> you notice the wave is growing and about to flood everything around you, but there's fuck all you can do about it.
In terms of online shopping, if the distributor cooperates with the consumer then there is something to do about it.
One of the largest Swiss online shop started to share warranty statistics of all products. That information is quite useful to avoid the cheap and soon to break stuff. Of course it's not perfect, since it only tracks faults within the 2 year warranty period. But it provides a proxy signal for quality. But maybe that only works in smaller markets with less incentives to game the statistics.
In terms of online shopping, if the distributor cooperates with the consumer then there is something to do about it. One of the largest Swiss online shop started to share warranty statistics of all products. That information is quite useful to avoid the cheap and soon to break stuff. Of course it's not perfect, since it only tracks faults within the 2 year warranty period. But it provides a proxy signal for quality. But maybe that only works in smaller markets with less incentives to game the statistics.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34536344