Comment by djoldman
14 days ago
> nitpick: most users don’t care about these things until something goes significantly wrong and it impacts them, e.g. a massive data breach or persistent global downtime.
> then they get angry. very angry.
Yes, this has a lot of overlap with how humans differ from "Homo Economicus" [0].
Humans generally can't find out, don't know, care to know, have the time to research, or are expert enough to understand the ramifications of decisions perfectly (or adequately to some definition of adequate).
However, they do understand price!!! So you end up getting cheap stuff that everyone chooses because they don't understand how they lower their future risk or save money over the long run with a more immediately expensive option.
This, also, has been true for a long long time. Humans are far more likely to choose the cheap option if they don't believe or understand the expensive one.
Incidentally, this is somewhat rational given that marketing half-truths are rampant.
I've noticed this is leading to less high quality products being produced in general. If the only real axis people understand is price then products can't compete on quality/durability/maintability/etc, and so they're pushed aside to lower the cost.
A recent example: I've bought many articles of clothing from Eddie Bauer over the years because they have been generally high quality and durable, and even so are only a bit more expensive than other brands. However just last week they filed for bankruptcy. Sure, the company could have been mismanaged, but I'm sure competition from fast fashion brands with rock bottom prices didn't help.
Haven’t followed the recent history of Eddie Bauer, but seems they’ve sullied their brand for a while. Sam’s Club has been selling Eddie Bauer stuff for years. I don’t think a $37 pair of Eddie Bauer hiking boots are going to be quality.
The more or less inevitable trend of "outdoor stores/brands" is to become increasingly sort of "outdoorsy casual" stores of some sort with--maybe--some camping/hiking gear at some level.
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There is an interesting counter balance to this consumer tendency: the business.
Businesses/organizations in a lot of ways act much more "rationally" than the individual consumer. So you'll see generally better car/truck maintenance in fleets than by consumers.
Then there is a cool feedback/blowoff valve where more expensive + higher quality "pro" tools get discovered by consumers, drive up demand, the price falls, and then the features become common.
Don't forget the second half of that feedback loop: other manufacturers come out with their poor approximations of those features at lower prices, consumption shifts to that because quality isn't clear from the labels, the quality manufacturers don't move enough volume to hit similar prices, so they end up either killing them or cutting corners.
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I've never heard of Eddie Bauer, and if I did see that in a store, there's no way to know the clothing is of higher quality, or how much higher. In a market for lemons, lemons win.
> However, they do understand price!!! So you end up getting cheap stuff that everyone chooses because they don't understand how they lower their future risk or save money over the long run with a more immediately expensive option.
I think people generally do understand that. What they can't do is tell which of the more expensive options is actually of higher quality and which just has higher margins. That requires expert knowledge and we can't each be an expert in everything.
In other cases it can also actually be better to get the cheaper crap option. E.g. if you are not sure if something will actually work for you the best option is no longer just the one with the lowest cost/lifetime.