Comment by allendoerfer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by allendoerfer | Hacker News Reader

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> OP is getting older. And, like me you move from nights of Gentoo tinckering to Arch, to 30 min Ubuntu LTS installs and hoping the default config files are what you need. And, in the future I see myself buying a Synology.

Feeling this. Except I hate crappy things. There is just a threshold of brokenness I am willing to accept. Consumer products are designed for shinyness and to break and be obsolescent. So most of the time when I have a problem, I learn the right way to do it (TM) look at the ready made solutions and conclude: Oh dear, I have to do this myself again or pay a shitload of money, haven't I?

I think my father passed this on to me. It may have something to do with craftsmanship. There is a German term called "Handwerkerehre" [0] (honor of a craftsman), which is culturally quite significant and encapsulates that you have to feel insulted by poor attitude and quality of work. He was a construction engineer and we always used to have professional grade equipment around the house. Either do it right or do not bother at all.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwerkerehre

I don't speak German but I love that word already. Craftmanship however doesn't exist in consumerism and capatilism where the goal is maximize profit and minimize cost. Whatever quick crap that I can sell to you to make better gain for myself is the way to go. Product development lines (not only in tech but in other fields such as construction) are dozens of levels of deep with each link adding a layer of indifference and workers who just don't give a f*k and nobody takes overall responsibility for any of the services/products rendered.

Eventually this our communal fault for having a strong bias towards price.

Personally I'd love to buy better quality products even if that means the price is higher. I'd love to replace quantity with quality. But sadly that doesn't exist in many fields / product categories and going for the "Premium" product still gives you that same "made in china" experience unless you can really afford to buy those luxury items such as have a single carpenter build you your dining table by hand. (Which is something I'd love to do but the cost is prohibitive)

> Personally I'd love to buy better quality products even if that means the price is higher. I'd love to replace quantity with quality. But sadly that doesn't exist in many fields / product categories and going for the "Premium" product still gives you that same "made in china" experience

The solution to this seems to be XaaS, where the business behind it buys the professional solution and rents it to you on demand.

Another way I deal with it is to buy extended warranties (e.g. for a vacuum cleaner etc) so they at least have additional costs if they sold me a crappy product.

You also should buy brands and then shamelessly abuse customer support. I own a Logitech mouse since about 10 years. Not only is the mouse still working, they also replaced its gliders free of charge after I have used it already for 4 years. Guess which brand I will recommend and buy in the future. I trust that they would want to protect their brand if a feature version would turn out shitty and replace it for me and improve the product for others.

I think this topic is way deeper than it sounds at first. It concerns all areas of society and has effects of historical significance up to the question of war and peace. Essentially it is added layers of complexity equals lacking accountability resulting in lost trust.

Some of it of course always has been that way, it is just that we see more if it now. We have never been healthier, there has never been a lesser percentage of poor people worldwide and so on. Maybe it is just a shift the most developed nations have to make. We have been cranking out features and innovations, time to refactor a bit and improve the base. I think it is already happening due to focus on green products.

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