alt Hacker NewsI feel like there's a false dichotomy here where there's an inverse relationship between quality and cost. I know seen plenty of cheap goods that do what they're supposed to and last forever, and I know plenty of expensive projects, both in purchasing price and development cost that are just steaming piles. So you get all this sloppy jank and say "well but at least it's fast and cheap". I'm not sure that's the argument you should be making, why can't we have high quality cheap things in the first place?
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The overall trend is that things are getting much more expensive while the quality is declining. It's inevitable when companies insist on endlessly increasing profits.
Even the things that are "good enough" and cheap tend to come with massive hidden costs. For example, good looking clothing can be inexpensive enough for a person to wear everything once and throw it away, but behind the scenes there are child slaves, microplastics/PFAS contamination, and a textile waste crisis.
Agreed. "Quality" is a shortcut word to mean an aspect of a product/service that many/most think desirable.
There are examples of seemingly contradictory high/low cost, high/low durability, high/low reliability, high/low status symbol, etc. and seemingly every combination.
Cars are a great example:
* Reliable cars can also be cheap.
* High status symbol cars can be incredibly expensive but also unreliable.
* Expensive cars can be dangerous.
* etc.