An article discussing changing trends in consumer values and the effect on politics and society

https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-20/the-bewildering-phenomenon-of-declining-quality.html

Posted by Ehgadsman

9 comments

  1. Capitalism, by its very nature, will make worse products for the consumer over time as the company prioritizes profit for its shareholders above all: even if it hurts their consumers or employees or even suppliers. I don’t really think this is bewildering in the slightest, it’s just what happens when economic activity is bent to serve only a small portion of the population rather than the people actually doing the work or even the consumers buying the products.

  2. It’s a race to the bottom, and I feel helpless about it. I go to the store and they only carry a couple of brands, all of which have decreased their quality in the race for profit. Unless you want to spend 100 x more on something for a super high-end brand, which isn’t feasible for the vast majority of people, you are stuck with what a few larger conglomerates want you to have.

    The only other reasonable options are online shopping with similar results or worse. Because you can’t see the product, you have no idea what the quality is until it arrives and if it is shit, returns are a hassle.

  3. I just wanted to point out, maybe with the furniture it’s more that the world’s population has tripled in the last 80 years and there simply isn’t enough nice old growth hardwood to make nice kitchen tables and chairs and desks out of? And though a couch may be of high quality and sturdy fabric, if it’s your grannies from 1965 it ain’t so fresh looking anymore?

    I’m with the author on most everything else here, and I agree I am not so much in to antique furniture, but even if most people were in to that – it wouldn’t really be doable with wood nowadays for everyone that wanted it.

    Could also just buy a high quality table made of steel and granite or aluminum and glass, or any other number of durable materials, instead of the MDF from Ikea, so they are right in that regard.

  4. I don’t think it’s “bewildering” in the least. The largest market for consumer goods has allowed the businesses in that market to put profit above all else, invest that profit into stock buy-backs (this used to be illegal), and has given the green light to every acquisition and merger over the past forty years, resulting in an illusion of choice and competition while drawing consumers to lower quality products.

  5. Hmm.. I think for all the talk about capitalism making quality a race to the bottom, I do often feel there’s a “privilege” element to that nowadays.. 

    Good quality stuff was always expensive, when I was young my family was quite poor and we often simply couldn’t afford to easily replace stuff. Most of our furniture and white good were actually quite old and yes, they were made to a high standard back then so they did last. But once they finally broke we couldn’t afford to replace them so we usually just had to do with out for some time. The dryer took years to replace. Electronic things like a telephone, computer, video/dvd player, we were always the last to get them. 

    And nowadays I do often feel the urge to complain about all this cheap furniture and plastics and textiles when I see them being dumped.. but I do recognise that it’s easy for me to complain about people buying them because *I* am now making enough money to buy the good quality stuff.

  6. The passive way they’re talking about “changing tastes” is wild, as if companies haven’t carefully engineered these fashion trends to enhance their profits, as if Millennial & Gen Z’s economic circumstances haven’t prevented them from upgrading to nicer furniture the way their parents did.

  7. As long as people shop by price only, somebody will make that widget cutting corners on materials to make widgets a little cheaper. BIFL is all but impossible. I ordered a flipper spatula from a so-called restaurant supplier. It is mild steel, bent flipping eggs the first time. Return for 100% promised, if unused…

    Arizona canned tea is still 99¢ after years. Why? The owner says he is making enough money, but they also developed a way to use less aluminum per can.

  8. >Things were cared for and repaired — an old housecoat might become a child’s pair of pants.

    Ah, that passive voice.

    I always think that to have the right to say things like this, someone ought at minimum to know how to do it – in which case sharing information is more helpful than shaming. Certainly my nan would repair and alter things, as well as making from scratch (and taught my mum, who taught me up to a point – I’m most likely to use sewing skills to put a knitted or crochet item together, though), but it is a real skill that takes time. Historically that’s overwhelmingly been *women’s* time, particularly working class women. ‘Things being…repaired’, an old housecoat that can ‘become’ a pair of trousers, is not a natural phenomenon we’ve lost, women were expected to repair clothing (and may have taken in ‘mending’ for others, to earn a bit more for the household). Nothing stopping men learning too though, they got hands (grandad helped nan knit baby clothes, he learnt in the army) one area where YouTube is a genuinely useful resource is fibre arts tutorials. Visible mending is one approach to start – patching will generally be one of the easier ways. A bit of basic embroidery can help give more impression of intentionality (woven wheel roses are very easy, and people who don’t embroider don’t usually know that).

    But, there is an actual reason people don’t do this anymore, when they don’t have to. As a young woman, my nan was the sort of poor that means being malnourished, and even more secure in council housing with her own family, they had very little.

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