YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Yes capitalism is certainly known for continually decreasing quality of goods. That must be why life was so much better in 1800.

I hate these glib comments that don't remotely reflect reality.

Go look at the goods people got in countries that didn't practice capitalism. They were worse in almost every way, more expensive if you could get them and often the things people wanted were completely unavailable because there was no market incentive informing production.

In my experience, this sort of comment is usually followed up by some personal preference of the commenter. Great. I don't want the same thing, so I guess something has to mediate the resource allocation and effort of society towards providing that want/need at a certain quality/price.. and guess how we do that?

Sounds like a lucrative business opportunity to sell a higher quality product at a lower price!

The device you're currently using is worse than the equivalent model was 10 years ago?

Over 30 years ago my family spent an _extra_ $1000 (in ~1993 dollars) on a computer system to upgrade from a 15" CRT to a 17" and increase the RAM from 16MB to 32MB.

Just because a group claims an -ist or puts an -ism in their name doesn't make them so. The NAZIs weren't socialist, they locked them up. The CCP isn't communist except in name. Russia has been an oligarchy since before the wall fell.

And what we have in the US right now is not a free market, nor a well regulated and efficient one. You can call it crony capitalism, if you want, but when banks are bailed out to the tune of $Ts, Federal deficit spending is responsible for "positive" economic growth, and speculative companies are shoved into the indexes that make up what savings the working class has, it barely makes the cut.

Plenty of more "socialist" places with with free healthcare and rule of law, are more market capitalist. Enshitification happens where it is allowed to, because it is allowed to.

Californians get paid more on average, and car prices are mostly constant, so the higher price of electric cars is less of a barrier than in other places.

FWIW, electricity prices in CA are much more out of whack relative to the US average than gas prices.

Reality check: US is by far the cheapest market for new cars, because of insane volumes and competition. Europeans shell out for a Golf as much as Americans do for a (even if shitty) monster truck. And a much higher proportion of their incomes.

I want any car that doesn't spy on me for the profit of the manufacturer. Any car that I don't have to wonder if someone could gain remote access on the back of the manufacturer's data connection and use that to injure or kill me. At present the only option is (at least in general) physically disconnecting or otherwise damaging the modem which places you at risk of not receiving software recalls and prevents first responders from being automatically notified in the event of a serious crash.

> I want an electric car that has tactile buttons, an instrument cluster and doesn't put the entire brain of a car in a mobile app controlled by a remote server.

> That car costs $200k in the US.

Which car is that?

I had no trouble finding such an EV in the US last year. My Hyundai Kona SEL EV has something like 50+ tactile buttons, an instrument cluster, everything I need works without the app, and was nowhere near $200k (the total was $34k).

They don't seem to be selling Kona EV in the US this year, but their other EVs are similar. Same with the Kia Niro and the other Kia EVs. I'm pretty sure Chevy EVs are similar as far as buttons and the instrument cluster goes, although I think they might be more app dependent. Oh, Nissan EVs were also similar, although I have no idea about their app use.

> Country is rich and money is really no object to most consumers

I take it you don't live here because that is an absurdly out of touch take. There's a massive stratification of wealth at present with a decent chunk of the younger population living paycheck to paycheck barely making rent (never mind hoping to ever own a home). On the far opposite side of the spectrum there's only a vanishingly small minority that sees money as "no object".

We certainly enjoy a high standard of living compared to much of the world and we're lucky enough to have cheap vehicles available but such specimens are far from what could be described as being in good condition.