Related to another linked-within-WoP post: I got a cheap Milwaukee M18 starter-pack of drill and ¼" impact for Xmas one year and lived with those for a few years. Then needed more/better and looked seriously at DeWalt, but....something about them just looked...not as good.
Now I know why: Milwaukee got bought out and did it right - investing in R&D and "better"; DeWalt got bought out and got driven to maximize profit.
I thought it was a joke as I got way deep into the Milwaukee ecosystem (last count 17 tools and slightly more batteries :facepalm:) which I heard from longtime Milwaukee fans, but now I realize it's true: Friends don't let friends buy DeWalt.

This post and the two others on the site are nicely done, but speaking of capitalism... the author works at Palantir? https://www.linkedin.com/in/keyanasapp/

It used to be if you didn't like a product's quality, you went to a competitor . But as the article outlines, there is no anti-trust enforcement so a parent company buys up the majority of competitors.

I also see some of the K-shaped economy here. If you are doing ok, then buying the $200 backpack is a smart investment. But if money is tight, buying a cheap backpack solves the need but costs more in the long run.

A lot of folks in other online spaces mentioning this is probably AI written ☹️

Most obvious tell I've found is lots of short, choppy sentences. Won't find one run-on sentence.

Every time you stood in a store in the 2010s and compared a JanSport to a North Face to an Eastpak, you were comparing three labels owned by the same parent corporation. Same earnings call. Same margin targets. Same quarterly pressure. The sense that you were choosing between competitors was a fiction that VF Corp had no incentive to correct.

Lots of that pattern "Point one. Point two. Point three." Short and choppy!

None of this shows up on the shelf. The colors are right. The logos are crisp. The product photography is excellent. You discover what you actually bought three months in, when the stitching pulls apart at every stress point.

You ship the bag back at your own expense. That runs $12 to $25 depending on size and where you live. You wait three to six weeks. That's the current turnaround per JanSport's own warranty page. Then they evaluate the damage.

I see references to planned-obsolescence everywhere, but I've never actually seen a compelling case that companies actually do this, for the sole reason, that usually when something prematurely breaks on you, rarely do you buy the same brand again. They allude to a monopoly here, and 55% market share is a lot, but it's still barely half.

Yes, products got a lot worse in the last few decades, but that's just market forces/consumers driving the prices down across all consumer-facing industries. If you want to pay extra and buy something that will last a long time, you definitely can, but that market remains fairly niche.

i am waiting for "Your software got worse on purpose" mr. palantir :-)

Planned obsolescence isn't new. We need to fight for right to repair, and also advocate, as communities, for companies to be held accountable for shitty products. Cooltools used to be great for this, and askMefi often has threads on brands or products that still last forever. This is a way to fight inshittification.