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Call me crazy, but it is possible to distinguish good from bad in most of these "lemon markets" the author lists. When buying physical products, there are tons

Call me crazy, but it is possible to distinguish good from bad in most of these "lemon markets" the author lists. When buying physical products, there are tons of high-quality review sites like Wirecutter, with journalists who spend months testing out products and reviewing them to find the best ones. Not to mention the reviews on sites like Amazon itself. And of course, just doing internet searches, researching the domain, learning what makes products good, seeing what others on various forums have liked. It takes some time, effort, learning, and taste to do all this searching and to weed out the fake reviews, of course, but I think many millions of people are capable of doing the above. Social media is similar. It's not that hard to discern whether you're following a low-quality spam account vs an authentic high-quality person. And you can curate and build up your list over time, to have more signal and less noise. Will most people filter effectively? No. Again, it requires time, effort, learning, and taste. But still, it's possible. Etc. But I don't think it's accurate to say we're in a lemon market. We're in a taste market, and the reality is that most people just have exceptionally bad taste.

yummypaint 1y ago
It doesn't matter whether it's possible for a highly motivated and educated person to distinguish the lemons. This will usually be true. The important thing is the experience of real consumers participating in the market as it actually exists. A better framing would be "of all products in category X sold last month on amazon, what fraction were lemons?"
- csallen 1y ago
  > It doesn't matter whether it's possible for a highly motivated and educated person to distinguish the lemons. It does though, since the entire premise of the "lemon market" idea is that buyers can't differentiate between good and bad products. What matters is where the bar is to be a good differentiator, and how many people can cross it. It also doesn't necessarily matter how many lemons are for sale, if the good ones are easy to find. Imagine that there are 1 million trashy sleep masks on Amazon and only 3 good ones, but the 3 good ones are right at the top, with superior ratings and reviews. The better question is: what % of buyers are buying lemons?

yummypaint 1y ago

It doesn't matter whether it's possible for a highly motivated and educated person to distinguish the lemons. This will usually be true. The important thing is the experience of real consumers participating in the market as it actually exists. A better framing would be "of all products in category X sold last month on amazon, what fraction were lemons?"

csallen 1y ago
> It doesn't matter whether it's possible for a highly motivated and educated person to distinguish the lemons. It does though, since the entire premise of the "lemon market" idea is that buyers can't differentiate between good and bad products. What matters is where the bar is to be a good differentiator, and how many people can cross it. It also doesn't necessarily matter how many lemons are for sale, if the good ones are easy to find. Imagine that there are 1 million trashy sleep masks on Amazon and only 3 good ones, but the 3 good ones are right at the top, with superior ratings and reviews. The better question is: what % of buyers are buying lemons?