But they absolutely simultaneously resulted in lower quality goods in many areas.
As an example, people used to buy hand crafted furniture after buying an home, and it lasted them a lifetime because it was made with such high quality material and with such craftsmanship. It was also very expensive, which motivated keeping it for so long and passing it on to future generations.
Today the furniture we buy is much less expensive as a percentage of income but the quality is crap and you may end up needing to replace it once the finish has worn off because refinishing would be as expensive as buying another crap quality piece of furniture.
The same goes for clothing and many other goods.
It’s not that nobody makes any high quality goods anymore, but they are several times the price and are very low volume because of the cheap crappy alternatives.
But that's not a problem and is likely a good thing. eg it lets you move more often which reduces your commute.
Though none of my Ikea furniture has ever failed and most of it is ~15 years old.
You can still move if furniture was more expensive and higher quality. You'd be able to sell what you have and buy new or used wherever you move. Most furniture is very consumable now so you just throw it away and buy new. You can't restore old furniture so the used market is full of stuff nobody really wants if they have the choice.
> but they are several times the price and are very low volume because of the cheap crappy alternatives
So high quality goods were expensive and still are expensive.
Not sure what your point is.
In most cases refinishing won't even be an option. Veneered plywood is bad enough but MDF doesn't even have that and some cheap end tables and interior doors are literally just a sheet of veneer affixed to cardboard ribs.
Not that I'm complaining. Those end tables are seriously impressive pieces of engineering given what they're made of and can had for barely more than pocket change.
Go look at the goods people got in countries that didn't practice capitalism. They were worse in almost every way, more expensive if you could get them and often the things people wanted were completely unavailable because there was no market incentive informing production.
In my experience, this sort of comment is usually followed up by some personal preference of the commenter. Great. I don't want the same thing, so I guess something has to mediate the resource allocation and effort of society towards providing that want/need at a certain quality/price.. and guess how we do that?
It’s a major part of why we have anti-trust law, because the country knew where it would all go.
If you look at the top 10 companies by market cap every decade, you'll see the churn in them. The lineup in 1910:
• United States Steel Corporation • Standard Oil Company • American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) • Union Pacific Railroad / Pennsylvania Railroad • International Mercantile Marine Co. • American Tobacco Company • U.S. Rubber Co. • Central Leather Company • Amalgamated Copper Mining Company
And today:
1. Nvidia – ~$4.57 trillion 2. Apple Inc. (AAPL) – ~$4.04 trillion 3. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL / GOOG) – ~$3.79 trillion 4. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) – ~$3.63 trillion 5. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) – ~$2.70 trillion 6. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC / 2330.TW) – ~$2.14 trillion 7. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) – ~$1.81 trillion 8. Broadcom Inc. (AVGO) – ~$1.57 trillion 9. Tesla Inc. (TSLA) – ~$1.40 trillion 10. Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) – ~$1.18 trillion
Over 30 years ago my family spent an _extra_ $1000 (in ~1993 dollars) on a computer system to upgrade from a 15" CRT to a 17" and increase the RAM from 16MB to 32MB.
Yes, the device I'm currently using is worse than the equivalent model was 10 years ago. Thanks, capitalism.
And what we have in the US right now is not a free market, nor a well regulated and efficient one. You can call it crony capitalism, if you want, but when banks are bailed out to the tune of $Ts, Federal deficit spending is responsible for "positive" economic growth, and speculative companies are shoved into the indexes that make up what savings the working class has, it barely makes the cut.
Plenty of more "socialist" places with with free healthcare and rule of law, are more market capitalist. Enshitification happens where it is allowed to, because it is allowed to.
That car costs $200k in the US.
Outside of North America, the cars are really good and affordable. So it's out there. We are clearly doing something wrong here.
https://evdbau.com/market-stats
In Australia Chinese cars had 4% of the market in 2020. They now have 35% and Chinese cars have the greatest share of any country.
https://www.anz.com/institutional/insights/articles/2026/07/...
Just as an aside, Australia is odd in that it has positive trade balance with China because Australia sells so much iron ore and coal there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
I take it you don't live here because that is an absurdly out of touch take. There's a massive stratification of wealth at present with a decent chunk of the younger population living paycheck to paycheck barely making rent (never mind hoping to ever own a home). On the far opposite side of the spectrum there's only a vanishingly small minority that sees money as "no object".
We certainly enjoy a high standard of living compared to much of the world and we're lucky enough to have cheap vehicles available but such specimens are far from what could be described as being in good condition.
Musk showed that to be wrong.
Look at latin america, asia, africa or oceania. Chinese cars everywhere, and not only electric, ICE market is also flooded with brands named after seemingly random letters like on those chinese electronics sold on amazon.
> That car costs $200k in the US.
Which car is that?
fortran77•1h ago