Comment by tshaddox
5 days ago
What zamalek describes isn't just that China manufactures cheap products. The complain is more about retailers or marketplaces (particularly online ones) that encourage essentially anonymous, zero-cost seller accounts and product listings.
Traditional retailers like Target or Costco also sell a lot of cheap Chinese stuff, but they don't have quite the same level of junk in their listings.
Right. There's always been a range of products from cheap to quality. But "cheap" used to mean something that wouldn't last as long or that had limited features, but that could still be worth the lower price. Now "cheap" can mean something that will break the first time you use it, at which point is any price low enough?
I bought a garden hose sprayer at Dollar General for $1, and it leaked immediately. $1 is so little now that it was basically free, but even for free it wouldn't have been worth it, and I'm not going to make a trip to get a $1 refund. At some point, "cheap" is so bad that it has negative value, as it only adds clutter and waste.