alt Hacker NewsI think it's worse than that. Even what people think of as a "legit business" like Amazon and Walmart are scamming a significant percentage of their customers.
Selling people mountains of cheap garbage that will break almost immediately is not much different than theft to me. But it's a scam that benefits enough other people like the shipping industry than nobody will rock the boat.
The economy in general is trending more into figuring out how to siphon wealth from people without money into the pockets of people who already have everything. Poor people are actually pretty profitable because they have little choice in spending.
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> The economy in general is trending more into figuring out how to siphon wealth from people without money into the pockets of people who already have everything. Poor people are actually pretty profitable because they have little choice in spending.
There are levels to the game everywhere. One example that I can think of is on the timeshare stuff in Mexico where they exploit retired older people into buying fake ownership of something and end up instead just owning a huge debt.
It’s like the world has entered an era of abundance where the game is no longer about value but rather perception of value and ways to pressure your psychological makings.
I don't consider selling cheap junk as a scam. To me its more an indicator of what consumers want and are willing to pay for.
If we wanted better quality stuff and weren't willing to buy cheap crap they would stop selling it or they'd go out of business.
These businesses haven't shifted from selling high quality products to junk quietly and without lowering prices. We all know the quality, how is that a scam?
Unfortunately that is the same mentality that drives offshoring and such.
Most people are fully aware of it, hence why cheap 1 euro shops (nowadays a bit more than that however) are so prevalent across the globe, or buying counterfeit goods at street bazaars.
Most will rather buy something five times, than one good enough that will last.
I wouldn’t consider that a scam so much as the inevitable result of brand reputation being diluted into nothing. Intermingling is part of the problem, but the real scam is every single Reddit-brand-check for BIFL is always “20 years ago this was a top-tier brand, now it’s garbage. Check craigslist/ebay”
Which is probably a direct result of things like consumer reports going down the gutter.
With the massive expansion of information available today, reputation should be utterly paramount to sort out the chaff and somehow it’s instead become entirely meaningless
Amazon is explicitly auctioning off (and not even second-price auction) search spots. So if you search for something you don't get shown what you search for but something that Amazon extracts the maximum amount of money from.