Despite what economists will say, there is an iron law about the provision of goods and services that says there is only so much good stuff to go around. Economics predicts that as demand for a good rises, so will price, causing the supply of the good to increase, bringing more to the market at a higher price. This encapsulates the promise that we can always have more of what we enjoy. For anything that truly matters this is not so.
While we can continue to consume more of anything, the problem is that most goods become inferior as their production and supply is scaled up. To produce a lot of anything, the means of production must become industrialized. In many cases the consequence is a fall in the quality of the good being produced. While we usually can buy more, the value of the experience tends to go down. If you don’t believe this, eat at any chain restaurant. These establishments have perfected the mechanized production, preparation and delivery of food. Portions are massive but the experience is mediocre.
Current house construction is another example. The demolition of a modern house is a revealing sight. It requires shockingly little effort to reduce a contemporary building to rubble. Find a place in a new house where there is no brick – usually not too difficult – and you can drive a car through the exterior wall at modest speed. You probably won’t even get hurt. Building techniques that make houses less vulnerable to hurricanes and tornadoes are well-established; the problem is that they cost too much, so are never applied. More accurately, we are told they cost too much.
Visit a Wal-Mart or K-Mart and marvel at the variety of useless junk on display. Here is an apparent wealth of goods, made in the cheapest manner and displaying the smallest possible amount of good design. Further up the economic chain, in stores furnishing apparently higher-quality goods, the situation changes but doesn’t always improve. Often, one sees equally poor-quality goods, packaged more expertly, and advertised more expensively.
There are occasional islands of excellence in this landscape. Automobiles from Europe and Japan truly show higher quality than was historically the case, while being made on an industrial scale. Target is a mid-priced store that is genuinely trying to offer products that are better designed and manufactured. However, more generally, people continue to expect to be supplied the lowest common denominator at the poorest quality they will accept.
As with products, experiences seldom scale up satisfactorily. If you liked visiting a foreign country, you will enjoy doing so far less when the experience becomes mass-marketed and homogenized. Cable television provides an endless list of channels, but there is a limited number of talented programmers, whose work is now more difficult to locate amidst the dross.
From time to time and in certain arenas, people do rebel against this tyranny, although in small numbers. In many localities one can find more good cheese, decent beer and artisan bread, albeit at a steep price, than ten years ago. The existence of these goods supports my argument and also shows that inflation, corrected for reduction in quality, is much higher than we are led to believe. The market for truly scarce goods such as fine art and prized real estate reflects reality, as prices soar in response to limited supply.
Unfortunately we are unwilling to suspend consumption when faced with products on offer that have made the transition from inexpensive to truly cheap.
How should we respond, as producers and as consumers? As producers, we need to realize that when a good becomes commoditized nobody will make any money producing it or derive much satisfaction from its consumption. We need to invest in solid brands conveying specific attributes that we adhere to and carrying guarantees of performance. We need to embrace the educated consumer and be willing to participate in third party organizations that furnish objective information to the market. We should accept that progress may mean producing less of our product but making it better and longer-lasting. We need to invest in producing superior products that will require less advertising and marketing inducement to attract buyers.
As consumers, we should ideally be prepared to spend our money only when we see something genuinely good on offer. We should be willing to keep goods we buy for longer periods of time and be prepared to buy fewer of them at higher prices. It isn’t easy to do this, but we have to get in the habit of demanding variety and quality and be prepared consume less. This doesn’t mean that we become self-sufficient small farmers; it simply means that we insist on better goods. We should insist on better-constructed, smaller homes, especially where we must cope with the threat of catastrophic weather conditions. We must put more knowledge and time into the process of buying. Above all, if the market doesn’t provide what we seek at the quality we want, we should buy nothing.
