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.
Outside of North America, the cars are really good and affordable. So it's out there. We are clearly doing something wrong here.
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.
Kia trucks and similiar classes of products (cheap, robust, no fancy features, intensely practical) are very common in some places (notably some parts of Asia) but are also extremely hard to find in the US, primarily due to regulatory reasons. BYD cars are also often cheaper than US options, but are also not available in the US.
High gas prices do persuade people. Look at the vehicle fleet in California compared to the other states. It is very different and the gas is only slightly more expensive.
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.
They do it because they can. Country is rich and money is really no object to most consumers, so they buy what they subjectively "want", a car does not need to be "optimal" for them. And they want ICE cars because average age of a new car buyer is 53, they are buying what they are used to. That simple.
> 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.
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.
Well it lasted 10 years less for pretty much same thing... Talking about my 27" 1440p monitor. Dell is still working. The 4 year old Asus have most likely some type of power issue and doesn't even want to start.
The device I'm currently using has no headphone jack, no removable battery, no removable memory, no removable storage, a single solitary USB-A port and a locked-down BIOS that only lets you install Windows by default. All in the name of profit.
Yes, the device I'm currently using is worse than the equivalent model was 10 years ago. Thanks, capitalism.
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?
Industrialization and automation brought down the cost of goods, making them much more accessible to more people.
But they absolutely simultaneously resulted in lower quality goods in many areas.
As an example, people used to buy hand crafted furniture after buying an home, and it lasted them a lifetime because it was made with such high quality material and with such craftsmanship. It was also very expensive, which motivated keeping it for so long and passing it on to future generations.
Today the furniture we buy is much less expensive as a percentage of income but the quality is crap and you may end up needing to replace it once the finish has worn off because refinishing would be as expensive as buying another crap quality piece of furniture.
The same goes for clothing and many other goods.
It’s not that nobody makes any high quality goods anymore, but they are several times the price and are very low volume because of the cheap crappy alternatives.
> Today the furniture we buy is much less expensive as a percentage of income but the quality is crap and you may end up needing to replace it once the finish has worn off because refinishing would be as expensive as buying another crap quality piece of furniture.
But that's not a problem and is likely a good thing. eg it lets you move more often which reduces your commute.
Though none of my Ikea furniture has ever failed and most of it is ~15 years old.
> But that's not a problem and is likely a good thing. eg it lets you move more often which reduces your commute.
You can still move if furniture was more expensive and higher quality. You'd be able to sell what you have and buy new or used wherever you move. Most furniture is very consumable now so you just throw it away and buy new. You can't restore old furniture so the used market is full of stuff nobody really wants if they have the choice.
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.
Regulatory capture (occasionally outright banning a superior product, but usually just raising the cost of competition) as well as anti-competition wrapped up in acquisition culture severely impair this.
Namely, these and monopolies are the end-stage of unregulated Capitalism. The big guy becomes evil and makes it so no small guy can ever enter the stage again.
It’s a major part of why we have anti-trust law, because the country knew where it would all go.
> The big guy becomes evil and makes it so no small guy can ever enter the stage again.
If you look at the top 10 companies by market cap every decade, you'll see the churn in them. The lineup in 1910:
• United States Steel Corporation
• Standard Oil Company
• American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T)
• Union Pacific Railroad / Pennsylvania Railroad
• International Mercantile Marine Co.
• American Tobacco Company
• U.S. Rubber Co.
• Central Leather Company
• Amalgamated Copper Mining Company
And today:
1. Nvidia – ~$4.57 trillion
2. Apple Inc. (AAPL) – ~$4.04 trillion
3. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL / GOOG) – ~$3.79 trillion
4. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) – ~$3.63 trillion
5. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) – ~$2.70 trillion
6. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC / 2330.TW) – ~$2.14 trillion
7. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) – ~$1.81 trillion
8. Broadcom Inc. (AVGO) – ~$1.57 trillion
9. Tesla Inc. (TSLA) – ~$1.40 trillion
10. Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) – ~$1.18 trillion
That already exists. If it weren’t for punitive tariffs, we’d already be enjoying cheap, high quality Chinese vehicles in the U.S. and Canada, like many other countries do already.
The transformation in Australia has been remarkable. Chinese electric vehicles are now everywhere.
https://evdbau.com/market-stats
In Australia Chinese cars had 4% of the market in 2020. They now have 35% and Chinese cars have the greatest share of any country.
https://www.anz.com/institutional/insights/articles/2026/07/...
Just as an aside, Australia is odd in that it has positive trade balance with China because Australia sells so much iron ore and coal there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
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.
Outside of North America, the cars are really good and affordable. So it's out there. We are clearly doing something wrong here.
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.
Kia trucks and similiar classes of products (cheap, robust, no fancy features, intensely practical) are very common in some places (notably some parts of Asia) but are also extremely hard to find in the US, primarily due to regulatory reasons. BYD cars are also often cheaper than US options, but are also not available in the US.
Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/americans-not...
High gas prices do persuade people. Look at the vehicle fleet in California compared to the other states. It is very different and the gas is only slightly more expensive.
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.
They do it because they can. Country is rich and money is really no object to most consumers, so they buy what they subjectively "want", a car does not need to be "optimal" for them. And they want ICE cars because average age of a new car buyer is 53, they are buying what they are used to. That simple.
> 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.
"X are spending more money to Y worse Z" is really the distillation of life under capitalism.
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.
Well it lasted 10 years less for pretty much same thing... Talking about my 27" 1440p monitor. Dell is still working. The 4 year old Asus have most likely some type of power issue and doesn't even want to start.
Now compare clothing. Or Pyrex. Or the chocolate in candy bars.
Stop buying brands that coast on past clout.
The device I'm currently using has no headphone jack, no removable battery, no removable memory, no removable storage, a single solitary USB-A port and a locked-down BIOS that only lets you install Windows by default. All in the name of profit.
Yes, the device I'm currently using is worse than the equivalent model was 10 years ago. Thanks, capitalism.
Why did you buy it then? There are systems on the market still that have none of these issues.
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?
State regulations, to prevent market distortions like monopolies, price fixing, lying about products and selling poisoned food, among other things?
Yes capitalism is certainly known for continually decreasing quality of goods. That must be why life was so much better in 1800.
Industrialization and automation brought down the cost of goods, making them much more accessible to more people.
But they absolutely simultaneously resulted in lower quality goods in many areas.
As an example, people used to buy hand crafted furniture after buying an home, and it lasted them a lifetime because it was made with such high quality material and with such craftsmanship. It was also very expensive, which motivated keeping it for so long and passing it on to future generations.
Today the furniture we buy is much less expensive as a percentage of income but the quality is crap and you may end up needing to replace it once the finish has worn off because refinishing would be as expensive as buying another crap quality piece of furniture.
The same goes for clothing and many other goods.
It’s not that nobody makes any high quality goods anymore, but they are several times the price and are very low volume because of the cheap crappy alternatives.
> Today the furniture we buy is much less expensive as a percentage of income but the quality is crap and you may end up needing to replace it once the finish has worn off because refinishing would be as expensive as buying another crap quality piece of furniture.
But that's not a problem and is likely a good thing. eg it lets you move more often which reduces your commute.
Though none of my Ikea furniture has ever failed and most of it is ~15 years old.
> But that's not a problem and is likely a good thing. eg it lets you move more often which reduces your commute.
You can still move if furniture was more expensive and higher quality. You'd be able to sell what you have and buy new or used wherever you move. Most furniture is very consumable now so you just throw it away and buy new. You can't restore old furniture so the used market is full of stuff nobody really wants if they have the choice.
> It was also very expensive
> but they are several times the price and are very low volume because of the cheap crappy alternatives
So high quality goods were expensive and still are expensive.
Not sure what your point is.
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.
Sounds like a lucrative business opportunity to sell a higher quality product at a lower price!
Regulatory capture (occasionally outright banning a superior product, but usually just raising the cost of competition) as well as anti-competition wrapped up in acquisition culture severely impair this.
Namely, these and monopolies are the end-stage of unregulated Capitalism. The big guy becomes evil and makes it so no small guy can ever enter the stage again.
It’s a major part of why we have anti-trust law, because the country knew where it would all go.
> The big guy becomes evil and makes it so no small guy can ever enter the stage again.
If you look at the top 10 companies by market cap every decade, you'll see the churn in them. The lineup in 1910:
• United States Steel Corporation • Standard Oil Company • American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) • Union Pacific Railroad / Pennsylvania Railroad • International Mercantile Marine Co. • American Tobacco Company • U.S. Rubber Co. • Central Leather Company • Amalgamated Copper Mining Company
And today:
1. Nvidia – ~$4.57 trillion 2. Apple Inc. (AAPL) – ~$4.04 trillion 3. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL / GOOG) – ~$3.79 trillion 4. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) – ~$3.63 trillion 5. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) – ~$2.70 trillion 6. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC / 2330.TW) – ~$2.14 trillion 7. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) – ~$1.81 trillion 8. Broadcom Inc. (AVGO) – ~$1.57 trillion 9. Tesla Inc. (TSLA) – ~$1.40 trillion 10. Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) – ~$1.18 trillion
Where is this place that has unregulated Capitalism?
Somalia is the traditional answer.
That already exists. If it weren’t for punitive tariffs, we’d already be enjoying cheap, high quality Chinese vehicles in the U.S. and Canada, like many other countries do already.