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Comment by bamboozled | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, why are people so attracted to "lower prices"? Is this really beneficial for the consumer and the economy in the long term?

I have been consuming often slightly higher priced, better quality, ethically produced goods for some time now. I'm hapier having less stuff and caring for the things I have.

How do I afford to do this? I just buy stuff and try buy second hand quality items where I can.

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Low prices are good for the economy, and they are morally good and help human society progress. You choose to pay more for better, more ethical goods because it is worth it to you to do so. For others it may not be worth it because they have a lower salary, or an alternative to consuming that good that is cheaper (like choosing to bike rather than drive a car). Having a cheap crappy option in no way obligates anybody to choose that good, and may even create economies of scale that create cost reductions across the board. Even though we may not want the cheapest version, for somebody else it might make a huge difference.

If lower prices were good per se, then markets for Lemons would not occur[1]. The mixture of downward pricing pressure, asymmetric information and arbitrage can lead to a state of affairs which is distinctly bad (and arguably morally bad too) for an economy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

To each his own ...I guess. Some cannot afford quality. Some others know higher prices doesn't necessarily mean higher quality.

The flipside of this is the wisdom - "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things".

This is of course ignoring the reality of being forced to purchase cheap because of money pressure, but the saying does hold reasonably true when you can afford it.

>Some others know higher prices doesn't necessarily mean higher quality.

But this is true too of course...

It might come down to the fact that it's easy for the average person to discriminate between prices but not as easy for them to discriminate on quality.

That's why marketers are able to take advantage of things like price signals even when there's no objective justification for the deltas in price between products.

It might come down to the fact that it's easy for the average person to discriminate between prices but not as easy for them to discriminate on quality.

This definitely sounds plausible, I guess for the most part, quality is a subjective thing too.

20 years ago you'd pay a lot for a fridge that would last you 30 years. Now you pay 2 times less for one that will last you roughly 5 years. So you're going to buy 6 fridges in the space of 30 years for at least 2 times more money, which means that it's a net benefit for the "fridge industry" in every way to build cheaper.

Ethics? quality? nah, most people want cheap, they are living from pay check to pay check and their capacity to borrow have been greatly reduced since the 2007 crisis.

More importantly, it's impossible to buy a 30 year fridge today.

Not entirely true, if you buy products for commercial use you might still be able to get something that will last and be possible to, and worth repairing.

It requires a change in thinking. I used to literally sort by 'Price: Low to High'. It took being burned a number of times for me to start thinking that maybe this approach isn't working.

Since then, I've been buying more expensive products and have been much happier with the quality

Clothes is a big exception where higher price doesn’t mean higher quality. Just a more famous brand.

There does seem to be a threshold beyond which paying more doesn't make sense. There's another threshold below which the quality is too poor. For me, something like Gap has enough quality/price balance to make it worthwhile.

>>Honest question, why are people so attracted to "lower prices"?

Because there's a finite amount of money in my wallet.

>>I have been consuming often slightly higher priced, better quality, ethically produced goods for some time now.

Great, but that's a luxury a lot of people literally can't afford.

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