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Comment by deanCommie | Hacker News Reader

I'm much more socialist than the average HN'er, but let's not mistake - they pursued increased profits AND massively reduced prices.

Now we can say the price reduction wasn't worth it and the bang for buck has actually gotten worse as we've made more things more accessible. That the cost of everything being cheaper is that we have to buy more of it, creating more waste, contributing more to climate change, etc.

But ultimately globalization and the move to manufacturing in China HAS contributed to a huge amount of prosperity world wide as geographies that would've never been able to afford certain devices, tools, or even just entertainment before, have been able to.

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    That the cost of everything being cheaper is that 
    we have to buy more of it, creating more waste

Is this true? It's an interesting question and one that's difficult to answer in any objective way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good

Using the economists' definition of "durable goods" I would say that for the most part, quality has improved. Cars last 2-3x longer these days. Computers have been "fast enough" for a while and can last 10+ years. Perhaps professional tools have taken a nosedive but my low-end Ryobi tools last essentially forever with light household weekend usage.

Not a "durable good", but cheap clothing also feels way more reliable. Cheap synthetic or cotton/synthetic blends are now comfortable and breathable (which is a relatively new development) and last pretty much forever.

Some things have gotten anecdotally worse. Everybody says that large household appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers have really taken a nosedive in quality and/or repairability. It certainly feels true but, I don't know what the actual numbers might say.

But I don't know, man. Affordable crap from 2023 actually feels better than the affordable crap I remember from 1983 or 1993. It certainly doesn't feel worse.

These sorts of change tend to have significant but very diffuse benefits (everybody pays X% less for $thing) but very concentrated costs (areas dependent on $industry being gutted).

I tend towards the idea that the benefits are often worth having, but that the costs shouldn't be externalised onto the workers in question, and therefore regard corporation tax being used to fund redistribution/welfare programs to be justifiable on a market basis as a pigouvian tax as well as justifiable from basic morality.

Yep, the trick of neoliberalism was they reduced worker shares of wages, but they tried to cover that up by reducing the price of commodities (but not fundamentals like land, education, healthcare etc).

And now with inflation those prices have gone up, while wages have not because it all went to where the supply is created.

That view is still highly Western-centric.

In North America, and maybe Europe, the share of worker wages has decreased to the benefit of the elite, but World-wide prosperity has increased DRAMATICALLY in the decades of "globalism" and "neoliberalism"

BILLIONS of people escaped poverty worldwide in exchange for the millions that entered it in the US.

Unfortunately it's not clear what the next step for those billions is. It's certainly not the path that the US and Europe went through for their post-industrial and post-war boom. But what is it instead? It's uncertain and unwritten.

At this point the existential threat to the majority of humanity isn't a lack of clean drinking water, vaccinations, and upward mobility opportunity. It's climate, heat waves, flood, and all the effects that affect everyone across class divides (except the 0.01% in their mountain bunkers)

Well, it's not western-centric to say that they (corporations/capitalists) reduced the workers' share of the revenue or profits. The workers for the corporations that moved production out of the USA and the EU pay their workers a smaller fraction of their revenue than they used to.

Yes, we've done a lot to reduce poverty in many parts of the world. There is a (relatively) furious argument going on, however, about the role of capitalist corporations in that process.

Most of that contribution has been from China lmao

In the west, we seem committed to destroying our gains in public health currently. Really incredible times to be living in.

Maybe if stuff was still quality and we didn't have to buy everything multiple times as they break and malfunction, we could afford purchasing more expensive tools and items. And it's not like things are all that cheap anymore.

Heh, you've just made me consider that the asymptote of capitalism is communism.

"What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers." - some German dude

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