Having stewed this around in my brain for a few weeks, it's time I finally allow you to share the vitriol and enjoy, yet again, one of my wacky ideas. (Pictured: stew.)
I hear a lot of people complain about the lack of product quality these days.
This goes for everything from hand tools, to cars, to food.
Across the board, "waaaaah! It's not as good as it was when I was a kid!"
You're right, it's not.
But maybe you don't understand why, and your own part in creating that situation.
So.
It's tempting, since the political left has done a stellar job of pushing the notion that all big corporations are automatically evil into the public consciousness (and, granted, some of those companies haven't done anything to help their own image; I'm looking at you, AIG,) to blame things on big-box retailers and discount chains. (Pictured: Evil Corporation.)
But that's not the whole story.
First, you must understand how a society works, and its purpose.
Back in the day, like 700 years ago, people followed trades.
Blacksmith; miller; farmer; there was a system of apprenticeship, whereby young men (historical correctness, y'all) could trade an established tradesman their time and effort for a number of years in exchange for learning the trade, and an eventual endorsement from their craftmaster as a reference when they opened their new business.
But why was this necessary?
I mean, why would you need a blacksmith at all? (Pictured: a good reason.)
Simple; the farmers didn't ALSO have time to shoe horses and forge plowshares. They had too much work to do.
The farther back technologically you go into history, the closer you come to seeing one family have to be entirely self-sufficient. Backbreaking labor, dawn to dusk, every single day, just to provide enough food to feed their families.
Waaaay back when, in the dawn of time, some brilliant guy, who was fairly competent at the forging bit - or maybe at barrel-making, or making candles, whatever - decided that he could make a living without having to milk cows, feed chickens, plow fields, harvest crops, train animals, repair damaged buildings, construct new buildings, build and maintain wagons and farm equipment, sort seed, pick weeds, chase off crows, deal with sick animals, and make candles, barrels, butter, and anything else he wanted all by himself.
The way he chose to do it was to specialize; he made his business exclusively by blacksmithing, and sold his labor - and its products - to the community, in exchange for not having to do all that other crap and still eat. (Pictured: Not having to do all that crap thanks to trade.)
Because he specialized, four things happened.
First, he got better at the craft of blacksmithing. Practice makes perfect, and someone who spends all their time on one chore is far more likely to discover ways to improve his technique than someone who does it only when desperately necessary. This, guys, was the motivating incident that spawned technological advancement. (More on this in a minute.)
Second, this took pressure off the farmers and surrounding community, as they no longer had to spend valuable time doing the tasks that he was performing; instead, they were able to trade part of the results of the labor they were already going to do anyway for his efforts. Because of this, agricultural production increased dramatically, as the farmers could devote more of their efforts directly towards production.
Third, this started us on the road towards capitalism. (More on this in a minute too.)
Fourth, this allowed other people to specialize, as well. Suddenly, there are chandleries, scriptoriums, cooperages, all manner of tasks getting done by people following a trade, because that way they could simply barter for their needs and not have to raise their own chickens.
So, after this system settled in place and became accepted, people realized that any clown could ride into town with a hammer and declare himself a blacksmith, and they would have no way to verify his skills. Thus the rise of the system of apprenticeship; when someone rode into town and could present a letter of reference from a particular (and known) master of his trade, the people in town could his skill in that trade. (Pictured: the consequences of charlatanry.)
Over time, that became more formalized, as craftsmen formed guilds, to allow their members to move themselves and their families greater distances than a single man's reputation was likely to spread.
But one thing remained constant: the skill of the tradesman determined his success. The quality of his products was a crucial factor in his community's willingness to purchase from him, and determined the price they were willing to pay for his products and services.
Thus the beginnings of capitalism; the price system. Basic economics is very simple: the price of a product is a measure of the costs of labor and materials to make the product, versus the amount the customer is willing to pay for the finished product, which is determined by need and quality. Something you desperately need, but is poor quality, will still draw a lower price than something equally needed but of greater quality.
Where you run into trouble is when the "quality" product is so MUCH more expensive than the inferior product that the difference in cost exceeds the increased value to the customer. (Pictured: superior versus inferior.)
Hold that thought.
Now, over time, as the various trades advanced technologically, they specialized further. Instead, for example, of a simple chandlery making all the night-time illumination for a village, you might have a chandlery for simple candles - and another merchant who, after buying parts from a blacksmith, made oil lamps.
As that specialization increased, so did two other things: customer choice, and free time.
The concept of a vacation was unknown, except to the very rich, until MAYBE a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago. (Pictured: Middle Ages vacation.)
But as society specializes further, it allows its citizens to invest less and less of their personal labor in subsistence, and a greater and greater portion of that time and labor in entertainment.
This is, ultimately, the purpose of specialization.
I personally can either do, or learn, everything necessary to build and run a small farm. As such, I possess, complete within myself, the ability to provide for my family.
But I'd never, ever be able to do anything else.
Because of specialization, I have time when I'm not at work, and can blog.
(Pictured: typical blogger.)
This is ultimately one of the reasons "society" and "civilization" exists in the first place; having the freedom to do other things besides farm. (There's also mutual defense, but that's a different topic entirely.)
But, see, here's the thing.
Remember me saying something about price being partly determined by product quality?
When you live in a specialized society, you have the choice, not only of buying from a craftsman, but of which craftsman to buy from.
So, how do you make that choice? Cost versus value, and here's where we move forward into the modern age.
See, any business can undercut its competitors, if it's willing to sacrifice the quality of its products. (Pictured: an example.)
You can ALWAYS make something cheaper.
The thing is, the product is therefore less of a value to the consumer.
Simple, right?
Except that that equation leaves out something very important that I ALSO promised to come back to, namely, the fact that the difference in cost is INHERENTLY a value to the consumer.
Specifically, a cheaper product means you invest less of your labor, in the form of currency paid you for that labor, into that product, which means you have more money left for leisure activities and sustenance.
Which means that if it's cheap ENOUGH, you will care a lot less about the fact that it's also of miserable quality. (Thus explaining why everything is made in Malaysia or Honduras.)
So, we have discount stores. They sell products which are in every way but one inferior to those sold by other companies: cost.
We shop there. And every time we choose a $5 toaster made in Malaysia over a $10 one made in St. Louis, we are choosing to further specialize our society - and we're pushing our society further in the direction of ever more disposable merchandise.
Craftsman tools, the product of Sears, Roebuck, & Co., are excellent quality tools. So good, in fact, that they come with a lifetime warranty - your lifetime, not theirs. If they break, ever, you get a new tool. VALUE!!! (Pictured: value!)
But they're expensive. And when you choose to go to Family Dollar and buy a $40 "complete tool kit" of vastly lower quality, because of the price, you are incentivising the production of more low-quality goods, and DISincentivising the manufacture of Craftsman tools.
Reputation still counts, to some degree; this is why people buy Sony products.
But you'll notice that the PlayStation 3 - inarguably a better product than Microsoft's XBOX360 (60% failure rate) - is getting beaten, badly, in the marketplace, because Microsoft's product is cheaper.
Both are getting hammered, sales-wise (still!) by the Nintendo Wii, which is technologically inferior to both consoles, has a smaller library of new titles, and...
...Costs less than either. (Pictured: comparative sales.)
We have made of ourselves a nation dependent on disposability; we've worshipped at the altar of low, low prices to such an extent, and for so long, that craftsmanship is nearly extinct in our culture.
Was it worth it?
We live longer than anyone ever has in recorded history; we have better medical care, no matter what anyone says about it, greater access to the market, greater access to goods and services, greater consumer choice than ever before in history, and people are complaining about cheap manufacturing and not having enough time off work. (Pictured: protesters.)
So.
You, reading this, need to make a personal choice.
That choice is either to continue to support specialization - and cheap merchandise - in exchange for a long life span, good health care, availability of services, vacations, 40-hour work weeks, and being able to get fresh pineapple in Minnesota in February, or... not.
If you don't want to support specialization any more, you can take simple steps. Buy better products. Look at your purchases as investments in quality, and buy items manufactured to a higher quality standard in preference to the lower-priced, disposable stuff. Make things yourself.
You'll have to trade more of your "free" time for it, but those are the options. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you want a return to the days when a TV set would last 45 years without a problem, spend the money to buy ones that do.
But if you participate in the Disposable Nation that allows all of us to exist without 16-hour days of backbreaking labor just to produce vegetable stew again, stop complaining about it and try understanding what it is and why it works. (Pictured: more stew, just to make a point.)
This is the PURPOSE of a society: to guarantee you the ability to get the most out of life that you can with the least amount of necessary work to achieve it; this requires lowering products' individual craftsmanship in order to allow you that privilege.
And you cannot get to the one goal without also reaching the other.
Thank you for reading and have a great day. (Pictured: a great day in Minneapolis.)
