Trademarks identify the origin of goods that a business wishes a consumer to believe. We need to expand that law to also indicate _actual_ origin.
For example, this DVD player came from this manufacturer and then got badged as Alpha Inc, but this other DVD had the same technical origin (despite the different case) and got badged as Beta Inc ... consumers should get that information. Capitalism relies on such things so that the best products can be chosen.
Instead, we get things like companies selling the same product code from different factories with wildly different quality. Or, far more egregious companies sending a product to reviewers and early adopters, then making a worse product and passing it off to consumers as the same.
There's much more to do (I should be able to see exactly what a product had done to acquire it's 'country of origin' - another area companies deceive consumers), but this would be a start.
Though this too can become hard in categories dominated by cartels : warranties for (magnetic) hard drives have been going down (not to mention the recent frauds by Western Digital, how they have fallen, sigh...), or, for (non-related) reasons, boycotting Intel and Ryzen CPUs (or Android an iOS smartphones) doesn't leave you many options, though RISC-V (and "real" Linux) have been making great strides in the recent years.
I have to admit that particular strategy hadn't occurred to me - but it's a good idea. Of course, it has to be an actual part-of-the-standard-deal warranty, not the hard-sell extended warranty that's really just an add-on insurance policy...
(Wondering where I find a box of staples warranted to pierce more than five sheets...)
Many other things seem to have gotten worse though, like clothes and linens. I suspect there's some pattern to those things that have improved and those that have declined, and everything in between, but I couldn't explain it.
I've heard this many times while at auto body shops. It seems that it's not the electronic parts cost that is expensive but you have to dissemble much of the car to replace the parts.
Current cars get more power and fuel efficiency, but its at the cost of complexity like high pressure direct injection, stop/start, variable length intakes, cam phasers, etc.
Its nothing to do with computer control making them brittle, more that there's just so many extra components to fail that just didn't exist on older cars and the techs need training on how they operate and troubleshoot.
The downside is that cars especially have not gotten cheaper. (This is starting to change, sadly by necessity rather than choice, ~ton personal vehicles will soon be the thing of the past even in rich countries.)
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-car-sa...
Was having my house painted a few years back, I have a triple set of spots near the very top of the roof (so about 30 feet in the air) - painter helpfully suggests - do you want me to replace those bulbs up there while I have my ladder up there? I agreed.
Big mistake, the bulbs their were still working 17 years after I moved in - now I have to replace them about every 18 months with the cheap crap the government only allows to be sold.
Not sure how replacing bulbs and throwing them in the landfill every 1-2 years is doing anything good for the environment.
It's simple physics :-)
This is anecdotal, but I had a bunch of bulbs of the same brand that started to fail, on the remaining bulbs I drilled a few air vent holes into them as they are used indoors only, and since then haven't had another failure.
I'm suspecting most LED bulbs fail from thermal stress on the driver circuitry.
Definitely not even close to 10-15 years I was promised.
And this is why warranties are pointless. How am I supposed to get one of these bulbs from a four-pack replaced by the manufacturer two years after I bought it?
It sounds cartoonishly evil, but "cartel" is just an economic term for a market where a small number of participants collude to control supply and pricing. Like OPEC.
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quanda...
IMHO, we should be more aggressive about converting industries which gravitate towards cartels into regulated natural monopolies, like power/water supplies. Some kinds of markets really are more efficient with fewer participants, and we should find ways to encourage that efficiency without letting the lucky winners indefinitely dictate the terms of the market.
And by the way, since the topic of "where do I find the good stuff" keeps coming up, why is there no site that is your one-stop recommendation destination for finding quality appliances, tools? We all know we can no longer trust Amazon reviews.
Consumer Reports has been around for ages but I don't feel they've kept in lockstep with the changing times. Maybe the Cool Tools site? But it seems a little too casual and not as rigorous as CR, too eager to direct you to Amazon as well. I don't know really. Just spitballing.
And yeah for products like these you really need to search prosumer forums for the specific area in question, Consumer Reports would be useless.
1. The prosumers can get detached from the needs of ordinary consumers (see: audiophiles)
2. Some products just don't generate enthusiasts. I recently had to buy a washing machine. All the reviews are sponsored and slightly suspicious crap because nobody cares enough to be the Tom Laundry Tips of the world
This is a claim that was already present in Death of a Salesman. Here's the quote:
> I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it's on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when you finally paid for them, they're used up.
The play came out in... 1949.
It's not been my experience that everything is crap nowadays. But of course one needs to shop wisely.