Worse on Purpose

bbookofjoe about 2 hours ago 28 commentsRead Article on ledger.worseonpurpose.com

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Discussion (28 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

xnx•2 minutes ago

This site is absolute catnip for HN. Do we know what motivates the site? Long-term SEO content authority reputation building before pivoting to affiliate links?

jackb4040•13 minutes ago

It doesn't really take into account that not all products are meant to be premium. Like it says to avoid Black & Decker because it's "Built to a price point, not a quality standard". Like we know, it's not the 1980s - sometimes you just need a cheap drill to mount a TV and then forget about until you move.

FinnLobsien•about 1 hour ago

I wonder if there’s an inverse of this: brands that actually got better over time because they don’t have massive brand history to fall back on, or simply because they actually care.

altacc•about 1 hour ago

The site lists "Approved" companies that have not been enshittified by private equity. What springs to mind for me are scissor manufacturers Ernest Wright and Whiteley. They maintained quality, relied on expert workers and aim to keep high quality staff for their career and hire people to learn manual skills.

The result of this is high prices and waitlists for many of their products, which is the exact opposite of what private equity and conglomerates want.

Another interesting example from the UK is Howies. They were bought by Timberland, which then in succession got bought by VF, a big US conglomerate. The Howies brand was small and insignificant globally so the management of Howies were allowed to buy the company back and it continues as a niche

Private equity companies exist in a range of sizes, some buying big multinational brands and others buying small local brands. It's a omnivorous predator and it's down to the owners of companies to resist the temptation of money.

jghn•39 minutes ago

It's difficult to keep track over time, however. Brands will build up a reputation as being the one that's actually good for a particular product, and then for one reason or another reduce in quality while relying on their brand history. And it can take a long time for that word of mouth reputation to die off. The effect is bolstered by people who own older generations of the product citing longevity.

An example that comes to mind is Speed Queen for laundry machines. People in the know now look for *used* Speed Queen machines, but casual searches will still turn up the old reputation.

FinnLobsien•about 1 hour ago

Yeah it's quite interesting how most of the decline of great brands came as a result of ownership changes, not complacency on part of the owner/founder.

I've actually found AI a great resource for finding brands that offer great value for money by buying from obscure factories/brands with the same quality attributes as major brands, but without all the marketing spend and brand margin to subsidize.

AnimalMuppet•17 minutes ago

Why would private equity not want high prices and a wait list? That's guaranteed future sales at high margin. Sounds pretty good to me...

lotsofpulp•36 minutes ago

>The result of this is high prices and waitlists for many of their products, which is the exact opposite of what private equity and conglomerates want.

Sounds like the opposite of what buyers want.

M95D•18 minutes ago

Buyers are diverse. PE are not.

dvh•40 minutes ago

Recently Texas instruments changed internals of NE5532 opamp. Several key parameters are worse. Completely changed input stage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZmmZ67SMY

M95D•about 1 hour ago

Suggestion: sort/filter by location (EU/US/etc.).

bob1029•43 minutes ago

I have a hard time with the Instant Pot case. If you have their first generation product, you never have to buy another one. This is not really worse on purpose. They made a product so good no one ever bought it again and they couldn't afford to keep making immortal products. It's really hard to get the customers to pay a premium for something that will last for 50 years but hasn't proven the ability to do so yet.

Not really sure how to solve this particular dilemma. I think Apple brushes up against it with the quality of their products too. I know of people who still use iPhones with a single digit in the model name. I am still on my M1 MBP.

gjm11•12 minutes ago

> This is not really worse on purpose. They made a product so good no one ever bought it again and they couldn't afford to keep making immortal products.

I don't understand how "their first product was too good, so they had to start making worse ones" isn't "worse on purpose". It seems like a paradigm case of "worse on purpose" to me. What am I missing?

burkaman•15 minutes ago

This is a myth. Instant Pot was purchased by private equity parasites when it first became popular, and they quickly extracted all value and destroyed the company when they saw it wouldn't keep growing exponentially forever.

It's possible the company would have failed on its own, but we'll never know, and it wouldn't be because their product was too good. If that were the case then all the recommended alternatives in the Worse on Purpose article would also be out of business. This company looks pretty comparable, and has been making basically one thing very well for 100 years: https://www.allamerican1930.com/pages/about. How often do people need to buy a new high quality pressure canner? They seem to be making it work despite durable products in a relatively niche market.

RamblingCTO•about 1 hour ago

Yeah not sure. Barbour for example has a few good models that are produced in England. The rest is from China and not up to standard. Well known, but this page just lists it as "approved". Same for carhartt actually.

ChrisArchitect•14 minutes ago

[dupe]

Worse on Purpose discussion 4 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019647

pizzaiolo•about 1 hour ago

This goes well with https://consumerrights.wiki

al_borland•31 minutes ago

I’m surprised to see Cutco as approved. I’ve never used their knives, I only know them as the brand that tricks young people into selling their stuff through misleading job postings. It always seemed like a scummy business, which always makes me assume low quality.

LastTrain•17 minutes ago

No entry for Sonos, the poster boy of enshitification?

fwip•about 1 hour ago

As far as I can tell, this is a site for an LLM to vomit out the same basic article with different specific products each time.

roryirvine•7 minutes ago

There's been a stream of these posts on HN recently; all clickbait nostalgia slop, based on everything having been so much better in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=worseonpurpose.com

Though, to be fair, the author works at Palantir - so probably does have relevant experience at making things worse on purpose!

bookofjoe•about 1 hour ago

Methodology: https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/methodology

jackb4040•15 minutes ago

Completely doesn't answer the AI question, nor the "who's paying for this" question. Because presumably it's not a hobbyist buying every tool, mattress, and boot in the world annually.

burkaman•3 minutes ago

Nobody is buying these things to review them, it's just a guy that works in "AI Strategy" in Palantir that has a lot of money to spend on LLM tokens.

NoDodgeQuestion•26 minutes ago

WorseOnPurpose methodology page does not answer the question: is it claude vomit or not? Are the articles written partially or totally by AI?

Apreche•41 minutes ago

In a K shaped economy, there is no success in making quality goods at reasonable prices. There’s no middle class to buy them. You can make luxury goods for wealthy customers who do not care about price, or you can make absolute garbage to sell to the masses in bulk.

If you want to bring back quality goods and services, end wealth inequality. Tax the rich.

brk•22 minutes ago

FWIW, I was with you until the "Tax the rich" bit. Considering how many people the average "rich" person employs, they are generating plenty of tax revenue.

sjsdaiuasgdia•4 minutes ago

Geez, the rich already take credit for the things their employees do...and now you want to give them credit for the taxes their employees paid too! Wild!