
Inefficient, but Smart - oftenwrong
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/6/5/inefficient-but-smart
======
andrewmutz
I think that the differences between the two models can be attributed to the
difference between the cost of human labor in the two countries.

Everything mentioned in the Ecuador example is labor intensive: private sector
busses driving around plentifully, moving laborers just parked next to the
furniture market standing around waiting, many small proprietorships in close
proximity haggling over prices, etc.

The big box model is better in the US where labor is very expensive. The
"bazaar" model is better in Ecuador where labor is much cheaper.

~~~
duxup
I read something once that indicated that the industrial revolution started in
Europe and didn't really hit places like China as early because China had a
huge amount of cheap human labor and Europe had less.

It was proposed that the lack of cheap labor is what drove people to find
efficiencies.

Granted I'm not a historian so I can't verify this claim, but it was an
interesting dynamic.

~~~
megameter
The causation of the Industrial Revolution is one of those historian's
favorites because there isn't a definite "yes" to it, and you can point to
origins going as far back as the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of
the Great Migration. Europe lost its old identity as it went into the medieval
period - with one large invasion after the next, it was difficult to keep
track of anything - and the new nations that formed from the ashes gradually
lost their taste for subjugating and extracting tribute from each other,
preferring trade competition instead, which is an innovation! If you look at
most earlier empires, there's trade, but it isn't in a systemically central
position because the ruling class would stomp out competition. That there were
multiple of these nations is critical to the process: it allowed someone who
angered a so-and-so to flee elsewhere and keep working. Fleeing is a common
recurring theme in biographies of notable early modern people. This allowed
Europe to keep holding on to ideas and discoveries over time, putting it in a
good position to absorb the world's knowledge.

Why Britain specifically is a subset of the question. One of the precipitating
factors often cited is the enclosure movement, which was part of a push for
stronger, more logical systems of property rights(a big philosophical movement
originating in the late 1600's and gaining steam in the 1700's - "life,
liberty, property", utilitarianism, and related ideas all come from this
period, and in Britain these ideas were especially popular). Enclosure had the
effect of kicking peasants off the farm, leading them into wage labor, and
Britain had a colonial system already in place, giving it many export markets
and therefore demand for manufacturing. Add to that the local availability of
coal and the gradual ceding of governing power to Parliament(another
centuries-old process) and you have something resembling a thesis for
preconditions of industrial capitalism - a stable country ruled by its
merchants, with a strong export market, availability of labor and energy
sources, and sufficient knowledge to usefully organize the labor.

~~~
duxup
Thank you

------
ogre_codes
The idea here of how you furnish a place in the US doesn't match my personal
experience. He does mention Craigslist in passing, but simultaneously
dismisses it, but I think that's a bit trite. We bought a ton of fixtures,
furniture, and even construction materials from Craigslist, St. Vinnies, and
our local Habitat for Humanities and saved a pile of cash. We didn't deal with
the whole big-box experience. Furniture is similarly dealt with.

Even before Craigslist, there were old fashioned classified adverts and garage
sales which weren't as convenient as a single giant market, but gave us
options.

From the sounds of it, our luck with Craigslist/ second hand sources was just
about as good as his was in Ecuador with one out of our many purchases being a
bit of a disappointment.

Also, this paragraph bothered me:

> Here, the process always involves a drive to a big-box store (few of these
> are convenient via transit, especially if you need to make multiple stops),
> a credit check, some paperwork to commit to a multi-month payment plan, a
> scheduled delivery a week or two out, and often some hassle with the
> delivery company requiring a phone call in which I sit on hold.

I don't pay for anything other than my car/ house on monthly payments and
nobody should. This article is more a criticism of the US _culture_ of debt
rather than looking at what options we genuinely have. We've always had the
option to pay in cash and not deal with the financing, it's just a bit less
convenient. Likewise, if you are willing to deal with second hand goods, we
have the option to get second hand goods, you just have to search a bit harder
to find them.

Really, the big difference between experiences is the expectation in the US
that you will have your own transportation, and that is the real story here in
my eyes. In Ecuador public Transportation and casual truck rental works. In
the US, it's quite a bit tougher to exist without a reliable car or truck.

I also don't understand why he dismisses CL, yard sales, and recycling stores
out of hand because they are right up his "Inefficient, but Smart" alley.

~~~
ebg13
> _I don 't pay for anything other than my car/ house on monthly payments and
> nobody should_

You should if there's no additional cost for doing so, because that's a free
loan. The same quantity of money a few months down the road will be worth a
little less than it is today, so you should give it to them then instead of
now when you can do slightly more with it. If you can get either 1X and 2Y now
or 1X now and 1Y later, you'd be foolish to do the latter.

And if you're thinking "but prices go down, not up", you're both wrong on
average and also probably thinking about the exact category of goods (tech
gear) that tends to offer interest-free financing.

~~~
seem_2211
I mean it's "smart" and "efficient" but it's also fragile. The simplest way to
manage your finances is to avoid debt wherever possible (especially consumer
debt). Very hard to go into bankruptcy when you don't owe anyone anything!

The "smartest" way to manage your finances is to use credit cards that give
you points and pay you back via a few hundred dollars worth of free flights a
year. But there's a bunch of opportunity costs associated with pursuing that
route, and a level of diligence that frankly most people do not have.

The best thing about debt is that it lets you move really really quickly - if
you don't have $2k for that furniture set, you can just finance things and pay
it off over 2 years. But that's the worst thing about debt as well - you now
have a monthly obligation that's going to be a line item expense for the next
24 months. If you'd spent 12 months saving up for that furniture set and paid
cash, the day you buy the goods is the day your financial obligations start
and end.

I am not opposed to debt entirely, and think it can be a great strategic lever
(I used a credit card to finance my initial move to America which has done
wonders for my income and my career, far exceeding the interest costs that I
paid). However I think for most consumer purposes it's less of a help and more
of a hindrance. Take the new 84 month car loans. That's 7 years! That's a long
time to assume that your life will have no material changes, or that nothing
will go wrong.

~~~
Jetrel
Yeah, this is smart.

The most dangerous thing about debt is the tacit assumption you can keep
making money as a functional adult. Full stop.

If you pay attention to the life stories of everybody who lives around you,
that's actually a very dangerous assumption - it's about as dangerous and
unreliable as a farmer assuming he'll never, ever, have crop failure. Some
really informal guesstimation for me actually gives kinda comparable rates -
1/10 or 1/5 chances of it blowing up, every year. Just this very year, in
fact, I've watched it blow up on half of my coworkers as they got laid off in
the pandemic. They may have to default on their mortgages - loans that assumed
the "working adult" party would just go on uninterrupted.

Yikes.

Debt can be useful, but man, people really need to only "sail out of sight of
land" with a damn good reason. Don't just do it casually to pay for routine
things like houses and cars.

~~~
seem_2211
Yeah that's 100% the truth. You also have to assume that multiple things
happen at the same time - what happens if you buy a house two weeks before you
get laid off at work and that's swiftly followed by your wife finding out that
she's pregnant. Suddenly having 6 months worth of cash in the bank gives you a
TON of breathing room.

The more we specialize, the more life becomes fragile, and the smaller the
gains become. A Formula One car is incredibly fast, but the amount of
attention and money each car requires is orders of magnitude higher than say a
Ferrari road car, which is comparatively simple to manage.

------
duxup
I feel like this is the sort of story you hear from a diplomat about how great
it is that in some other country they can hire a gardener, nannies, and etc
for very cheap. Then they move home to a different country and they bemoan
their lack of cheap help.

Is this a great thing? I'm not sure for the folks getting paid very little it
is ...

Granted every system somehow relies on cheap labor somewhere so there is more
to it than that.

~~~
firethief
Cheapness of labor is not necessary for the system the author is describing to
work (although it's probably a factor in how that system is able to be the
present equilibrium). The system in Quito may be less efficient (i.e. there
may be waste, like extra guys with trucks waiting for customers), but it's
also less efficient at concentrating capital. Whether wages are "low" depends
on the ratio of those inefficiencies. I can imagine a world where the latter
"inefficiency" is maintained as the waste is reduced and wages rise. It would
require "gig economy" coordination tools to match capacity to demand
efficiently, but the market tech would need to lack power over the workers,
whether because of competition or regulation.

~~~
duxup
I'm not sure the gig economy really is a good example of positive things as
far as wadges / benefits and etc goes.

~~~
firethief
For the "gig economy" to become a good example of positive things as far as
wadges / benefits and etc goes, the market tech would need to lack power over
the workers, whether because of competition or regulation. That's why I'm not
saying "look at Uber, Uber is wonderful." I'm saying I can _imagine_ a system
with the best of both worlds. The American political/economic climate hasn't
got us there.

~~~
duxup
I'm really skeptical of the idea that you could have everyday people hire
other humans for cheap... and at the same time somehow they would make a good
income / benefits / etc.

------
munificent
With so few data points in the anecdote, there are many narratives you can
apply to it that all fit, each with it's own little facet of truth.

One that resonates with what I'm going through in my life right now is that it
seems that US culture optimizes for _preventing unexpected bad experiences_
with the consequence that unexpected good experiences are lost too. There is
very little serendipity to life in the US today. When you get a couch from
Ikea, you know exactly how it's going to go. Every meal at McDonald's is like
every meal there you've ever had.

There are, of course, pockets of delight you can find. But, overall, it seems
that our culture has trended towards risk-aversion, safety, familiarity.
There's a sort of constant infantilization going on where we're trained to
believe we _can 't_ handle surprises and thus we should avoid them. Millions
of adults read nothing but "Young Adult" fiction. All of our biggest box
office movies are comic book adaptations. Millions are on anti-anxiety
medication.

Because we avoid taking risks, we never learn to handle them. We never witness
ourselves being resilient and gain the self-respect that that garners. So the
feedback loop keeps us nestled tighter and tighter in our bubbles.

~~~
jmcqk6
There might be some truth in this, but it's also true that we're really bad at
avoiding risks.

The pandemic is a good example of that. Nearly everyone in the US, nearly
every business in the US, was almost completely unprepared for it.

A better way to look at it might be that we optimize for being comfortable.
It's not so much risk aversion, but since risks make us uncomfortable, we
avoid them.

~~~
Viliam1234
Speaking about pandemic, I was very surprised at the cultural differences
about face masks. And I don't mean whether people want to use them or not,
because you find both kinds of people everywhere. The surprising difference
was at behavior of people who thought that using a face mask was a good
thing... what was their following step?

My American friends typically did some research, found which types of face
masks offer the highest protection, and refused to settle for anything less.
Then they complained on social networks about the good masks being sold out.

My Eastern European friends typically found some DYI videos, and then either
started making their own face masks at home and selling them on social
networks, or just bought them if someone else was faster. In a week or two,
everyone had as many masks as they wanted to have. Lower quality, sure, but
way better than nothing.

Of course, I am generalizing here, but this was the pattern I noticed, and it
quite surprised me, because I honestly expected the opposite thing to happen.
I expected Eastern Europeans to beg their governments to do something about
the situation, and Americans to handle the situation using their
entrepreneurial spirit. But somehow I saw Americans complaining about why
Trump didn't do this or that, and Eastern Europeans taking initiative in their
own hands; and even the statistics show how the latter approach saved
thousands of lives.

Seems like living in a country where you know that everything is unreliable,
especially the system (whether you use this word to mean goverment, market, or
whatever other power greater than you and your neighbors), provides some
valuable survival skills. Now I guess the question is how to develop or
maintain those skills when your environment improves. Because, obviously, most
people would like to see their situation improve and the environment become
more reliable.

~~~
munificent
I'm sure there's some perceptual bias here because you notice the Americans
complaining but have no easy way of noticing the Americans who did just
silently figure out a way to make do and get on with their lives.

------
cactus2093
> You don't find many small proprietors selling furniture and appliances in
> the U.S.; it works in cities like Quito because of the physical model of an
> open-air marketplace with many small retail spaces in close walking
> proximity to one another.

I'm very skeptical of this claim, it seems like the author has the cause and
effect backwards. The physical marketplaces don't exist because there just
isn't as big of a market for small furniture makers since labor is much more
expensive in the US. (Plus as other commenters point out, few metro areas in
the US are as large and dense as a city like Quito, so whatever selection
there is will also be scaled down proportionally in most areas).

My now-wife and I still talk about the time years ago when we first moved in
together. We needed a couch and walked into a small boutique furniture store
in Brooklyn. They had this oversized, soft leather couch that I still to this
day remember as the most comfortable couch I've ever sat on. The salesperson
came over and started explaining how these are hand-made by one guy in North
Carolina, we can choose the exact leather in the color/style we want and the
craftsman will sit down at his bench and begin building the couch specifically
for us. It was quite a compelling pitch but the couch was almost $6000 which
we couldn't afford, so we thanked her and went over to Macy's where we bought
a still very nice leather couch for under $800 to be delivered 3 days later.

You can absolutely get a boutique, small-batch, hand-made version of almost
anything in the US. But we're so used to the prices that mass-production make
possible that the vast majority of people are unwilling to pay for it.

One interesting thing though, is with the internet and direct to consumer
brands, and improvements in manufacturing (or at least in easier access to
cheap manufacturing), it seems like there are more affordably priced
alternatives to big box stores now than there have been for the past few
decades. It's a little weird to write an article about furniture buying habits
in 2020 that ignores the massive rise of companies like Casper, for instance.
The last time I bought a couch I bought it on Wayfair, which was incredibly
simple and it arrived just as I expected. It sounds like the author had quite
a memorable adventure in Ecuador, but it definitely also sounded like a
stressful day of running around, and at least to me ordering online is a much
more pleasant alternative.

~~~
oftenwrong
My impression of Brooklyn is that there are a lot of small (but high-end)
"makers" based there, or at least selling their goods there. It is not so
different from what the author is describing, but on a higher tier of
affluence. You can start a small operation in whatever small space you can
find, and have many potential customers within walking distance.

------
dvaun
This reminds me of an essay on Ribbonfarm about legibility[1] and the
construction of cities based on a false sense of order. See [2] for a
discussion on this.

[1]: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-
call...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-
legibility/)

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996377)

------
addicted44
This is pretty much completely anecdotal, and not very useful, to be honest.

The informal stuff doesn't work well. I'm guessing they went to buy their
furniture off the informal buses during off peak hours. So they didn't have to
deal with the crowds the majority of people have to deal with during regular
rush hours, where you will find people hanging off the buses, and others
struggling to get in. Sure, the bus may come every 5 minutes, but you may have
to wait a few buses to get in.

Further, these are private buses. In the US you can get a cab exactly where
you want that takes you exactly where you want. You could also "rideshare".
The reason you dont have buses to do that in the US is because people can
afford single occupancy cabs. What the person is really complaining about is
the fact that the US is richer and things are more expensive.

A cab is a proper analogy to the private transport that is being compared to.
And the real complaint is that earning dollars and then paying in dollars in
the US is more expensive than earning dollars and then paying in local
currency in the 3rd world.

~~~
danaris
> The reason you dont have buses to do that in the US is because people can
> afford single occupancy cabs.

It's much more complicated than that, though.

Public transport is looked down upon in the US—not just in the same classist
way it is looked down upon in many places, "that's for the plebes", but like
many public institutions, it is viewed by many to be inherently worse than
private solutions, both ideologically and practically.

To a large extent, it is a victim of the deliberate practice of the American
right wing, over the course of at least the last several decades, of reducing
funding for public services (because Big Government Bad), then decrying their
ineffectiveness (well, duh, they're not doing great because you took away half
their budget), and pushing for them to be privatized.

~~~
oftenwrong
Most roads in the US are public, and funded with taxation. Granted, it
requires a private car to benefit from them. Still, this suggests that anti-
government sentiments can only partially explain this aspect of US
transportation.

~~~
082349872349872
When Huey Long was governor of Louisiana, he wanted to build roads. His
opposition did not want to pay for roads. But he managed to wrangle enough
budget for 60 miles of road. Then he paved one mile of road in each parish.
After having experienced the difference between the single paved mile and
their existing mud ruts, the populace voted for a much more substantial road-
building program.

(another unusual Louisiana political stunt:
[https://www.athensnews.com/news/local/louisiana-gov-huey-
lon...](https://www.athensnews.com/news/local/louisiana-gov-huey-long-wanted-
the-vote-of-african-americans-so-
he/article_976d274f-3593-5df0-a217-7f62987909a1.html) )

------
lacker
Something seems wrong about this analogy.

 _Scarcely any U.S. city can compete with Quito—a place I was told would be
poor and dysfunctional—in the ease of getting around on public transit. The
network of these informal bus lines has not been coordinated from above._

These aren't "public transit". They are private bus lines. The right
comparison is how easy it is to get around the US using private transit like
Uber.

In the US, it's also quite possible to furnish your house over the internet,
by getting furniture and other items delivered. Far more efficient than
traveling about, either on public or private transit.

~~~
ogre_codes
> These aren't "public transit". They are private bus lines. The right
> comparison is how easy it is to get around the US using private transit like
> Uber.

I agree they aren't public transit in the classic/ US sense, but comparing
them to Uber/ Lyft isn't right either since the cost difference is an order of
magnitude different. Uber and Lyft very wasteful compared to a busy bus line.
Bus transportation in Quibi is $0.25-0.50 by comparison, an affordable amount
even where incomes are much lower. If Uber was $1-2, then it would be more
comparable.

For lower income workers, the $5.80/ trip minimum Uber fair is simply not an
option for daily transportation.

~~~
lacker
Income is also an order of magnitude different between the US and Ecuador. So
the cost is pretty similar between the two options in terms of peoples'
ability to pay.

------
oftenwrong
Here's a photo essay that is somewhat focused on the same subject:

[https://granolashotgun.com/2019/07/22/the-show-horse-and-
the...](https://granolashotgun.com/2019/07/22/the-show-horse-and-the-work-
horse/)

It was also discussed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20497711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20497711)

------
wccrawford
This is an article about someone who was forced to shop in a way they found
surprising and sub-optimal before trying it, and found out that there are
upsides to it as well.

Then they proceed to say that they could have done a lot of this via
Craigslist, etc, but there are hefty downsides to that.

Yeah, there are hefty (possible) downsides to thgis experience, too.

I'd bet that if there were no big box stores and no small market like this
article has, they'd use Craigslist and write an article about how wonderful
that experience was after all.

I don't consider myself a big risk-taker, but it seems to me that I'm more of
one than the person in the article. I often buy things dirt-cheap and take a
chance that they might not be quite right for my needs. I'm _often_ happen
with them, regardless of cost. Sometimes I have to take the price into
consideration, too, before I'm happy. And rarely I'm just out some money for
something that didn't work right.

As for the transportation, I'm betting if the price was higher they'd be
unhappy with it. We actually have at-will transportation in all our cities:
Taxis. And now that we have Uber/Lyft/etc, there are actually alternatives
that are cheaper and arguably better. We even have for-rent bikes and scooters
that will often be better than any automobile ride in the city.

Yes, I agree that people should open their eyes and welcome surprises more
often... But I don't think the author has really taken that to heart
themselves.

------
mac01021
There are only 10 cities in the USA with populations equal to or greater than
the size of Quito's.

I suspect, living downtown in any of those, your furniture-buying experience
would likely be quite similar to the Quito experience in terms of the size of
the vendors visited and the modes of transportation used for people and
furniture. You probably wouldn't legally be able to ride in the pickup bed
next to your fridge, though.

~~~
cortesoft
Yeah, I was going to say you could absolutely recreate most of this experience
in a large US city. They will all have furniture districts, with custom made
furniture you can look at and buy.

Now, most people don't go to them, because IKEA is cheaper and easier

------
rootusrootus
It seems like a bit of a contrived example. If I wanted to outfit a house, I
could easily go down to the local appliance store (a small one, maybe a couple
thousand square feet of retail space), and have something delivered in a
couple hours. There are a number of random furniture stores in town that carry
a variety of items nothing like the big box stores. And if I did want to go to
a big box store, like Home Depot, I could just rent their truck for the
afternoon. If I needed to hire some help, that's pretty trivial too.

------
empath75
I'm absolutely fascinated by the bus system in Guatemala and other central
american countries. It's incredible and blows away any system in the US, in
terms of price and convenience, if not in safety and comfort.

Even the most remote places have regular bus service, and there's a whole
economy around bus stations and vendors selling things on buses. You can get
from one end of the country to another for a couple of dollars and for not
very much more, there are pullman bus routes between major cities that are a
better traveling experience than amtrak.

~~~
zip1234
The buses are often just American school buses which have been bought second
or third hand, painted garishly, and reused.

~~~
Viliam1234
That just underlines the point. Second-hand American school buses can be put
to great use... in a different country... but something prevents using the
same solution in USA.

~~~
empath75
Well I think a big part of it is that Americans are a _lot_ taller than
Guatemalans.

------
mc32
The biggest difference is bureaucracy and control/power it exerts. They have
less of it, we have more of it.

They may seem chaotic, but they are more agile because there is no (or little)
bureaucracy. In the US things are standardized and predictable but at the cost
of inefficient bureaucracy. Over there they have inefficiency of variability.

Neither is good or bad, they just work differently and some people like one
over the other.

~~~
luckylion
> Neither is good or bad, they just work differently and some people like one
> over the other.

They like one over the other when both work out the same. If some accident
happens and the bus explodes, killing the passengers, nearly everybody wants
more regulation.

People want the standardization and predictability, but they don't want the
associated cost and lack of flexibility. That's understandable, but it's also
naive.

~~~
mc32
It really depends on people’s tolerance for the negative results vs positive
impact.

Drug manufacturing, food product, yes you want more regulation because of
impact. Where someone sells furniture and whether or not they have a valid
business license much less so. Light regulation means more people are self
employed.

As economies develop and mature they also develop more regulation. When
economies are less i institutional then they have less regulation. We can even
see that within the CHOP.

If you overregulate an emerging economy you risk suffocating it.

~~~
luckylion
> If you overregulate an emerging economy you risk suffocating it.

Oh, absolutely, I agree. I believe the comparison with more developed
economies is often in a "why can't we have this flexibility here"-tone, and
the answer is that we could and had, but we've discovered that it's better not
to.

It feels a bit like thinking "hey, if I leave my tent at home, I'll travel
much lighter and hiking will be more fun", which is true, but sleeping won't
if the weather isn't in your favor.

------
gok
I have to laugh at the author's delight in the informal bus system. At home
I'm sure he'd love to shout about the evils of "illegal ride sharing" but in
Quito:

"if there is demand for a trip (in the form of overcrowding on buses between
points A and B), someone is going to figure it out and capitalize on it."

Imagine that!

The words "regulation" or "law" do not appear anywhere in the article. Why are
there no open air appliance markets in the US selling maybe-working gas
stoves? Surely not safety or consumer protection laws. No, the obvious
explanation is that the owners of capital are wish it to be so.

------
hogFeast
Life definitely is easier when there is a large underclass of disenfranchised
poor people willing to do anything. Why has no-one considered this before?

(On a serious note, this is basically a meme at this point. Someone sees a
thing, blames it on corporate greed. You may be a worker in a big-box store
but you will make more money, you take less risk, and you get the opportunity
to retire with some dignity rather than work yourself into a coffin. Poverty
tourism is great fun but it is quite tragic when you see other people
suffering and think there is nobility in that.)

~~~
oftenwrong
That strikes me as an uncharitable reading of this article. The guys
transporting appliances in a pickup truck are, in some sense, forced to do
that to survive. However, the author's point concerns the opportunity they are
capitalising on. In this environment, one can start an appliance transport
business with a truck and some strong men. The environment of the USA has many
more barriers to entry, and that influences the types of enterprises that
exist there.

~~~
ff317
They're inextricably linked, though. It's always much easier to start a small
business in a relatively-unregulated environment, but that's because nearly
zero thought or protection is being given to the drivers' or loaders' living
wages, healthcare, eventual retirement, actual health (as in long-term
occupational stress on the body), or even ability to be compensated for severe
workplace injuries. All of the things we privileged Americans complain about
in cases like Amazon's treatment of their warehouse and shipping workers are
orders of magnitude worse, in practice, for most of these opportunistic
workers in Ecuador.

~~~
codeadict
I lived in Ecuador, all these people will have retirement and healthcare thru
the IES([https://www.iess.gob.ec/](https://www.iess.gob.ec/)), equivalent to
the US Social Security. It's not a perfect system but neither is US retirement
if you don't have 401k or some kind of private retirement plan, the healthcare
could be slow sometimes and you spend 30 mins to an hour to see the doctor but
it works.

------
jpm_sd
This reminds me of "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast,_Cheap_%26_Out_of_Control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast,_Cheap_%26_Out_of_Control)

Spoiler alert: the FC&OOC approach to robotics did not succeed. It has been
superseded by more expensive, more sophisticated, more reliable systems that
have gradually come down in price through economies of scale.

~~~
Viliam1234
Very roughly speaking, fast and cheap things can be great end products, but
bad ingredients.

If you want to buy a cabinet for normal use, fast and cheap is probably
better, as long as it doesn't fall apart. But imagine that you would want to
buy hundred cabinets and build a huge block out of them, or something like
that. At that moment the weaknesses of individual pieces add up, and the whole
structure is likely to collapse. To make the structure not collapse, you need
to build it from reliable and thus more expensive pieces. (And, as you said,
economies of scale can sometimes do something about the high price.)

I think the frustration many programmers feel at their jobs also has a similar
origin. We use dozens of "fast and cheap" tools, and each of them individually
is better than nothing, but using them all together means you spend a lot of
time angry about this or that problem. (And when finally most of the annoying
problems get fixed, a new programming language appears, and everything needs
to be rebuilt again.)

------
zip1234
The American suburban model of separating structures out by usage type is not
efficient in the least. It is orderly, but that is about it.

------
gbronner
Many buildings in NYC require people delivering furniture to have certificate
of insurance, and to schedule deliveries 48 hours in advance. This creates a
lot of overhead, and makes it hard for 2 guys with a truck to compete, as they
often lack the administrative skills necessary to operate in this environment

------
_bxg1
It's funny that the United States prides itself on being the heart of
capitalism, where anybody can allegedly strike out on their own and make their
own way thanks to The Market.

But in reality, Ecuador sounds much more capitalistic (in the positive sense)
than the United States. Today's United States is just as elite-ruled and
hostile to the little guy as the next developed nation - possibly more so -
it's just that in our case, many of the elites are overly-powerful capitalists
instead of government officials or (nominally) oligarchs. But the end result
is the same.

I think the basic fallacy that so many voters have in their heads is that that
big businesses and small are on the same side politically. But the reality
couldn't be further from the truth.

------
danans
> There are of course now online options for small vendors—Craigslist,
> Facebook Marketplace, etc.—but that model has its own substantial downsides
> for something you really want to be able to touch and test out before
> purchase.

While in general I am a fan of the "small l" _hyper-local libertarianism_ of
Strong Towns (I'm a contributor), at least when it comes to things like
housing zoning and small scale commerce, I think this demonstrates that the
writer has a fundamental unfamiliarity with how Craigslist works for used
goods purchases today.

Here's my recent anecdote to support this: I just sold a clothes dryer and
furniture set on Craigslist. Both transactions involved meeting potential
buyers on site and demonstrating to them that the goods were functional, and
even helping them load the goods into their vehicles. One of the items was
loaded into a beat-up pickup truck either borrowed or rented by the purchaser
from another individual.

The biggest issue with the Craigslist process was that as a seller I received
multiple scam requests, and as a buyer at other times, I've found that the
item I inquired about was a scam.

But it's very much an in-person commercial experience.

Where I do think Latin America is leaps ahead is in creativity in using items
in design that our US-based market-segmented big-box consumer mentalities
don't get a chance to ponder. Examples are the Acapulco chair - made of simple
plastic PVC thread and a metal frame [1], which was turned into high design
(vs the terrible PVC lawn chairs designs of the 70s and 80s in the US), and
the many examples of use of upcycled materials to build homes in Mexico [2]

1\. [https://www.patioproductions.com/blog/patio-
furniture/iconic...](https://www.patioproductions.com/blog/patio-
furniture/iconic-history-of-the-acapulco-chair/)

2\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52TLLZz6lq8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52TLLZz6lq8)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hl6iDHm3yk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hl6iDHm3yk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVqM6ZTaXbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVqM6ZTaXbE)

------
JackFr
This is not a compelling article. It doesn't even rise to the level of
anecdata.

------
netcan
The "Bureaucracy vs Markets" or "Top-Down vs Bottom-Up" debates are stale.

These ideas had purchase a generation ago, when these ideas were proxies for
Soviet vs American ideological sparring. That ended 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, it seems trite to have these conversations in the abstract...
comparing Ecuador to the US. It's not like these ideas haven't penetrated the
political realm. They've been paramount in politics, policy and political
thought for decades. Local, National & International.

This is positively naive:

 _" a swing back toward a messy city and a messy marketplace full of small
proprietors—what I've heard called "capitalism with more capitalists"_"

We need to either find new ideas, and importantly, new terms. At the least, we
could mine some new old ideas. How about Khaldun instead of Smith for a
change... he was the original anyway.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Both the Soviet economy and capitalism as we know it are centralized
economies; neither are bottom-up planned. Sure, maybe capitalism has some
competition between large companies, but that's the extent of it.

