alt Hacker NewsI don't think the fundamental premise is much of an issue - it's what a (mostly) free market is meant to do. Someone sells a chair for $100, someone else believes they can sell it for $80, so they do. There are two main complicating factors (outside of brand reputation and possibly some others?)
1) quality - someone accepts the $80 chair which is a little bit more wonky
2) the $100 company spent a few years developing the technology to steam and bend timber to make the chair so they're marking up based on R&D and ip. The $80 chair company just copied the other tech
There is absolutely a lot of profiteering (charge what we can, not what we need to) happening, but honestly I believe that happens everywhere, including China (trivial case - wild price swings on aliexpress - they're maximising profits).
Replies
> There is absolutely a lot of profiteering (charge what we can, not what we need to) happening
I think that profiteering is the default behavior for companies. Maybe not all companies behave this way, or maybe in the past it wasn't the default behavior, but I'm very confident it is now
In the digital world quality is a post purchase signal and the ability for consumers to communicate about quality has basically been destroyed by allowing paid counterparts by businesses to drown out the signal