tell consumers what they should want. Government failure an cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight. It doesn't, however, give any pointers on where to go from there.
  - ericmay 1y ago
    > You can't tell consumers what they should want. Why does marketing and advertising exist then? > Government failure and cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight. If capitalism gives what the market demands, then you are suggesting that The People want government failure and malaise. Either your premise is wrong or Late Stage Capitalism is wrong. Likely both. Terms like Late Stage Capitalism are just there to give you something nice to hold on to and use as your scarecrow for anything bad you see in the world. An intellectual crutch, a helping hand into the graveyard. Car recall? Late Stage Capitalism! Forest fire? Climate change - late stage capitalism. Teeth fell out? Late Stage Capitalism. Covid-19 vaccines or a cure for cancer? Hmm somehow still Late Stage Capitalism. And now you have your answer to why the world sucks and even better, Late Stage Capitalism says nothing about what comes next! No reason to do anything about it, like support the arts or educate a child, because it’s just Late Stage Capitalism after all. Hopeless and failed ideologies (Communism/Socialism) love to generate destructive and useless distractions and slogans. Reject them!
    - ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
      >> Government failure and cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight. > If capitalism gives what the market demands, then you are suggesting that The People want government failure and malaise You are both correct here. Obviously people don't want malaise directly, but some directly seek government failure, and the rest vote for things that result in malaise and government failure, wittingly or otherwise. Often such voters do so because they think it will get them more money, which is a reasonable desire under capitalism. > Hopeless and failed ideologies (Communism/Socialism) Oh, I didn't realize till the end that you were treating this discussion as a team thing, and capitalism is "your team", so you must attack "the other team", even though nobody else mentioned it. Maybe instead of treating "the other team" as something nice to hold on to and use as your scarecrow for anything bad you see in the world, you can keep discussing the substance of things? You did a good job of this for a bit.
      - 1y ago
ants_everywhere 1y ago
> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? If that were the explanation then you'd need another explanation for declining quality issues in communist countries. A test claim that some problem caused by "capitalism" should always backed up by a proof that the problem doesn't exist in the many other economic systems the world has tried. If only because this forces people to actually think about the economics instead of just using words to evoke an emotional reaction.
- jfengel 1y ago
  There really isn't anybody with state ownership of the means of production. It's hard to find anything to make a comparison to. Communism would have its own reasons for declining quality: the lack of an individual profit motive. The hope would be that you would no longer be alienated from the products of your work, but that never came close to happening. So if you were referring to China... they are the world's foremost capitalists right now. Their products get worse because that's what the market tells them.
  - ants_everywhere 1y ago
    Communism has been tried many times always with severe quality issues. But my point isn't just about communism. You have to run a different argument for mercantilism, command economies, mixed economies, barter economies, etc. The fact that people have historically tried devaluing currency for as long as they've had currency suggests that there's a force that favors attempting to sell inferior goods without decreasing price and that this force predates the industrial revolution. > So if you were referring to China... they are the world's foremost capitalists right now. This is the same logic by which communists called socialists who believed in democracy "fascists". It's just an attempt to excommunicate people from the church if their interpretation is different from yours.
    - monocasa 1y ago
      > This is the same logic by which communists called socialists who believed in democracy "fascists". It's just an attempt to excommunicate people from the church if their interpretation is different from yours. I mean, China is second only to to the US in minting new billionaires. Sure, gatekeeping and no true Scotsman are real things, but at the end of the day so are definitions. I don't see any definition of communism that allows for the private acquisition of billions of dollars of private capital.
rapnie 1y ago
Processed foods is another example. Reconstructing well-known food products with cheapest materials. If it still tastes and looks somewhat familiar, its a go.
- nico 1y ago
  A couple of days ago on Reddit, there was a thread about “company secrets”. A guy that did food tasting for some cookies company said that most people, when doing the tastings, think they are trying different brands and that the company is trying to get their preference. But what they are really doing, is testing the same cookie, each with one different (cheaper) ingredient than the current recipe in the market. The company is looking for the cheapest new recipe that people will still eat (buy)
SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago
Yes. To be more specific, look for the point where a Private Equity firm gets involved. Whose aim is extractive and often bankrupts the host company - to cut costs, send production somewhere cheaper, and in general use up the value in the good name that the product has. This is what happened to Dr. Martens (footwear) to Instant pot (cookware) to Red Lobster (restaurants)
- walterbell 1y ago
  > whose aim is extractive Endorsed by legislative policy, e.g. tax-deductible interest payments on PE-induced debt.
- jcynix 1y ago
  Good example. Add https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons which acquired various popular apps (Evernote, Filmic, …), fired most developers, and now exploits these apps to death.
  - moomoo11 1y ago
    Oh they bought meetup. No wonder it’s so shit now.
  - AznHisoka 1y ago
    Evernote still has maintained a lot of its old UI and features. Maybe it too will degrade eventally but its still very good
- an0malous 1y ago
  PE is the corporate equivalent of cutting the crack with baking soda
  - moomoo11 1y ago
    Their goal is to make money but they need a few to die because that means their meth(ods) is good. Jeez. I can see it. Omg.
boomlinde 1y ago
I'd argue that they both represent a kind of efficiency. If your product or service has an unacceptable quality, demand will decrease and you will lose money that way. On the other hand, if in the pursuit of higher quality your production costs become too high, profit will decrease and you will lose money that way. Somewhere between these is a sweet spot where the level of quality and demand are in balance so as to maximize profit. The difference between cheap rocket launches and cheap clothes in those terms is just where this sweet spot is: there may not be a high demand at all for more failure prone rocket launches, while poorly constructed clothes and appliances have evidently come to seem perfectly acceptable to a lot of consumers.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  In theory quality gets balanced with price, but it's too hard to measure the difference in quality between different products. "perfectly acceptable" often means being tricked. And some people will say it was an intentional choice to go with the cheap appliance instead of the industrial one that costs 3x as much, but all they really needed was one that had fewer corners cut and cost 15% more to build. When designs are falling into the quality hole, the percent increase in lifetime per percent increase in build cost is really good but good luck figuring out which companies built better and which companies increased the price for nothing.
- xp84 1y ago
  > If your product or service has an unacceptable quality, demand will decrease and you will lose money I challenge that assumption. If whole markets are dominated by companies who have downgraded quality to the minimum, then customers have no choice but to keep buying from you or someone else doing the same thing. If they don’t buy from you because of their most recent bad experience, someone else (who bought their jeans that ripped in a month from someone else) will. The only alternatives would be to make your own clothes or to seek out very specific high-quality artisanal sources. Both options are out of the reach of at least 75% of the market.
  - boomlinde 1y ago
    I don't agree that this is a challenge my assumption. You are talking about the lack of information and of alternatives; factors in how the demand for poor quality products can exist. That naturally affects where the balance point is, but I don't think that rebuts or even addresses my fundamental assumption. In my view there is such a balance point regardless of how the demand has come to exist. A market without perfect information and where consumption isn't necessarily driven by rational needs is ripe for exploitation. Why should a business create higher quality clothes if they can instead manipulate consumers into thinking they're losers for not replacing their wardrobes every year, flood the market with thousands of labels to create brand uncertainty and pay people to "review" them favorably to further make it hard to be an informed consumre? They can can condition consumers into believing that poor quality is acceptable, so why shouldn't they if it ultimately results in higher profits?
somenameforme 1y ago
I think it's more of late stage consumerism. Why do middle class people spend $1000 on a phone that's, for every single purpose they use it for, basically identical to a phone that would cost a fraction as much? Why do low class urban people buy sneakers for hundreds of dollars that, again, for every single purpose they use them for - are essentially identical to some no brand sneakers that would cost a tenth as much? Somehow, at some point, being overtly ripped off became a way of signaling 'class', which is just about the most idiotic thing imaginable. In 'better times' people would look at somebody with a $1000 phone or $300 sneakers as a gullible idiot, and that seems correct to me. The way people spend money creates a major incentive for companies to rip them off. Our economic system isn't forcing people to behave this way, although mass advertising is probably playing a huge role in maintaining it.
- teiferer 1y ago
  > Why do low class urban people buy sneakers for hundreds of dollars that, again, for every single purpose they use them for - are essentially identical to some no brand sneakers that would cost a tenth as much? I just made the mistake of buying cheapo flipflops a few weeks ago. One stroll through the park and they are full of gravel stuck in the sole that left holes when I removed it. A few a days I replaced them with 7x as expensive ones. Already walked around 10x as far distance, no sign of issues. A reminder that buying cheap ends up more expensive. I don't need crap in my life and maybe that holds too for the folks you are thinking of?
  - robinsonb5 1y ago
    The problem is there's plenty of crap masquerading as the good stuff, at the higher price point, and telling the difference is not easy. (At least pre-purchase!)
    - Der_Einzige 1y ago
      When you learn about clothes and fashion, it’s quite easy to tell the difference. HN is full of computer nerds who can’t fanthom that computers are as mysterious to normies as sneakers are to the nerds of HN. A lot of people know how to tell apart good and bad footwear - it just isn’t you or your crowd!
an0malous 1y ago
Yes, capitalism requires perpetual growth. When the opportunities for growth through innovation dry up, businesses resort to cutting costs which usually involves cutting quality and hoping most consumers won’t notice. Incidentally, this is the exact strategy that VC and Private Equity use. They know how the game is played. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- imtringued 1y ago
  This is correct. Capitalism requires perpetual growth because capitalist logic does not apply in saturated markets with excess capital. Anyone who believes in capitalism must by necessity believe thatcapital produces part capital and part consumer goods and that the rate of capital production must exceed the rate of capital depreciation. But in the face of stagnating population growth this logic must by necessity result in excess capital, threatening investor profit, to which they respond with drastic anti consumer measures.
BobaFloutist 1y ago
"Late Stage" as a term means "right before it fails." People have been calling capitalism "Late Stage" for decades.
- int_19h 1y ago
  The distinct term "late stage capitalism" is exactly 100 years old, in fact. Given that the entire history of capitalism spans several centuries, I don't think the term is even necessarily wrong. But it certainly has nothing to do with declining standards of quality - that is a much more recent phenomenon.
PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? You know this phrase originated in the 1930s or early 1940s, yes?
swed420 1y ago
> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? Yes, just as Marx predicted with his law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF): https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/a-world-rate-of-profit-important-new-evidence/ https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/a-world-ra...

ericmay 1y ago

No - the term Late Stage Capitalism gets thrown around a bunch as a scarecrow for anything seemingly bad going on, but in this case it’s more likely a symptom of lack of education of materials and/or people not caring, and resource depletion/competition due to overpopulation and rise in living standards across the world. > With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doing it make more money than ever. Specifically this is an issue of government failure and cultural malaise - food quality anyone? We need to vote better, and vote with our dollar better. Stop buying dumb DJI drones to race around and buy a nice sweater instead.

wiz21c 1y ago
> resource depletion/competition due to overpopulation and rise in living standards across the world. Interesting take. Any source ?
- ericmay 1y ago
  Nope just personal observation. There are only so many lobsters and marble quarries, and we can only raise so many sheep for high quality wool. Most of the hardwood trees are gone too. That’s why we have switched to plastic and other industrial materials to keep building suburban houses and we spend all day on Netflix.
jfengel 1y ago
Capitalism gives the market what it demands. You can't tell consumers what they should want. Government failure an cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight. It doesn't, however, give any pointers on where to go from there.
- ericmay 1y ago
  > You can't tell consumers what they should want. Why does marketing and advertising exist then? > Government failure and cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight. If capitalism gives what the market demands, then you are suggesting that The People want government failure and malaise. Either your premise is wrong or Late Stage Capitalism is wrong. Likely both. Terms like Late Stage Capitalism are just there to give you something nice to hold on to and use as your scarecrow for anything bad you see in the world. An intellectual crutch, a helping hand into the graveyard. Car recall? Late Stage Capitalism! Forest fire? Climate change - late stage capitalism. Teeth fell out? Late Stage Capitalism. Covid-19 vaccines or a cure for cancer? Hmm somehow still Late Stage Capitalism. And now you have your answer to why the world sucks and even better, Late Stage Capitalism says nothing about what comes next! No reason to do anything about it, like support the arts or educate a child, because it’s just Late Stage Capitalism after all. Hopeless and failed ideologies (Communism/Socialism) love to generate destructive and useless distractions and slogans. Reject them!
  - ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
    >> Government failure and cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight. > If capitalism gives what the market demands, then you are suggesting that The People want government failure and malaise You are both correct here. Obviously people don't want malaise directly, but some directly seek government failure, and the rest vote for things that result in malaise and government failure, wittingly or otherwise. Often such voters do so because they think it will get them more money, which is a reasonable desire under capitalism. > Hopeless and failed ideologies (Communism/Socialism) Oh, I didn't realize till the end that you were treating this discussion as a team thing, and capitalism is "your team", so you must attack "the other team", even though nobody else mentioned it. Maybe instead of treating "the other team" as something nice to hold on to and use as your scarecrow for anything bad you see in the world, you can keep discussing the substance of things? You did a good job of this for a bit.
    - 1y ago

ants_everywhere 1y ago

> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? If that were the explanation then you'd need another explanation for declining quality issues in communist countries. A test claim that some problem caused by "capitalism" should always backed up by a proof that the problem doesn't exist in the many other economic systems the world has tried. If only because this forces people to actually think about the economics instead of just using words to evoke an emotional reaction.

jfengel 1y ago
There really isn't anybody with state ownership of the means of production. It's hard to find anything to make a comparison to. Communism would have its own reasons for declining quality: the lack of an individual profit motive. The hope would be that you would no longer be alienated from the products of your work, but that never came close to happening. So if you were referring to China... they are the world's foremost capitalists right now. Their products get worse because that's what the market tells them.
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  Communism has been tried many times always with severe quality issues. But my point isn't just about communism. You have to run a different argument for mercantilism, command economies, mixed economies, barter economies, etc. The fact that people have historically tried devaluing currency for as long as they've had currency suggests that there's a force that favors attempting to sell inferior goods without decreasing price and that this force predates the industrial revolution. > So if you were referring to China... they are the world's foremost capitalists right now. This is the same logic by which communists called socialists who believed in democracy "fascists". It's just an attempt to excommunicate people from the church if their interpretation is different from yours.
  - monocasa 1y ago
    > This is the same logic by which communists called socialists who believed in democracy "fascists". It's just an attempt to excommunicate people from the church if their interpretation is different from yours. I mean, China is second only to to the US in minting new billionaires. Sure, gatekeeping and no true Scotsman are real things, but at the end of the day so are definitions. I don't see any definition of communism that allows for the private acquisition of billions of dollars of private capital.

rapnie 1y ago

Processed foods is another example. Reconstructing well-known food products with cheapest materials. If it still tastes and looks somewhat familiar, its a go.

nico 1y ago
A couple of days ago on Reddit, there was a thread about “company secrets”. A guy that did food tasting for some cookies company said that most people, when doing the tastings, think they are trying different brands and that the company is trying to get their preference. But what they are really doing, is testing the same cookie, each with one different (cheaper) ingredient than the current recipe in the market. The company is looking for the cheapest new recipe that people will still eat (buy)

SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago

Yes. To be more specific, look for the point where a Private Equity firm gets involved. Whose aim is extractive and often bankrupts the host company - to cut costs, send production somewhere cheaper, and in general use up the value in the good name that the product has. This is what happened to Dr. Martens (footwear) to Instant pot (cookware) to Red Lobster (restaurants)

walterbell 1y ago
> whose aim is extractive Endorsed by legislative policy, e.g. tax-deductible interest payments on PE-induced debt.
jcynix 1y ago
Good example. Add https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons which acquired various popular apps (Evernote, Filmic, …), fired most developers, and now exploits these apps to death.
- moomoo11 1y ago
  Oh they bought meetup. No wonder it’s so shit now.
- AznHisoka 1y ago
  Evernote still has maintained a lot of its old UI and features. Maybe it too will degrade eventally but its still very good
an0malous 1y ago
PE is the corporate equivalent of cutting the crack with baking soda
- moomoo11 1y ago
  Their goal is to make money but they need a few to die because that means their meth(ods) is good. Jeez. I can see it. Omg.

boomlinde 1y ago

I'd argue that they both represent a kind of efficiency. If your product or service has an unacceptable quality, demand will decrease and you will lose money that way. On the other hand, if in the pursuit of higher quality your production costs become too high, profit will decrease and you will lose money that way. Somewhere between these is a sweet spot where the level of quality and demand are in balance so as to maximize profit. The difference between cheap rocket launches and cheap clothes in those terms is just where this sweet spot is: there may not be a high demand at all for more failure prone rocket launches, while poorly constructed clothes and appliances have evidently come to seem perfectly acceptable to a lot of consumers.

Dylan16807 1y ago
In theory quality gets balanced with price, but it's too hard to measure the difference in quality between different products. "perfectly acceptable" often means being tricked. And some people will say it was an intentional choice to go with the cheap appliance instead of the industrial one that costs 3x as much, but all they really needed was one that had fewer corners cut and cost 15% more to build. When designs are falling into the quality hole, the percent increase in lifetime per percent increase in build cost is really good but good luck figuring out which companies built better and which companies increased the price for nothing.
xp84 1y ago
> If your product or service has an unacceptable quality, demand will decrease and you will lose money I challenge that assumption. If whole markets are dominated by companies who have downgraded quality to the minimum, then customers have no choice but to keep buying from you or someone else doing the same thing. If they don’t buy from you because of their most recent bad experience, someone else (who bought their jeans that ripped in a month from someone else) will. The only alternatives would be to make your own clothes or to seek out very specific high-quality artisanal sources. Both options are out of the reach of at least 75% of the market.
- boomlinde 1y ago
  I don't agree that this is a challenge my assumption. You are talking about the lack of information and of alternatives; factors in how the demand for poor quality products can exist. That naturally affects where the balance point is, but I don't think that rebuts or even addresses my fundamental assumption. In my view there is such a balance point regardless of how the demand has come to exist. A market without perfect information and where consumption isn't necessarily driven by rational needs is ripe for exploitation. Why should a business create higher quality clothes if they can instead manipulate consumers into thinking they're losers for not replacing their wardrobes every year, flood the market with thousands of labels to create brand uncertainty and pay people to "review" them favorably to further make it hard to be an informed consumre? They can can condition consumers into believing that poor quality is acceptable, so why shouldn't they if it ultimately results in higher profits?

somenameforme 1y ago

I think it's more of late stage consumerism. Why do middle class people spend $1000 on a phone that's, for every single purpose they use it for, basically identical to a phone that would cost a fraction as much? Why do low class urban people buy sneakers for hundreds of dollars that, again, for every single purpose they use them for - are essentially identical to some no brand sneakers that would cost a tenth as much? Somehow, at some point, being overtly ripped off became a way of signaling 'class', which is just about the most idiotic thing imaginable. In 'better times' people would look at somebody with a $1000 phone or $300 sneakers as a gullible idiot, and that seems correct to me. The way people spend money creates a major incentive for companies to rip them off. Our economic system isn't forcing people to behave this way, although mass advertising is probably playing a huge role in maintaining it.

teiferer 1y ago
> Why do low class urban people buy sneakers for hundreds of dollars that, again, for every single purpose they use them for - are essentially identical to some no brand sneakers that would cost a tenth as much? I just made the mistake of buying cheapo flipflops a few weeks ago. One stroll through the park and they are full of gravel stuck in the sole that left holes when I removed it. A few a days I replaced them with 7x as expensive ones. Already walked around 10x as far distance, no sign of issues. A reminder that buying cheap ends up more expensive. I don't need crap in my life and maybe that holds too for the folks you are thinking of?
- robinsonb5 1y ago
  The problem is there's plenty of crap masquerading as the good stuff, at the higher price point, and telling the difference is not easy. (At least pre-purchase!)
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    When you learn about clothes and fashion, it’s quite easy to tell the difference. HN is full of computer nerds who can’t fanthom that computers are as mysterious to normies as sneakers are to the nerds of HN. A lot of people know how to tell apart good and bad footwear - it just isn’t you or your crowd!

an0malous 1y ago

Yes, capitalism requires perpetual growth. When the opportunities for growth through innovation dry up, businesses resort to cutting costs which usually involves cutting quality and hoping most consumers won’t notice. Incidentally, this is the exact strategy that VC and Private Equity use. They know how the game is played. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

imtringued 1y ago
This is correct. Capitalism requires perpetual growth because capitalist logic does not apply in saturated markets with excess capital. Anyone who believes in capitalism must by necessity believe thatcapital produces part capital and part consumer goods and that the rate of capital production must exceed the rate of capital depreciation. But in the face of stagnating population growth this logic must by necessity result in excess capital, threatening investor profit, to which they respond with drastic anti consumer measures.

BobaFloutist 1y ago

"Late Stage" as a term means "right before it fails." People have been calling capitalism "Late Stage" for decades.

int_19h 1y ago
The distinct term "late stage capitalism" is exactly 100 years old, in fact. Given that the entire history of capitalism spans several centuries, I don't think the term is even necessarily wrong. But it certainly has nothing to do with declining standards of quality - that is a much more recent phenomenon.

PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago

> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? You know this phrase originated in the 1930s or early 1940s, yes?

swed420 1y ago

> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? Yes, just as Marx predicted with his law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF): https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/a-world-rate-of-profit-important-new-evidence/ https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/a-world-ra...