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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

There's still a matter of status. When everything mass produced is cheap, the wealthy will demand hand produced goods.

Why would I want something produced by a human when I can instead get something produced by a robot to within 0.001" tolerances?

Humans are very poor craftsmen; their only advantage is that so far everything else is even worse. 20 years from now we'll probably react to hand-made goods the same way as parents today react to what their 5 year old children produce -- admire, praise, and then place on an out-of-the-way shelf to collect dust.

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Because anybody can get something produced by a robot to within 0.001" tolerances. Therefore it looks cheap and gauche, and darling, you surely can't want that on your shelf, can you? My God, it looks like you'd bought it at K-Mart, dear.

Exactly. $100,000 limited run Patek Philippe watches? One-of-a-kind works of art/clothing/food which come with a story and an "experience"? Even today people a farmers market to a supermarket.

Perhaps this will change when robots are able to create completely individually-customised products, but we're already pretty close to that. Some people will always value "authenticity".

> Why would I want something produced by a human when I can instead get something produced by a robot to within 0.001" tolerances?

Because of social norms. Aren't you aware that a 5000$ swiss watch is always inferior to any 5$ chinese watch, from a precision point of view?

Why do you think that rich people assemble at Pebble Beach and buys 50 years old cars for 3 millions $? Because objectively, a Ferrari GTO sucks compared to anything made by volkswagen nowadays on almost any aspect but looks.

>Why would I want something produced by a human when I can instead get something produced by a robot to within 0.001" tolerances?

The problem here is you're thinking like a technical person. You don't buy a Rolex to keep time. You buy a Rolex to let women around you know you can afford to buy a Rolex. Same goes with a Ferrari or Bruno Maglis or any of the other conspicuous brands.

Why would anyone want a hand-made spoon?

http://books.google.com/books?id=D__29PemDKoC&pg=PA88...

Written in ~1898

This already happens today. Rolex: handcrafted, expensive, not very accurate. Digital watch at Target: mass-produced, cheap, and very accurate.

Yes, but how many people buy Rolex watches? There are always going to be idiots in the world; but this is a very small group of idiots.

They aren't idiots just because they don't share your values.

Of course not. Sharing my values is irrelevant. They're just idiots because they pay more for a lower quality product.

Really you mean, "I think they're idiots because..."

There are many reasons someone might want to buy a Rolex, of which quality is just one.

Why are they idiots for having reasons you disapprove of?

Yes but if you follow that argument to its logical conclusion then we're all wearing unisex wipe-clean grey jumpsuits, on the basis that they're the most efficiently functional clothing.

The funny thing about high-end anything is that you buy it once and it's yours for the rest of your life, vs buying something cheap and replacing it every year (or 5 years or whatever). That Rolex is self-powering and can be repaired in a backroom workshop (quite literally at a 1930s tech level) and will last long enough to pass onto your kids. The Timex has to be replaced with a whole new unit, and damaged ones go into landfill. Manufacturing the Timex involves sweatshop labour and toxic chemicals for the semiconductors. Etc..

Actually, the cheapest electronic watch will be several orders of magnitude more accurate than any however-expensive mechanical watch. Which goes to show that people do not value this, but rather the image, the signal the good conveys. Conspicuous consumption, in Veblen's word.

Because perfection is boring.

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