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Comment by supportengineer | Hacker News Reader

Buy used instead of new.

I get that buying used products might be a partial solution at a personal level, but that doesn't change the fact that we're producing ever more cheap, low-quality stuff. What the market is ideally supposed to do is optimise for the tuple (cheap, quality). It doesn't seem to be doing that, as it seems like things are being optimised for (cheap, perceived quality), and just straight up lying about their quality. When people are buying stuff online, it is even easier to just focus on the price. How do we fix this?

The first time I heard the old-money put-down about someone who had "bought their own furniture" my American newer-is-better head spun (and I'm not much of a "consumer" by American standards).

Not only are we socially conditioned to prefer new, as you point out, this is further reinforced by the necessity imposed by disposable-quality products.

I think the parent commenter's answer was pretty valid. You have to vote with your wallet. Buying used will signal to the market that people don't want the crap that's being produced. Or, especially, given the generous return policies these days, buy new and then don't hesitate to return something if you don't like it.

That's a temporary and limited response. I've heard from people that sell vintage clothes that this will basically die as an industry because the more recent garments just don't have the lifespan.

Wouldn't be surprised. Good furniture can be had second-hand now, but if everyone starts doing this demand will outstrip supply by far.

My first sofa was a turquoise leather 2½ seater bought for €100 from a municipal charity shop. Impossible to resell it turned out, but still in excellent condition we had the municipal charity shop in our new town pick it up (they sold it pretty fast; this is one of those sofas you have to see in a store to say “hey, this could work for me”).

Our present sofa is an ox-blood 2 seater Chesterfield-type one bought for €400 from a piercing shop which had it for waiting customers for only a brief while. Excellent condition and likely to last us another decade at least (if I didn't have a child I would be more sure about it lasting my lifetime).

Exactly, I buy more used furniture and clothing because of the “old world quality” of consumer goods.

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