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?
The page is entirely AI-generated and each piece is written with the same silly thesis (things used to be better and then they ruined everything). I see why this works, but it's frankly disappointing to see so many smart people fall for it over and over again. There's no human on the other end of these essays that believes these things. They're not true and not meant to be true. Yes, they're what we want to hear, but that shouldn't be enough.
As to why it exists: when generation of content costs next to nothing, I think that question is harder to pin. The basic answer is "clicks".
The site may be slop and poorly made, but that doesn't invalidate that consumer products of a given quality tier are lower quality than they used to be. People like to see it confirmed because it matches their lived experience.
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.
... and this kind of site gives you the ability to do some more research ...
Myself, I am of the "buy the cheapest tool" first and see if I use it... If I use it and it works, great - if it breaks or wears out - or I use it regularly and it is "sub-par", then I will replace with something I do more research on.
Except - the breakdown of that argument, is sometimes the cheap tool wastes your time and it's "poor quality" actually prevents you from developing the skill and experience of performing that task correctly.
People didn't used to own so many clothes. Respective to income, clothing used to cost a lot more. As prices fell off a cliff, people's closets started overflowing.
It's been a long time since we've had a sense for how expensive clothing used to cost, and a "good" pair of boots (just as example) would be an enormous sticker shock to most people.
This might be more tolerable if you only owned a single hoodie (why would you need more than one?) and crucially if it lasted for many years.
I totally agree with the premise. I do agree with the parent that this wouldn't be a "mainstream" price. The mainstream is a $15 hoodie. I also try to own fewer, nicer things while keeping the overall cost comparable (if not lower) than someone with a more shitty things.
> It's been a long time since we've had a sense for how expensive clothing used to cost, and a "good" pair of boots (just as example) would be an enormous sticker shock to most people.
Esp that example it's kinda triggering me a little, because someone I know can't shut up about it.
From my perspective, what they consider "a good pair of shoes" is what I'd consider a "durable pair of shoes", which is - to them - criteria which makes them good
While that's an acceptable view, it's subjective - not objective. And I wouldn't trade my running shoes for them, even if I have to buy them new every 2-3 years... And consider the running shoes better, because they do provide a more comfortable wearing experience - at the cost of longevity.
I sure wasn't expecting to see multi-level-marketing company Cutco on the list of "Approved" vendors. I guess it depends on which moral failing you're monitoring.
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.
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.
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.
> An example that comes to mind is Speed Queen for laundry machines.
I should have figured when I noticed my local appliance store starting selling them. That was my plan for when the Samsung garbage that came with my house breaks. What's the quality machine now?
I'm moderately sure that there's a part of private equity that would be content with a steady profit (at the right price). It's just not the part that you usually hear about.
The path to "get rich quick" is selling a lot of cheap junk for a high price. In order to make this work you need to constantly be on the lookout for a new scheme though as the money will run out on the old one fast.
The get rich not quick as quick (and perhaps not quite as rich) it make a good quality product with consistent margins as you earn a reputation.
>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.
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.
This is actually a terrible use for AI, since it's going to regurgitate the marketing astroturfing on Reddit without showing you the source so you can see it's all bots.
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.
Also, a lot of it makes no sense. Bonobos is listed as "Avoid" because it was bought out, not because the product was made worse in any way. Some entries have reasoning about avoiding because the product was made worse, but most are just "company was sold" or "owned by a conglomerate"
That isn't reason enough for me to avoid, maybe to watch for things, but not avoid. Wake me when a product is worse on purpose, like the title claims.
And it's just ai slopped text too. This is the reason ThermoWorks is "Approved"
> Independent and honest; manufacturing is English rather than American, which matters for framing but not for stewardship
What does that even mean? That says absolutely nothing.
Same with the reason lodge is approved:
> Family-owned, US-made, priced honestly. The anchor of the entire counter-list.
Says nothing besides the AI wrote everything, and likely claude.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not quite sure how you got that out of my comment, but no.
In the US at least, those classified as poor have a very low tax burden, in many cases they pay $0, or close to $0 in federal taxes after standard deductions.
US taxes are wildly regressive. Last time Elon's taxes came up, I calculated that he pays taxes at about 1% the rate that I do (and most of us here do). Crazy!
I think "Tax the rich" is the wrong slogan. What we need is to incentivize sharing the progress we are making in terms of productivity widely instead of all the benefits going to a few. For example some people are talking about giving company shares to all workers. This would align the incentives for all workers in the company to do better and then benefiting instead of just the top few percent.
I wonder if this could be achieved by changing the tax code.
The moment tax policy goes into a wonky side alley it can be bought and paid for. Frontal assault is the only strategy that can possibly work for this one.
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!
Yep, and you see a similar thing with government spending and presumption of waste.
Sure, government spending can be wasteful. But it's also generally going into the economy. It's buying stuff from companies who use the revenue to pay their employees and supply chains. It's paying government employees who spend their pay on places to live, food to eat, entertainment, etc. Some folks act like that money disappears. Waste or not, governments aren't generally hoarding cash, they're spending it.
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.
> 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?
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.
I’d like to know what’s supposed to be bad about a late-model Instant Pot. We have one that’s at least ten years old, and we just bought a 3 quart one. AFAICT, it’s the same thing only smaller. Buttons seem the same, seals look to be the same spec. I’m not saying there isn’t an internal difference, but painting it with “owned by PE, bad!” without further information isn’t helpful.
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?
The page is entirely AI-generated and each piece is written with the same silly thesis (things used to be better and then they ruined everything). I see why this works, but it's frankly disappointing to see so many smart people fall for it over and over again. There's no human on the other end of these essays that believes these things. They're not true and not meant to be true. Yes, they're what we want to hear, but that shouldn't be enough.
As to why it exists: when generation of content costs next to nothing, I think that question is harder to pin. The basic answer is "clicks".
> They're not true and not meant to be true.
The two companies I looked up were accurately described, according to my own experience with them.
The site may be slop and poorly made, but that doesn't invalidate that consumer products of a given quality tier are lower quality than they used to be. People like to see it confirmed because it matches their lived experience.
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.
I wouldn't need the site for these situations, just buy what looks good at Lowe's or Target and don't worry if the brand is worse than the 1980s.
Wonder how much money "Worse on Purpose" has been offered so far.
... and this kind of site gives you the ability to do some more research ...
Myself, I am of the "buy the cheapest tool" first and see if I use it... If I use it and it works, great - if it breaks or wears out - or I use it regularly and it is "sub-par", then I will replace with something I do more research on.
Except - the breakdown of that argument, is sometimes the cheap tool wastes your time and it's "poor quality" actually prevents you from developing the skill and experience of performing that task correctly.
Tools are (can be) cheap.
An electric drill from Harbor Freight costs as much as breakfast from Dennys.
You going to pass it on to your kids? No. But maybe you don’t need to.
Man, I clicked on "American Giant", which the website says is known for "Quality US-made staples at mainstream prices".
Then I see how much a zip-up hoodie costs: $168.
I guess I'm not in the mainstream anymore, yikes.
People didn't used to own so many clothes. Respective to income, clothing used to cost a lot more. As prices fell off a cliff, people's closets started overflowing.
It's been a long time since we've had a sense for how expensive clothing used to cost, and a "good" pair of boots (just as example) would be an enormous sticker shock to most people.
This might be more tolerable if you only owned a single hoodie (why would you need more than one?) and crucially if it lasted for many years.
I totally agree with the premise. I do agree with the parent that this wouldn't be a "mainstream" price. The mainstream is a $15 hoodie. I also try to own fewer, nicer things while keeping the overall cost comparable (if not lower) than someone with a more shitty things.
> It's been a long time since we've had a sense for how expensive clothing used to cost, and a "good" pair of boots (just as example) would be an enormous sticker shock to most people.
Esp that example it's kinda triggering me a little, because someone I know can't shut up about it.
From my perspective, what they consider "a good pair of shoes" is what I'd consider a "durable pair of shoes", which is - to them - criteria which makes them good
While that's an acceptable view, it's subjective - not objective. And I wouldn't trade my running shoes for them, even if I have to buy them new every 2-3 years... And consider the running shoes better, because they do provide a more comfortable wearing experience - at the cost of longevity.
Might’ve been one of the earlier entries. When I first purchased a zip up hoodie from American Giant 10ish years ago they were around $65.
I sure wasn't expecting to see multi-level-marketing company Cutco on the list of "Approved" vendors. I guess it depends on which moral failing you're monitoring.
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.
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.
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.
> An example that comes to mind is Speed Queen for laundry machines.
I should have figured when I noticed my local appliance store starting selling them. That was my plan for when the Samsung garbage that came with my house breaks. What's the quality machine now?
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...
That’s the downside of requiring infinite (in the sense of “never-ending”) growth, and not being content “just” with profit.
I'm moderately sure that there's a part of private equity that would be content with a steady profit (at the right price). It's just not the part that you usually hear about.
The path to "get rich quick" is selling a lot of cheap junk for a high price. In order to make this work you need to constantly be on the lookout for a new scheme though as the money will run out on the old one fast.
The get rich not quick as quick (and perhaps not quite as rich) it make a good quality product with consistent margins as you earn a reputation.
>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.
Buyers are diverse. PE are not.
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.
This is actually a terrible use for AI, since it's going to regurgitate the marketing astroturfing on Reddit without showing you the source so you can see it's all bots.
Suggestion: sort/filter by location (EU/US/etc.).
Recently Texas instruments changed internals of NE5532 opamp. Several key parameters are worse. Completely changed input stage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZmmZ67SMY
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.
How is Snap-On approved and Proto is on the watchlist?
Proto >> Snap-On IMHO. Both in raw quality and in value.
And while Craftsman may have changed significantly even before Sears' demise, there are still some excellent tool lines within the brand.
This goes well with https://consumerrights.wiki
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.
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 with making things worse on purpose!
Also, a lot of it makes no sense. Bonobos is listed as "Avoid" because it was bought out, not because the product was made worse in any way. Some entries have reasoning about avoiding because the product was made worse, but most are just "company was sold" or "owned by a conglomerate"
That isn't reason enough for me to avoid, maybe to watch for things, but not avoid. Wake me when a product is worse on purpose, like the title claims.
And it's just ai slopped text too. This is the reason ThermoWorks is "Approved"
> Independent and honest; manufacturing is English rather than American, which matters for framing but not for stewardship
What does that even mean? That says absolutely nothing.
Same with the reason lodge is approved:
> Family-owned, US-made, priced honestly. The anchor of the entire counter-list.
Says nothing besides the AI wrote everything, and likely claude.
Methodology: https://ledger.worseonpurpose.com/methodology
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.
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.
WorseOnPurpose methodology page does not answer the question: is it claude vomit or not? Are the articles written partially or totally by AI?
Here is the creator's X profile: https://x.com/keyanasapp
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.
[dupe]
Worse on Purpose discussion 4 days ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019647
No entry for Sonos, the poster boy of enshitification?
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.
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.
So you are saying - make the poor pay taxes for the rich?
Not quite sure how you got that out of my comment, but no. In the US at least, those classified as poor have a very low tax burden, in many cases they pay $0, or close to $0 in federal taxes after standard deductions.
US taxes are wildly regressive. Last time Elon's taxes came up, I calculated that he pays taxes at about 1% the rate that I do (and most of us here do). Crazy!
I think "Tax the rich" is the wrong slogan. What we need is to incentivize sharing the progress we are making in terms of productivity widely instead of all the benefits going to a few. For example some people are talking about giving company shares to all workers. This would align the incentives for all workers in the company to do better and then benefiting instead of just the top few percent.
I wonder if this could be achieved by changing the tax code.
The moment tax policy goes into a wonky side alley it can be bought and paid for. Frontal assault is the only strategy that can possibly work for this one.
It'll trickle down this time for sure.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a leather boot? I'm thinking brk here might just be able to tell us the answer!
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!
It's kind of weird. There is a lot of propaganda that says
* rich people spending money==great investment into the economy and we need to give them more so they make the economy even better
* poor people spending money==mindless consumption, it's a bad idea to give them money because they are wasting it anyways
Yep, and you see a similar thing with government spending and presumption of waste.
Sure, government spending can be wasteful. But it's also generally going into the economy. It's buying stuff from companies who use the revenue to pay their employees and supply chains. It's paying government employees who spend their pay on places to live, food to eat, entertainment, etc. Some folks act like that money disappears. Waste or not, governments aren't generally hoarding cash, they're spending it.
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.
> 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?
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.
I’d like to know what’s supposed to be bad about a late-model Instant Pot. We have one that’s at least ten years old, and we just bought a 3 quart one. AFAICT, it’s the same thing only smaller. Buttons seem the same, seals look to be the same spec. I’m not saying there isn’t an internal difference, but painting it with “owned by PE, bad!” without further information isn’t helpful.