Quality Content, the "Wal-Mart Effect" and the Lowest Common Denominator
Yesterday, I was reading this post by @whatsup about people and the many different types of content on Steemit.
Whereas I personally happen to be a proponent of "quality content" (or at least adding something that's "of value" to others, not merely a "place holder" for upvotes), I make no claims that my way is the RIGHT way or the ONLY way.
What People CARE About...
Salvia in bloom
The post, however, got me to thinking about some memories from being quite young, which led me to speculate on some of the weird quirks of the human condition.
I remember being little (aka "about 10-12") and thinking that humans did an awful lot of complaining about how stuff would break and was "cheaply" made. I couldn't get that to make sense in my young brain, because everyone was always trying to find "the cheapest" of whatever they were looking for.
My "solution" (and my understanding) was an appreciation of the fact that I wanted to do better, along with the understanding that "better" took more time and effort, and thus could pretty much never be cheaper.
It was baffling to me that the "smart adults" were so often blind to their own contradictions... and it was many years before I understood that many ostensibly "smart adults" are more attached to what they want to be true, than what actually is true.
Changing my Direction
But people were always saying they wanted "better" so I dedicated much of my life to understanding "better" and creating better.
Purple Irises
What I discovered — much to my ongoing chagrin — is that people actually don't really want "better." Or, rather, they are not willing to pay the price of better. More specifically, the lure of "cheaper" nearly always beats the desire for "better."
My dad (also a proponent of "quality" in life) was fond of saying that people "want a new Mercedes, but they are only willing to pay a Ford price for it."
Alas, that turned out to be a reality that ended up governing much of my adult life. Although I stuck to my values of attempting to maximize quality, it was never a commercially viable enterprise.
In @whatsup's post, I made the comment that it is Wal-Mart (the super discount store with an explosion of cheap junk) that's making billions of dollars, not "Fred's Carefully Handmade Ethical Goods."
People may say they want what Fred has (and perhaps they sincerely do) but when push comes to shove, they inevitably drive their Suburbans over to WalMart, while muttering to themselves that ".. next time I will buy the good one, rather than the cheap one..."
A Childhood Memory
I had a memory that this may be a tendency that's programmed into Humans from birth. And maybe you can even relate to this story.
Scotch Broom in close-up
I remember being little — and perhaps this is where to touch on the roots of human nature — and going to the candy store with my friends, and everyone wanting a bag of "whatever you get the MOST of."
Not the tastiest, not the best, not the flavor they like best... but what you get the MOST of for your dollar.
Whether this is ultimately bying into the dominant scarcity paradigm that seems to drive the world, and a variation of "hoarding" I don't know, but it seems to be part and parcel of how many/most people live.
Could be my take on it is completely wrong... I am just observing what I see around me, and drawing on what several decades of business seems to have told me.
Of course, this post is a generalization, and there are always exceptions... and you may be one of them!
How About You? Where do you fall on the scale of "quality vs. price?" Do you want the best, or the cheapest? Or do you abstain, unless you can have both? Does quality or quantity matter more to you? Do you think the (general) human obsession with having an ever BIGGER pile of "stuff" is a not-so-subtle expression of "fear-of-scarcity" and hoarding? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
created by @zord189
(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 180720 17:05 PDT
I am a careful shopper, meaning I look for quality and price if I can. If I can't get the quality for the price I have in my pocket, I wait until I do. I would rather buy something that will last rather than something I will have to replace every year. I don't shop discount stores because the quality of goods is not up to my standards.
And that makes perfect sense to me! I just try to be mindful when I am trying to get something I actually need; it makes more sense to spend $60 on a heavy duty bar blender that will last for 5-10 years than spending $29.95 on pieces of crap I have to replace because they burn out every 18 months.
the Daily "Spotlight”!
Thanks for featuring my post @daveks; a surprising and delightful honor!
You make some excellent and fascinating observations here, @denmarkguy.
It is true that quality, thought given much praise, and truly appreciated by most when it comes to products/function, often takes a backseat to "what can I get now?" In economics I believe this "I want it now" attitude is called having a "high time preference." That is to say, being unwilling to wait and/or pay more for higher quality goods.
It is my position that if there were a philosophical paradigm shift in society in general, which flipped this all on its head, the extant systems would die. As it stands, however, pretty much everything, including governments themselves, are running on the "Walmart model." Why? Its the easiest way for those perched at the top of the system to siphon value from those on the bottom.
If you create a system where everything is designed to fail ("break"), including currency, security, food, etc, you will have "customers"--unable to afford better thanks to the guns of government (taxation, violent regulation, licensing, etc)--for life.
I am anticipating this great shift, as individual after individual wakes up to the real value of quality, and begins to say NO to the ruse. Platforms like this, cryptocurrencies, and the permaculture/homesteading, and entrepreneurial movements across the globe currently are proof of this.
Your childhood intuition was right. Soon it is my hope that individuals will come back to this, and that humans in general, across the globe, will begin to opt for the candy they want, and not the cheap-yet-ubiquitous flavorless sweets of coercive economies, markets, and governments!
Appreciate the thoughtful comment, Graham.
I can't help but come back to the idea that the eternal "shortening" of everything in our world... be it the time allocated to doing something, or the length of tweets, and the length of people's attention spans plays an important part.
I experience some of this "up close" and personal, from my involvement in the art business. Increasingly, art "enthusiasts" are more oriented to art as something they take a smartphone photo of (quick, temporary) rather than acquire to enjoy on the wall in their home (long term enjoyment).
I vaguely remember the term "planned obsolescence" being tossed around in the 1970s as part of the cause of the demise in the US auto industry. How do you sell more cars? Make sure they break so people have to keep buying them... for me, a disgusting motive for being. Mind you, I grew up in Scandinavia where Volvo's were valued because you could drive them 500,000km.
As of late, I have been musing a lot on the many forms of "violence" we face in the world... including coercion. It's my great hope there is a non-violent way to move towards a new paradigm... I'm just not a "blood in the streets revolutionary" type, but I can't imagine the status quo allowing itself to be dismantled without a fight. Of sorts.
drive their Suburbans
MSRP: From $50,200
my late wife's millionaire oil-well owning rancher uncle bought nothing but.
he thought they were pretty good cars.
Hoarding is what the unprepared say about those who ARE prepared after SHTF.
it's not FAIR...they should SHARE!!!!
Appreciate you keeping me on my toes, Everitt!
I shoulda probably said a "1985 Yugo" instead, and I got my metaphors a little mixed... just remembering the ocean of Suburbans outside Sam's Club and WalMart (often with "Buy American" bumper stickers) in Texas in the 80's and 90's... as Junior League wives bought pallet loads of cheap trinkets from Asia.
Suburbans ARE pretty good rigs. If you're into camping (or survivalist stuff) they'll pack a BUNCH. It's different now, but my hesitation back then was that they weren't 4WD.
they weren't 4WD.
not all of them were.
*This is the "Quality Bot" inspector, I'd love to mark your post as quality, your affirmation to quality status will occur as soon as you correct bying to buying. (lmao)
I wouldn't go as far as to say everything in a Walmart store is cheaply made. It depends on what you are looking for. Their furniture would obviously be cheaply made but on the other hand their electronics made by the same manufacturer who supplied to other retail stores would be the same and usually less costly. (Especially during the holiday season) My kids bought me a Kodak printer one year for a hundred bucks that was a pain, sure their ink is cheaper but not if you have to keep replacing it after you print twenty pages of something. The Christmas before last during a Walmart black Friday event I bought a HP printer for $19 and the ink lasted almost a year. There's so much more to take into account for reasons to shop at cheap retailers. Like why would someone pay twice as much for a container of say Liquid Nails if they could get it three to four bucks cheaper at Walmart. Of course you have to weigh the thought of is that the only thing I am going all the way to Walmart for and is it worth it or is it something I put on my list of things I need for when I am out that way again. Stopping for a few minutes to save three or four bucks would be worth it to me if I already out there. Usually that's how I tend to shop. When I get ready to shop I will go out to the furthest point and work my way back down the strip. I save quite a bit of money doing that. Big items though like furniture really has to come from a reputable dealer if you want them to last. When I moved back from trying to escape the city life I lived in a house in the country that had mold. I had already decided trying to handle two sets of tenants was a handful so I'd just move back to the city but I threw my couch away because of the mold situation. It was just me at the time so not having a couch wasn't a big deal. It took me almost a year to save up for a couch that costed several hundred dollars, plus scotch guarding and shipping....but that couch came with a fifteen year warranty. Not that I will have it for fifteen years but I will have it more than fifteen months. It was quite easy after the acquisition then it was before to show my family why I waited so long, quality and comfort come at a price. You could say the same for buying clothes, it depends on who you are buying them for, if you are buying clothes for toddlers that they won't fit into the next year then cheaper brand clothes from Walmart makes sense. If your are a adult who doesn't mind wearing paper thin clothing Walmart might also make sense. You can also buy name brand clothing products from Walmart also but I have found the savings isn't that big enough of a deal. To save on those items you really have to shop at the end of a seasonal clearance. Just like most any quality retailer shopping for quality sweaters for the next winter season will always save you bundle. To me shopping is a mixed bag of knowledge and know how to get the best price, quality and quantity for your buck.
One of the hassles that comes with coding Steemit posts in raw HTML (in order to get nice formatting) is that when you go to edit, the Steemit interface strips all the formatting... so correcting a couple of typos also mean having to rewrite all the code for the images and captions. So correcting a typo ends up eating ten minutes off the clock... rather than a few seconds.
So I'm going to have to forego my quality award, sadly...
But it segues nicely into the idea of "quality as paying attention to detail." It's a relatively simple code fix to capture the "post format" when someone submits something, and then use that piece of data to bring it back to the editor in its original form.
The counter argument is perhaps "Who's gonna bother with that level of formatting; nobody cares."
Not everything at WalMart is "cheap," naturally. And "cheap" is a combination of things. Using your printer example, I have an $850 HP laser printer... everybody thought me NUTS for buying it, because you can get printers for $30 at OfficeMax or WalMart. Mind you, I have not had an issue with it in six years and the huge $300 long-life toner cartridges will print 20-22 times more pages than the "cheap" $39.95 inkjet cartridges you have to replace every 5-6 weeks.
But it often depends on the situation. As I mentioned elsewhere, I tend to be very "anti waste," as a result of which I have a fondness for second-hand stores. Not only to I like reusing, but stuff that makes it to a second hand consignment store tends to be good enough that it actually LASTED to get to a consignment store.
You are quite right, however, it is all a mixed bag.
Biggest issue is when you shell out the larger amount for quality and it just breaks 2 years later like everything else. Quality just does not seem to be what it used to be. I spent double on my chair then I needed and as soon as the warranty went it started to have issues. I thought to myself “I’m going sit so many hours a week in this I better pay for something nice.” I could have saved the money and just bought 2 cheaper ones and had a better overall experience.
Most of the times I just can’t afford the quality of most things. Depending on my budget I try and not to go the cheapest either. Instead I focus on usability and how long can I get a function out of something. Such as my computer I spent more than I needed in some areas and went cheap in others that I could upgrade later on as it aged. I knew at the start what specs I needed for the bare minimum and made sure to get anything a little over board that I would be not be worth trying upgrade later result in needing to do an entire new build.
I mostly live by the rule if I don’t need it now for something I just don’t want it in general. I’m not really a stuff kind of person. I forget how many years since I’ve even owned a tv. Don’t have many fancy pieces of plastic junk that most people are so proud to be showing off till they break it.
One place I will spend on where I don’t need to are books when I have the spare income. I just love a new fresh paper book that is my own. I have a bookshelf that far to packed and I’ll even pull something off the shelf and read it once in a while.
It’s sad to see how our economy is where people own very little of anything anymore. It’s all made it break after a year or two of use. Everyone wants to give you that amazing deal on it as well. I’ve even fallen into that trap out of necessity as far as the budget is concerned.
Some people these days just seem to have an never ending pile of amazon and other type of boxes outside of their house overflowing the garbage can. Makes me a little thankful that I’m not an impulse buyer like some people appear to be from the outside. I don't even want to know about the piles of broken things that rest inside.
Your comment made me think of a related issue here... and I'm by no means suggesting that this applies to you; I just thought about it while reading.
Impatience. Short term thinking. Instant gratification. These are often buzzwords of our times...
It reminded me of being little and a kid... and the whole notion of simply doing without until you could afford things. or the things you wanted. And the whole idea of something like "buying a new sofa" was a proposition that involved "saving your money" for a couple of years. Now, I'm going to add here that being Danish may involve a different approach to the while "time value of money" thing, so I might be out in left field.
I do agree that some things are more important to us than others... and that certainly influences the picture and our buying habits. And what matters to you might not matter to me and vice-versa. We all have our things... I tend to spend money on original art; I enjoy the creativity and it feels (to me) like a sort of antidote for our otherwise "plastic" lives. A lot of people think it's NUTS that I drive a 2003 Chevy pickup that needs a good bit of work... but I "have money" for a $300 piece of art.
Maybe that's not really on-topic as far as "quality" is concerned... but your mention of books and then the stream of empty Amazon boxes made me think of it.
The whole issue of "filling our empty spaces inside," is complex... and more than a comment on this post could possibly hope to address. But I might put it in the creative hopper for a future post.
My thing is that I miss the old ways where everything was done with quality and not quantity; at least that is how I see it.
I do feel that everything right now is done cheaply and fast and doesn't last very long.
I see it that way. I really don't mind paying the price for the right and good product but that doesn't seem to be the case these days which makes it so frustrating and really confusing, since sometimes you can buy a better product for a cheaper price than paying lots for a crapy product.
Great post as always @denmarkguy
Remember as a kid the paddle balls?...those thing were near indestructible, now you buy one the elastic is so thin you would be lucky to get three or four swipes out of one.
One of the "telling" things for me is that I often end up scouring second-hand stores for furniture (on the rare occasions we DO need something!) because something made in the 1970's or before was often better than things made today. Most of the items we have in our house are older... my dresser is from about 1900 and seems as solid as it probably was when it was made. Our coffee table is 1950's "Danish modern" and solid as a rock; the chairs we use around the table in the kitchen are English pub chairs from the 1880s; they saw 100 years of service at a public house and still keep going after another 40 or so with us.
I don't like particle-board-in-a-box from Target...
I totally agree with you. I'm pretty much the same way.
Ah man, I gobbled up this post so fast........... great read. Primarily because it resonated with me.
I find it quite amazing about myself that even after my claims of upholding logic and reason, how often I break those covenants even without realizing it. We grow up in a flawed environment and that becomes the norm for us. I really want to blame my predecessors for all the contradictions in my nature.
The sad truth is that I might have acquired a part of those from my senior generation but sure as hell, I was the one who nurtured those contradictions within me. I want quality and yet I am to 'cheap' to pay for it and that ladies and gentlemen is the the rarely admitted truth.
Well done for "owning" your shit; not many do.
My parents were outside the norm in that they were "quality obsessed." Not as a status thing, but... well, my dad started teaching me the value of "heirloom" tools when I was quite a small kid; teaching me the joy of using a tool that always worked, was well designed and did its designated job with ease.
My dad also had a low tolerance for frustration — including the frustration with "cheap crap that breaks" — and was willing to pay his way out of that frustration.
howdy there @denmarkguy! well sir I think it depends like in your situation, on how and where people are raised and what stage of life they are in and probably their age. Personally I agree with @cecicastor as far as purchasing philosophy but I'm not a single mom pinching pennies!
Very thought-provoking article sir!
Hi @janton, I would have to say that part of my motivation for quality is also that I just don't like waste. My $850 computer printer has already paid for itself multiple times because (a) it hasn't broken 17 times like those almost-free printers you can get at office supply stores, and (b) the huge $300 laser toner cartridges will print 20 times more pages than the $39.95 "cheapie" replacements you need to buy every six weeks to keep things running.
But people don't think like that, for the most part. You can even take a microcosm like Steemit... people are all in a twist over what their rewards for the next post with be, but forget the greater opportunity of being able to build a significant stake here over a multi-year period.
howdy today @denmarkguy..it's a real pleasure to hear from you again and to absorb some of your wisdom. Man, that sounds like a suck up line but it's not, I just like learning from others who are succeeding.
Your point is well taken. I don't even look at what I'm earning, I'm assuming it will increase over time and building for the future.
thank you sir!
Congrats on the @daveks spotlight! I guess I am different in wanting cheaper verses quality. If you look at the furniture in our house in the Philippines. I had a local carpenter hand make this furniture out of the local name Tugas. It is a type of teak. I wanted something that will last out my lifetime plus some. I could have paid less and we could have to replace it three or more times over the next 10 years.
Even our house is small, but built right. We could of had larger and more space, made with cheaper materials.
Great post!
Thanks!
I appreciate that your appreciate quality! Which also brings up an additional variable here: Different cultures have different traditions, in terms of how they regard quality.
One of the things I noticed when I came to the USA from Denmark many years ago is that I was raised with a cultural "quality mindset;" they idea of buying furniture of a quality that it would pass from generation to generation was pretty normal. I arrived in the USA, and it seemed more important (to many people) to have "the latest style" than necessarily high quality.
So true! I am from the USA, my family is from Canada and we now live in the Philippines. In the US many people will own 20 plus cars in a lifetime. In some countries many never own a car and some 1 in their lifetime. That person with one takes extremely good care of their one.
Many in the US will replace the furniture in an entire room from time to time. Perfectly good furniture that perhaps is out of style as you said. The funiture I was telling you about is beautiful and I cannot foresee it ever going out of style.
Cheers
I would guess that a fair bit of what we experience as shoddy quality today is also the product of someone having the bright idea that things there were considered "basic staples" back in the past are today regarded as "fashion statements" or "status symbols."
Suddenly you have the paradigm of needing to "keep up with the times," and not just utilitarian.
Buying a new computer is always an expensive proposition for me, because I buy a high end base model and load it the hell out with the upper limits of RAM, storage and anything else that will "technologically degrade" quickly. That way I can usually get about 6-8 years effective use out of it... rather than buying a cheap piece of junk every 18 months so I can "keep up."
I am with you on this my friend!