Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
you've got two important ideas I want to separate; people moving towards concern for welfare of company over people, and product pricing.
Enshittification (platform decay) describes the pattern where products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, passionate developers create things that match their vision, and consumers benefit from this labor of love. Eventually they degrade their services to maximize profits for shareholders. Inside the company, it's because the owners get rich and money is more important to them than their vision. Outside the company, customers favor big corporations because they think small companies aren't successful companies. Many people would be surprised to learn that small businesses employ 45.9% of American workers, or about 59 million people. It's not that the small companies "haven't made it yet". They're literally the backbone of our economy.
As for product pricing, I'm with you 100%. Buy dollar store shampoo that smells good, it's the only bottle in my shower. It's exactly as effective as the pricey stuff.
No, the cheapest stuff is not as good as the pricey stuff. The midrange priced stuff is as good as the expensive stuff, but the cheapass shampoo and other grooming products are absolute trash and likely to have lead or other contaminants.
Take canned vegetables at a factory. Yes, the factory sells to different companies with different reputations and who each enforce different quality control. A can of green beans from the same factory sold by the expensive company will never have stems or leaves in their cans, but the cheaper ones might. Is the price difference worth it? Probably not. Are some canned foods like kidney beans indistinguishable between cheap and expensive? Probably.
Relevant to your point:
-Terry Pratchett
There's optimal cheap and too cheap. Someone always wants to be the cheapest in its class, and they'll compromise on quality to get there.