Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by lordCarbonFiber on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @01:11PM (#17759772)

The only way you can possibly justify that sort of view point is the implicit hard cap on what you're willing to pay. You can't find "quality" (in appliances, in shoes, in just about anything) because you're not willing to pay for it.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by Spooky23 on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @02:18PM (#17760457)

No way. Price is all about market segmentation, there is little or no correlation with quality. The most expensive built-in refrigerators, for example, have very high failure rates.

After going through 3 washing machines in 9 years, i bought a Speed Queen commercial washer without a cashbox. It is not very pretty, and cost $50 more than the mid-range residential washer that it replaced, has a 5 year warranty, and an expected life of 10-15 years.

This is true for most categories of consumer products. Appliances, shoes, pants, furniture, etc.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by Retric on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @01:17PM (#17759822)

You can easily spend 3000$ on a crap fridge.

The problem is optimization as energy efficiency and lifespan for example are often at odds. Further you can measure energy efficiency much easier than lifespan so the incentives get out of whack from what consumers want in favor of what they can measure.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by Spooky23 on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @02:22PM (#17760492)

Energy efficiency is one of the most noxious concepts in appliances.

We probably spend exponentially more energy manufacturing, distributing and delivering new appliances that fail due to pointless efficiency engineering than we shave off.

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