I’ve been ordering from Amazon less and less because of how flooded it has become with cheap crap at exorbitant prices. Every site that sells stuff on a broad scale is like this now. If you go to Etsy, you now have to carefully traverse sellers because there are tons on there now that sell AliExpress bulk items as expensive one-offs.
Search for a necklace on Etsy. Simple enough. Except now instead of each seller being an artisan that makes the item, you’ll get a list of items that can be purchased in bulk on AliExpress for $1-2 per piece. Sellers will buy stuff in big bulk purchases, and resell that same necklace for $50. They even go as far as making fake backstories for their stores.
The head mod of r/EnoughLibertarianSpam wedged this into my brain years ago:
The whole idea of free market forces is that corporations will be motivated to be good based on reputation alone, which assumes that reputation can’t be falsified.
I interpret it in a broader sense. Recently I tried to test a mechanical keyboard to see if I would like it. The small local shop did not have any (understandably), so I went to MediaMarkt and they didn’t have any either. It seems that since everyone is ordering stuff online, the physical shops only have stock for very generic stuff.
So… the convenience that everyone was demanding (being able to order anything) is now mandatory for me.
Of course, it’s just first world problems in my case.
Funnily enough that’s more or less the opposite in germany. Amazon used to be good and had everything but now it’s flooded with cheap chinese garbage. Some products you won’t even find and if you find it it’s often fairly expensive.
My last two mechanical keyboards I bought were from MediaMarkt and ComputerUniverse. The Mediamarkt one I even got in a local shop at a reduced price because it was the display model. In general the local shops do have a good product selection here. At Mediamarkt I could try several different mechanical keyboards with various switch types.
I went to my local mall 2 weeks ago and entered through the Best Buy. They had several types of mechanical keyboards with different switches on display, most had a couple keycaps stolen.
I can see the point though, I just don’t think it applies everywhere.
I interpret it in a broader sense. Recently I tried to test a mechanical keyboard to see if I would like it. The small local shop did not have any (understandably), so I went to MediaMarkt and they didn’t have any either. It seems that since everyone is ordering stuff online, the physical shops only have stock for very generic stuff.
So… the convenience that everyone was demanding (being able to order anything) is now mandatory for me.
Of course, it’s just first world problems in my case.
Most of the small local shops have been closed down by a combination of big box stores and Amazon anyway, so in a lot of places, your only options are the evil megacorp you have to drive to or the other evil megacorp that’s convenient.
Netflix was awesome, but we’ve returned to the age of cable. The good news is now you CAN choose ala carte. The bad news? All the channels suck, and almost none have what you’re looking for.
The shitty thing about cable was that you had to buy basic cable just to get in the door, then each of the 5 most popular channels were in separate packages that added 15 bucks each.
For a short while you could access almost everything on one streaming site for $15. Then slowly it began to fragment to the point where each service in theory has a nearly infinite library, but in practice you need 4+ subscriptions to access all the content most people want to watch. So it’s back to the same core reason cable sucked.
Yes, those points you made contribute to the reason why cable sucked. Though I think the core reason cable sucked was that it was a subscription with mandatory minimum periods, like a year or whatever. For the time being (I don’t have any streaming service accounts, mind you), you can at least just pay for a month of Netflix, binge everything you want to watch, then cancel and pay for a month of the next streaming service that has the content you want. For the time being.
Fair point. That was never really a huge deal for me because my watching habits tend to be pretty stable, so signing up for a year minimum wasnt a big deal. But that is a place where streaming is still better.
Though I think the core reason cable sucked was that it was a subscription with mandatory minimum periods, like a year or whatever.
You can “think” anything, but that wasn’t a thing for most places I lived, nor a big problem. But if you’re going to make up your own problem and say it doesn’t exist now, ok.
Right, I can think that. It’s an opinion. It’s also not a made up problem, and it doesn’t exist now. Yet. Which was the real point I was trying to make. Just anticipating that someone will do it, make you sign up for a year of netflix instead of month to month for example.
Never did I imply you made an invalid point and even agree with you. But if you want to make this into some argument for whatever reason, ok.
We’re getting close to that with calls for different streamers to “take over” a show that failed on one. We’ve also seen streamers like Netflix take on cable’s failures.
Pretty much waiting for Disney to do a direct continuation of the original marvel MCU shows, though they kind of are doing that with Daredevil, though dropping much of that show’s characters.
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