I'd argue the ongoing direction of consumer advertising suggests that you're not as craft-agnostic as you claim "as a consumer." Everyone's brands are trying to connect with human experience and human effort, and an appeal to human problems. Even computer motherboard advertisements have a funny tendency to omit the spec sheet and the price and focus on what they let you do and how they're different.
And then there are companies like Apple.
> But may well be a necessary ingredient in many/most cases. But I'm likely not buying your product over a cheaper/better/etc. competitor because you put in more blood/sweat/tears.
Again, I'm not sure this is true. But the idea that "hard work is meaningless" fundamentally ignores that the basis of an economy is goods and services, not money. Without those goods and services, which are essentially the definition of hard work, every other aspect of the business would be meaningless.
So at some level, hard work must matter. And if it didn't, why are companies copying the designs? Can't they just scribble something on a default shoe and call it a day?
You're confusing inputs with outputs, processes with results. Hard work is a process that may lead to a quality final result. But consumers don't pay for the process. They pay for the result.
It's when we decide that design theft is defensible because it creates inferior, copycat goods that are cheaper, and that's somehow been defined as laudable progress by you in this thread.
But commoditization is great for consumers and has been for centuries, and high-quality luxury goods are still available for those who care to spend more money on that sort of thing.
Then you're factually wrong. Commoditization does not include design theft. If we're talking about handcrafted sunglasses and then someone else makes a machine-created alternative that looks different but has similar properties, that'd be more inline.
That said, defining designer goods as "commodities" is a hell of a stretch for that word. Assuming good faith, you're drawing a parallel. But if I were not very firmly and strenuously looking for a good faith explanation, I'd worry you're just using "an economics word" to make it sound like you have a theoretically backed argument.
> But commoditization is great for consumers and has been for centuries, and high-quality luxury goods are still available for those who care to spend more money on that sort of thing.
Considering actual commodities by the dictionary definition, this is true up to a point. But it doesn't really apply to finished goods.
Hard work by itself IS pretty much is meaningless. As a consumer I really don't care (for the most part) how many times you iterated on design or process or business model or whatever to come up with your product. It may well be a necessary ingredient in many/most cases. But I'm likely not buying your product over a cheaper/better/etc. competitor because you put in more blood/sweat/tears.