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Comment by PMunch | Hacker News Reader

> Major known brands are guilty of this too, often regardless of price.

I think this is part of the problem. Everyone wants high-quality (for the most part), but no-one wants to pay more than necessary. If known brand is no longer an indicator of quality, how do you determine that you want to spend say 2-5x the price on something? Reading reviews and such gets you part of the way, but they often focus on new products and performance or style. And it's not always easy to find a review for the thing you are looking to buy. Besides, who has time to wade through reviews for every purchase? So we end up buying the cheaper options because at least then you will only be out a little bit instead of feeling tricked spending more for the same product.

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I love this - super testable experiment. I have this exact desire too. - I can’t stand most cheaply made tshirts or things with crass branding

- there are a few clothing brands that focus on high quality (and in this case english mfg fabric mills).

- it is not cheap. our whole society is warped around “physical goods are super cheap now [because we can manufacture in cn]”. it’s a race to the bottom and we’ve hit the bottom.

- you can buy a black nylon/cotton tshirt for 10 USD

- these tshirts will set you back 130 USD. it feels amazing, was made in a country with health care, ages well, looks high quality.

do you want to pay the price this requires? I do but I think most can’t or won’t https://www.sunspel.com/collections/the-classic-t-shirt

it's also a matter of fashion, you can get real denim work pants that will last a tech worker probably two lifetimes. They're ugly, thick, and heavy though.

> do you want to pay the price this requires?

I ordered one to see how it holds up. $100 for a t-shirt isn't even that high of a price, most t-shirts I own are merch shirts that cost $45-$70 anyway and are printed on the cheapest Hanes or similar shirt. If it's actually good at $100, I'm sure many people would want to buy it, they just don't know about it. I had never even heard of this company till I saw your comment, but regularly spend more than $100 on an article of clothing if I think it will actually last.

You can look for reviewer that care about the same things you care about?

> Besides, who has time to wade through reviews for every purchase?

Claude does! And most purchases I make are repeat purchases, so I don't have to read the reviews again.

Claude is subject to the same enshittification market forces. Think of the value Claude could unlock by having trusted commercial partners that just happen to have the best product in a market segment.

Claude was just an example. You can use an open source model or even run it locally.

They are subject to exactly the same enshittification factors. How much would you pay DeepSeek to train their model to always say you make the best clothes?

Once an open weights model is published, you can keep using that model (with exactly the same sha256 hash). It's hard to be sneaky.

So you don't plan to ever use any open model newer than 2025?

Sorry, I don't follow. Could you please explain?

Suppose someone releases a new open weight model tomorrow. Other people try it and write their reviews. I'll check if anyone mentions any enshittification. If not, I'll go and use it.

I don't see what this has to do with 2025?

> but no-one wants to pay more than necessary

Why would you assume that to be true? It's definitely not true for me.

I guess "necessary" was a bit too vague of a word. I meant that for all your various requirements such as quality, style, workers conditions, etc. there is a cost included. If I gave you the same shirt, from the same brand, created by the same people, but gave you two options for price you'd choose the lower one. If I gave you one shirt at a high price and one shirt at a low price you'd need the higher priced shirt to be justifiably more expensive.

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