My impression is we've traded off a lot of stuff for convenience, and we're paying the price. To take the Amazon example, you can buy a lot of cheap stuff, but it's often very low quality. In some categories it's difficult to find even mid quality items, and forget about advice and support.
My impression is we've traded off a lot of stuff for convenience, and we're paying the price. To take the Amazon example, you can buy a lot of cheap stuff, but it's often very low quality. In some categories it's difficult to find even mid quality items, and forget about advice and support.
I think you see this everywhere. By slashing barriers to entry markets have been flooded with crap, and every day we swim in it. Social media (of which Substack is included) is a case in point, with the ratio skewing to low quality. Maybe it's progress, but the caveats are considerable.
My experience has been the opposite. Just as I know I can buy cheap not-sturdy tools from Harbor Freight which I expect to use once a year, and expensive sturdy tools elsewhere which I expect to use more often, so I can find the level of quality I want from Amazon, as long as I pay more and pay attention to the reviews. Amazon has begun adding warnings to some items that they have a higher-than-average return rate.
I remember spending far too long traipsing from store to store looking for just the right kind of tent, buying books and magazines, and finally settling on one from out of state which was illegal in California (made of GoreTex and could have flame retardant applied). I have zero interest in returning to those days.
I will guess that in 20+ years of buying from Amazon, I have only had a couple of bad buys. If I had been limited to brick and mortar stores, it would have been higher simply for the lack of choice and the expense + hassle of traipsing all over to find even that limited choice and talking to employees who either didn't know enough or were so biased that they didn't know about alternatives.
I guess you can be rosy about the past. I actually found Amazon pretty good in terms of quality for most of the time I've used it. But the past few years standards seem to have dropped. It's good for things like books. But if I wanted a specialist item I'd probably go elsewhere, albeit still online.
My impression is we've traded off a lot of stuff for convenience, and we're paying the price. To take the Amazon example, you can buy a lot of cheap stuff, but it's often very low quality. In some categories it's difficult to find even mid quality items, and forget about advice and support.
I think you see this everywhere. By slashing barriers to entry markets have been flooded with crap, and every day we swim in it. Social media (of which Substack is included) is a case in point, with the ratio skewing to low quality. Maybe it's progress, but the caveats are considerable.
My experience has been the opposite. Just as I know I can buy cheap not-sturdy tools from Harbor Freight which I expect to use once a year, and expensive sturdy tools elsewhere which I expect to use more often, so I can find the level of quality I want from Amazon, as long as I pay more and pay attention to the reviews. Amazon has begun adding warnings to some items that they have a higher-than-average return rate.
I remember spending far too long traipsing from store to store looking for just the right kind of tent, buying books and magazines, and finally settling on one from out of state which was illegal in California (made of GoreTex and could have flame retardant applied). I have zero interest in returning to those days.
I will guess that in 20+ years of buying from Amazon, I have only had a couple of bad buys. If I had been limited to brick and mortar stores, it would have been higher simply for the lack of choice and the expense + hassle of traipsing all over to find even that limited choice and talking to employees who either didn't know enough or were so biased that they didn't know about alternatives.
I guess you can be rosy about the past. I actually found Amazon pretty good in terms of quality for most of the time I've used it. But the past few years standards seem to have dropped. It's good for things like books. But if I wanted a specialist item I'd probably go elsewhere, albeit still online.