
Why There Are More Consumer Goods Than Ever - uptown
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-there-are-more-consumer-goods-than-ever-1461556860
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thedevil
Is anyone else amazed at the absolutely magical era of time in which we live?

I don't know which is more awesome: 1) I can find a product that fits my need
more exactly than I could ever have expected ten years ago, 2) that I can get
information, recommendations and reviews in order to buy these things with
confidence, or 3) that something even more awesome will come out a couple
years later.

It gets even better because I can take part in all this: I can make an app
that fills a specific need (literally, I made an app to calm a crying baby)
and without advertising at all, I can ship it to tens of thousands of people
around the world just by reviews and word of mouth.

I get so excited just thinking about this stuff and how much greater the
future will get, and at an accelerating pace!

~~~
mattmanser
Is it? The razor I bought can't cut hair, the laptop I got has a stupidly
nosiy fan, the phone I bought has a rapidly diminishing battery life, the
headset I bought makes a constant hiss, my OS and TV now spy on me. Do I even
own my steam games? I have to rent my music and TV to get it at a reasonable
price, but songs and shows disappear without explanation or warning.

It seems to me things are worse than they used to be, it's harder than ever to
find quality products, even meticulously researching everything.

And that's before we even get onto forced obselence.

Maybe I'm becoming a grump as I grow older but electronics brands you used to
be able to trust are no longer sure bets and everything seems to have a nasty
gotcha spyware or horrid EULA.

Edit: although I do admit there's a lot of magical things, I love my Kindle, I
love how my phone synchs with my Kindle when I'm in random queue, I love being
able to get + give directions from my phone in random places.

I just feel overall quality of goods has gone down as they become (worringly
for the environment) disposible and consumers are losing control as their
stuff is no longer theirs.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Maybe a case of increasing expectation. Owning your own movie or game was
never all that cool - what with losing them, or scratching the CD, or the
platform changing so they didn't run any more. Steam beats all that, at a cost
of course.

The chaotic state of shows and songs is another story. My outlet (e.g.
Netflix) has shifting contracts and terms that are opaque to me. So I miss out
by procrastinating. Still its better than broadcast TV ever was! That was
somebody else deciding every night what I would watch.

I'm an old grump too. But really, I should just have more patience when my
phone won't connect. Its going to space after all!

~~~
vtlynch
>Owning your own movie or game was never all that cool - what with losing
them, or scratching the CD, or the platform changing so they didn't run any
more. Steam beats all that, at a cost of course.

So we replaced a flawed physical medium with a digital medium which,
theoretically, should solve all those problems. But dark patterns, bad
licensing terms, and loads of other problems (that are often the results of
purposeful decisions) make that digital medium just as flawed.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Differently flawed. And actually very useful as it is - I log many more hours
now playing (instead of thrashing over problems) because it almost always
works. Wherever I am; whatever machine I'm on. There's no denying the
benefits.

------
Animats
Then there's Trader Joe's, with a limited selection of reasonably good items
at reasonably good prices to make reasonably good profits.

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shogun21
With the paradox of choice, this many products often make us less satisfied
and more unhappy.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...](https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en)

~~~
wallacoloo
I have major objections to this talk. The speaker claims that choice itself is
the issue. I disagree - choice is _not_ the issue. The issue is an inability
to _make decisions_ when presented with hundreds of possibilities & to not be
upset over poor outcomes that our choices create, and our ability to make
these choices is a recent phenomenon that has finally caused this issue to
surface.

Consider his point on salad dressing (paraphrased):

> If you buy one of the 100 available salad dressings & you don't like it,

> it's easy to imagine what things would have been like if you had chosen a

> better one & suddenly you're disappointed.

Well sure, I'll be disappointed. But then I'll just try a different one next
time and repeat until I find some dressings that I _do_ like, and now I'm
happy. If there wasn't choice here, I would be _perpetually_ unsatisfied.

Regarding paralysis when confronted with too many choices, I _think_ this is
just a temporary artifact as we're making the transition to having more
options. The first few times I went shopping for shoes at a shoe store, I
tried on _tens_ of pairs and debated the pros and cons of various shoes for
over an hour under the assumption that of all the shoes in the store, only one
would be the _best_ one for me. Now I know that this isn't the case. There are
several shoes that I'll be completely satisfied with, and now there are enough
of them that the store has specific sections where probably a good 20% of them
will meet all the requirements I have. So I find the first one that meets all
my goals, and then I buy it. The process takes < 10 minutes.

This is actually _less_ time than it previously would have taken, as the
candidate shoes would previously have been spread over different sections and
not one of them would match _all_ my requirements, leading me to have to make
a conscious decision on what to sacrifice. And now that my decision carries
more weight, I would spend more time deliberating and hence the trip to the
shoe store would take longer & I'd be disappointed at the time I lost.

No, the author cherry-picks his points & confuses his own limitations as being
indicative of a problem with the existence of choice rather than a personal
limitation because - guess what? - he doesn't want to blame himself for his
own lack of satisfaction.

~~~
grillvogel
"the author is just cherry picking but my cherry picked anecdotal story
related to me proves he's wrong"

ok

~~~
wallacoloo
I intended for my shoe story to be a rebuttal against the speaker's pants
story, as the scenarios are essentially identical if you substitute "shoes"
for "pants". Perhaps the argument would have been more valid had I skipped
that and just directly addressed the long-term results of his pants encounter
instead.

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esharef
Yes, but there are fewer merchants than over. 50% of e-commerce goes through
12 merchants. Consolidation is insane in digital commerce. So yes, we can buy
many more products but through fewer and fewer merchants giving them huge
power. Amaozn alone accounts for 30% of e-commerce

~~~
cm2012
Keep in mind that well over 50% of amazon merchandise sales are from 3rd party
sellers - basically small businesses. A bunch of other big players have
significant 3rd party marketplace models - eBay, Newegg, and more.

~~~
digi_owl
Sadly this means that there is a very big caveat emptor factor involved.

Ebay at least is up front about it, as it is basically an auction house for
anyone.

But Amazon and Newegg is in a sense lending credibility to any fly by night
reseller from who knows where.

When you buy from a big name store front you expect someone working at their
supply end has assessed the product as worth the risk of stocking. But with
the likes of Amazon, seemingly anyone can start offering products through
them.

Consider for example a recent story here on HN about a USB charger that had a
damaged transformer. It was giving out straight 240V (European model) to the
USB end.

~~~
cm2012
Generally reviews are meant to solve this problem - both internal amazon
metrics (which vendors are punished for severely if they are bad) and external
customer metrics.

~~~
mrfusion
Nope those don't work anymore.

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askyourmother
At first I think "wow, what a price for those jeans!" Then I watch the
documentary 'China blue', and then I think "wow, what a price for those
jeans".

------
mrfusion
I feel like quality has plummeted. The last 4 toy boats I've bought have top
sized or sunk. How hard is it to test a toy boat in water before you mass
produce?

I think we're relearning how to produce and market quality goods now that all
manufacturing has moved to China. Lately I've been preferring to buy from
target or Walmart over Amazon since I know they have a purchasing team that
vets products before allowing them on their shelves. (Not always though). But
they should do more of this since it would be a great differentiator for brick
and mortar retailers.

~~~
jkraker
I agree, and I've observed this on multiple products. The most recent was a
hair trimmer that I replaced with the same brand and model.

It's unfortunate how there's an ever quickening velocity of consumption. Not
sure who exactly is to blame, but I think both consumers and companies play
their part.

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wodenokoto
Are there any reasons why we shouldn't expect there to be more consumer goods
than ever?

~~~
stephengillie
Since durable goods[0], by definition, last a multiple of the time it takes to
create them, we would have more simply by making more at a set rate over a
period of time. As our population grows, if the same percentage of our labor
force goes into making durable goods, the quantity of durable goods created
would also increase over time. In short, I agree completely.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_goods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_goods)

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freddref
If the price goes to near-negligible, and people (eventually) reach some
saturation level for the amount of easily replaceable stuff they have access
to, what will a feeling of infinite supply do to consumer demand? Surely you
can only need or use a certain amount of stuff. And what will this do to the
value of money if having more money doesn't change your life much. Is money
becoming worthless?

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grillvogel
other fun facts: modern advertising exists because factories were churning out
so many products that they needed to figure out how to sell them all.
advertising was created to recruit consumers to buy all this shit.

~~~
stephengillie
Henry Ford doubled his workers' wages so they could afford to buy it all, too.
Or at least the ones they made.

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JacksonGariety
How do I read this article?

~~~
pravda
Google the title, then right-click WSJ result and open in incognito window.

That's what I do.

~~~
aidenn0
Also to save you from having to google the title, you can click the "web" link
below the headline if you are viewing the comments.

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guelo
TLDR: because of Facebook ad microtargeting.

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LesZedCB
In a related fact, consumer debt normalized to household income has also
increased massively[0].

[0] [http://www.money-zine.com/financial-planning/debt-
consolidat...](http://www.money-zine.com/financial-planning/debt-
consolidation/consumer-debt-statistics/)

