I'm not "arguing" for anything but choice. You probably don't use a $30 cell phone but there is a time and place for them and as a consumer, I like knowing I have the option to pick one up if I want to. If I want quality, I pay for it. If I want an electric screw driver that is going to last long enough for me to setup my Ikea furniture for a 10th of the price of a brand new Dewalt what business is it of anyone but me?
I think it's an unwarranted assumption that cheap necessarily implies "breaks quickly". Some cheap things last for eons; others don't - if anything, the low-end market may well be a place where the largest improvements can be had.
And even if longer-lasting stuff implies es some extra cost, I question whether that extra cost is significant in the sense that it would change market positioning (i.e. a 10% BOM increase is huge considering the kind of markets this affects, but still not nearly enough to close the gap with the more luxuriously branded stuff).
> If I want an electric screw driver that is going to last long enough for me to setup my Ikea furniture for a 10th of the price of a brand new Dewalt what business is it of anyone but me?
If they were "manufactured on demand", I would agree. You'd pay more or less depending on your needs. As it is today, each product you can get off the shelf is being manufactured in millions of copies, and is a part of purchasing environment. It affects the market for everyone, and its production affects the environment.
I'm of belief that tools barely suited to their function are a waste of materials, energy and production effort - and therefore should not exist. Worse than that, they also provide a price floor on the whole category. You get two categories of items - "crap" items, for which price is pushed down to minimum, and "premium" items, for which the price can stay higher, because customers going for them are not price-sensitive.
I currently believe (though this is not a very strong belief) that if we could somehow raise the floor of minimum acceptable product quality, we'd have much less waste, and the better items would be cheaper than they're now (supply and demand, after all).
I'm of belief that tools barely suited to their function are a waste of materials, energy and production effort - and therefore should not exist.
Is this a correct read on what you're saying:
You feel other people buying low-cost poor-quality products are making the wrong choice 100% of the time. If you were in charge, you would pass legislation to ban these crap products from being sold. This will protect consumers from making poor purchasing decisions.
More along the lines: crap quality products are a huge resource waste and damaging to environment. Consumers will buy lowest-cost goods because that's what consumers do. There's no point to blame individuals, because there isn't much agency on the consumer side to talk about. Raising the quality floor will remove "cheap crap" option from people (they'll go for "slightly more expensive but much less crappy" option instead). Both lives of consumers and our energy use will improve.
You may say it's patronizing view, but I don't blame individual customers because I don't believe they have a meaningful choice in the matter. There's no agency here - people buying cheapest, barely functioning crap is an obvious consequence of it being available.
