this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Buy expensive things.
Planned obsolescence finds an issue with that statement.
Buy good expensive things.
The perfect combo, why didn't I think of that?
Because you think that every company is out there to sell you garbage. They're out to make money and its hard to do that if you're selling expensive stuff.
you're such a fucking redditor, stfu
Death to America
This is basic economics at modern scale.
You make less and less sense with every subsequent comment
I'm not the best to explain this, but, small businesses are hard. They're limited to more traditional business types (resturaunts, grocery stores, niche services). Modern economies heavily prefer stuff at scale. There's a reason why Framework has two laptops but dell makes two dozen new ones each year.
I'm also definitely a bad choice to explain this. Clothing is also hard. Since the 00s clothing technology has skyrocketed. Just today I was wearing an eight year old shirt that had never torn, faded, or lost a button. Pants are better at hiding erections. Bras are just better in general. Loose threads dont happen as oftrn, amd theyre less destructive.
Large scale manufacturing of clothing can create good products now, often better than handmade stuff. It can also be really bad. It's hard to tell, and fast fashion is abhorrent for the market. There isn't something that's cheap and good, though.
I'll say that clothing is not hard. Let's not talk about cheap for a second. There is enough accumulated knowledge that it should be possible to make long lasting high quality clothing at an enormous scale. The problem in this is the cost and profit margins. It is much more profitable for clothing brands to sell ephemeral stuff that you have to buy over and over again rather than something they sell to you once in a decade owing to the longevity. It is not a problem of scale why fast fashion and generally available clothing is terrible. It's a problem of economic motives.
Talking about cheap vs. expensive, I would say that it was true about a decade ago that you could reliably expect expensive stuff from good brands to last long. But as time has gone by this has begun to be less and less true. Luxury brands are looking to expand their customer base and profits because that's what their shareholders demand. As such, they are also adopting techniques from fast fashion to produce lower quality clothing at a cheaper price to boost their profit margin. So you could buy an expensive item these days and it would be a dice roll for it to turn out long lived.
There is also the option of niche brands producing good stuff. Like Darn Tough Socks making indestructible socks. But sometimes these brands end up being acquired by venture capital bros who then run them in the ground.
There are a ton of economic factors that churn out terrible products. Large scale manufacturing is not important IMO.
People also don't seem to know that things like expensive clothes are sold at like a 50% markup, which is fucking wild. In my work it's considered a great job if you make 10% profit
Yes that's what I said.
Yep
Make sure to account for survivorship bias and your own luck and perception. Are you basing this off the fact you have stuff in your closet from that time? If so, make sure to understand there is probably a lot of stuff that broke from that time too.
And it's hard to do that because of economies to scale. Their name implies they only sell socks.
It's not large scale manufacturing. I didn't say that I said "stuff". It's vertical integration, large scale distribution, established brands, logistics, customer support, brand optics, etc. The sock company in your comment has "socks" in their name.
bot
Death to America
lol no I've been burned too many times by thinking expensive stuff is just made better
Fucking AX shirt was supposed to be built well and fell apart faster than one I paid ten dollars on
There's some outliers but you're paying for the logo 90% of the time
Many expensive things don't hold up. They're just a brand name or status symbol.
There's also a trend of capitalist vultures buying up well-known and trusted brands and then squeezing them for all their worth by changing manufacturing to something much cheaper and lower quality and slapping the logo on it. Eventually this stops working because the brand loses caché.
I've had pricy clothes fall apart just as fast as cheap fast fashion. I thought I was buying quality but was misled and the workmanship was just as bad. Money isn't necessarily correlated with quality anymore. Most of what's being sold at a premium nowadays is brand identity. You're advertising your place on the socioeconomic ladder, while the stitching or fabric isn't really any less shitty.
Which gets me to your follow up comment:
Ok sure, like what?
Specific examples are what OP wants.
It depends on what she wants.
Framework makes good laptops. Anker makes good cables.
OP uses she/her
Edited
ty!
Ya don't gotta thank me bro
Maybe they've turned their act around, but the Framework Batch 11 laptop kept breaking down on me. I had a host of issues (motherboard died, touchpad was simultaneously loose and sticky, power management messes, bad heat management), After just two years, the keyboard failed, and they don't actually sell replacement keyboards, despite the whole premise being that you're supposed to be able to buy replacement parts.
I've actually not had good luck with Anker overall. My powerbank turned into a spicy pillow right after the one year mark. My soundcore started having syncing problems after a couple years.
And the PD part of my power cube broke after a month. At least that one was still under warranty though.
For cables Anker has been good fwiw
I still feel like monoprice is my best option for cables though. A good balance between durability and price. But I know some hate them and call them cheap crap. I don't buy their other stuff. Only the cables.
I've never had an issue personally.