Transcription
We've all noticed the same thing, right? That everything around us is becoming increasingly shittier. Like, I'm talking specifically about the physical items that we buy and own. It seems like, over the last number of years, the quality of everything has just become absolute garbage. Let me show you what I [Music] mean.
So, these right here are a pair of Levi's jeans that I've had since high school. Now, admittedly, I haven't worn them in many years, just because they're blue and I've come to prefer black pants more recently. But these were my everyday jeans for more than 5 years. Like, from the time that I was 15 or 16 till I was about 22, I wore these things every single day. That's thousands of wears. They've been through the washer and the dryer hundreds of times. And though they're definitely a lighter shade of blue than they were when I first bought them, they're otherwise in like, perfect condition. There are no rips, there are no tears. Theoretically, I could keep wearing these for probably still another few years at least. I'm pretty sure they still fit me too.
But when I decided that I wanted a pair of black jeans, I did what made the most sense to me at the time, which was to get basically the exact same pair in black. These, these are a pair of black Levi's skinny jeans, or at least they used to be black. They're the same brand, they're the same style, they're the same size, same everything. But after wearing these for only about a year and a half, a big hole developed in the back area of the crotch, bum, thigh area. And I tried to have this fixed, but the fabric around it is so thin that it couldn't be stitched or patched because it just continued to unravel.
Even worse, now the reason I had opted to go with Levi's was because, in my experience, they were comfortable, they fit me well, they were durable, and most importantly, they were affordable. Each of these pairs of pants cost me around $50, which sounds pretty reasonable, right? But in retrospect, it actually makes no sense at all. Because I bought these ones in probably 2007 or maybe 2008, but I got these around 2017 or 2018. That's a difference of 10 years. And in that period of time, the cost of goods and the cost of manufacturing had to have increased pretty significantly, right? So how is it possible that the price stayed the same?
To understand this, we have to talk about consumer behavior. Like, we all know that inflation exists and that it causes the cost of everything to gradually increase over time. But when it comes to our shopping habits and the purchases we make, we don't actually like to acknowledge that at all. So if you bought a pair of Levi's jeans for $50 and then years later went to replace them and found that those same jeans now cost $100 or maybe even $150, you wouldn't be okay with that. Because your expectation is that Levi's jeans cost around $50. And Levi's knows this. So in order to keep their prices low and in line with customers' expectations, they have to start cutting corners.
This could be in the type and the quality of fabrics they use, opting for things like polyester or viscose instead of cotton. Or it could be in the craftsmanship of the manufacturing, or really, the lack thereof, by reducing their quality control measures and insisting that workers produce more pieces faster and for less pay, which leads to garments being cut and sewn poorly, so they don't fit well and don't last long. Usually, it's a little bit of A and a little bit of B. And of course, this is not at all unique to just Levi's. It's happening everywhere.
For years, I shopped almost exclusively at The Gap for things like sweaters and t-shirts and other basics. And I did so specifically because the quality was excellent. I could wash and wear these pieces over and over again for years, and they never wore out. But then, at some point in the last 10 years or so, I started to notice that every time I bought a piece from The Gap, it would fit great when I first bought it, and after wearing it only one or two times and then washing it, it would be all stretched out of shape and shrunken in weird ways. It would get shorter and wider, and it didn't fit anymore. And after experiencing this maybe five or 10 times, I just stopped shopping there altogether because the clothing had quite literally become single-use, and it was an absolute waste of money.
But the thing is that the prices had stayed fairly consistent over the entire time that I had been shopping there, which had been years. And in retrospect, that kind of explains it all, doesn't it? The longer we go expecting things to be cheap, the lower quality everything has to become in order to meet those expectations, until all we have left are things like Forever 21 and Shein and H&M and Temu and all of these other retailers selling us this hot pile of garbage that we've come to call fast fashion.
So, yeah, all that is to say that buying cheap, mass-produced clothing is probably not the best strategy to save money. But you know what is? Paying less for your insurance. Because insurance is one of those things that we all have to pay for, but for being honest, we don't really want to pay for. And so it really just doesn't make sense to pay more than you have to. I think a lot of the time, we just convince ourselves that it's really complicated or a huge hassle to find a better rate and switch providers, but it's not at all. Thanks to this video sponsor, Insurify. Insurify is a totally free-to-use platform that finds you the best possible deal and can even cut your rates in half in just a few minutes. Essentially, they make insurance companies compete against each other and bid for your business, so you get the best deal possible. All you have to do is answer a few quick questions about yourself and what type of insurance you need, and Insurify will show you how you can save a ton of money while maintaining the same coverage you already have, or maybe getting even better coverage than you currently have. True story. But I switched both my home and car insurance last year after being with the same company for years, and it saved me over $1,000. That's like $1,000 of found money. Insurify is totally free to use and saves you money, so there's really no downside. Just click the link below and stop overpaying for your insurance. And thank you to Insurify for sponsoring this video.
So, this is all happening because of something called consumer engineering, and it's nothing new. It started nearly 100 years ago. Essentially, if they can convince the masses that whatever they have is out of fashion, then people will continue to buy more and more new things. The problem is that this becomes a cycle. Because the more things we buy, the less we're typically willing to pay for them. And the less we're willing to pay for them, the lower quality they're going to become in order to meet that expectation. And the cheaper and more plentiful things are, the less inclined we are to even care if it's good quality or if it's going to last. So we expect a t-shirt to cost no more than $15, and we don't care if it's going to fall apart in 6 months because it was only $15, and more than likely, we'll have replaced it long before then with something new, a different brand, a different style, a different color, whatever.
This happens with microtrends and clothing for sure, but it also happens with a lot of other things. How often do we see people getting rid of perfectly good things so that they can redecorate or refurnish their homes to keep up with the newest design trends? Or how about when people buy a brand new $60 water bottle seemingly every year just so they have whatever one is the most popular on social media at that time, even though they probably already have a perfectly good one at home? With this widespread mindset, brands have no incentive to make good quality products because no one cares.
But of course, this goes much deeper, even still. Clothing is far from the only thing getting shittier. It's everything. Furniture, appliances, housewares, phones and other tech products, even our cars are just not built to last anymore. Even food items are being made with worse ingredients and sold in smaller packages, a tactic which is now being called shrinkflation. This used to be 600 grams, now they're 300 grams for the same price. In order to keep prices unreasonably low, cane sugar gets replaced with high fructose corn syrup, healthy fats get swapped for palm oil, and kids' snacks get dyed with Red #40 instead of fruit juice.
Just a month ago, I had to buy a new washing machine. Actually, I should probably take the plastic off. That wasn't nearly as satisfying as I expected it to be. Anyways, my house was built in 2016, which means that at most, my previous washing machine was 8 years old. I kept the filters clean, I didn't overload it, and I only did one to two loads of laundry per week. But even still, it crapped out. I called a local appliance repair company who told me it would be $200 for them to come out and look at it, and based on what I was describing, the repair that they thought that I needed would be somewhere between $500 and $1,000. When I told the guy that it was an 8-year-old Samsung front loader, he laughed and he was like, "Oh, actually, in that case, don't even bother. 8 years old? That thing's dead. Just get a new one." So I did, and it cost me less than $800, including tax, delivery, and hauling away the old machine.
But how is that even possible? How is it possible that it's cheaper to have a brand new machine delivered than it is to just replace one part on the old machine? Well, by intentionally making products difficult, or maybe even impossible to repair, or by intentionally pricing replacement pieces absurdly high, companies can basically just bully you into buying a new one. But the fact that 8 years old is considered end of life for a washing machine is just crazy to me. Because my mom just replaced hers for the first time 2 years ago, and she's been living in the same house since 1992. The thing was 30 years old. In fact, she has a chest freezer in her basement that is older than I am by a lot.
So what the hell is going on here? A little something you may have heard of called planned obsolescence. Basically, there was a time when things were made of high-quality materials and with expert craftsmanship. People would buy things once and expect that they were built to last. So typically, they were. But over time, companies started to realize that there was a huge flaw in their business model. If people bought their product one time and never had a reason to buy it again, then they would quickly run out of customers and stop making money. But the technological revolution provided a solution to this problem, at least in the short term.
For a while, technology was advancing at such a rapid rate that even having an item that was just 2 or 3 years old meant that you were probably missing out on a whole host of amazing features. When smartphones first became a thing, every new generation that was released came with major improvements and a whole host of practical new features: better screens, longer-lasting batteries, massively improved cameras, video calling, turn-by-turn GPS navigation, virtual credit card wallets, Bluetooth tracking to find lost devices. Computers became faster and way more compact. TVs became sharper. Home appliances became more aesthetically pleasing and more energy efficient. Cars became faster and sportier, and for some reason had TVs mounted into the dashboard because we all decided that was safe. But they had backup cams and heated seats and Bluetooth connectivity, all sorts of things that were genuinely useful and made people want to upgrade or risk FOMO. Sounds just like fast fashion, right?
Well, with this, business was booming. Companies were raking in cash, and customers were happy to be constantly buying and enjoying new things. But then we hit a wall. Our phones had every feature we could ever want them to have. Computers were faster than we even needed them to be. TVs were plenty sharp. Appliances were sleek and sexy and energy efficient. And our cars had every luxury we could ever dream of. What more could we possibly want? Or more importantly, what more could companies possibly offer us to entice us to keep upgrading? There's really nothing we're missing.
So now, companies can really only offer tiny, marginal improvements year after year, most of which are completely unimpressive to the public, and some of which are flat-out stupid, like integrating Bluetooth into a $400 toothbrush. Oh, look, it used to be $500, it's on sale for $400. What a bargain. And yes, I know that I have mocked this product before. I'll probably do it again. First of all, I just kind of think it's funny, but I think that it perfectly encapsulates where we're currently at as a society: taking this perfectly good, inexpensive, utilitarian item and cramming it with all of this unnecessary technology that no one even asked for, just so they can convince you to buy something new and expensive. I can't believe that this thing has like a thousand reviews on Amazon. A thousand people that not only paid $500 for a toothbrush but are willing to publicly admit that they paid $500 for a toothbrush. Oh man.
Anyways, as I was saying, we basically hit a wall because technological advancements slowed down dramatically. Practical improvements were almost non-existent, and most people didn't really have a reason to upgrade a perfectly good product because there was no difference between one generation and the next. So once again, companies found themselves with the same problem that they had years prior. Customers had no reason to keep replacing their products. So planned obsolescence became an obvious solution to this problem. By making items shittier and faster to break and cost-prohibitive, or maybe even impossible to repair, cha-ching, they're back in business, baby.
And so now we have clothing that barely lasts a season, expensive home appliances that die after just a few years, phones that cost $1,000 but slow down and stop holding a charge after 24 to maybe 36 months, and cars that barely make it to 100,000 miles. This is our new normal. And as we adjust to it and come to accept it, it's only going to get worse. And what I think is the worst part of all of this is that with technological advancement, things should be going in the opposite direction. Like, I can only assume that we have the resources and the engineering capabilities to make things better than ever before, to make things more efficient, more durable, longer-lasting, and generally better. But it's just not profitable for companies to do so. So it's never going to happen. And that's capitalism. I want you to thank capitalism for that, because that's how it happened. The free market was never meant to serve you. It was designed from the get-go for you to serve it, for all of us to become wage slaves who exist solely for the purpose of consistently increasing corporate profits by any means necessary, and then being forced to spend whatever measly dollars we earn buying things whether or not we actually want to or even need to. And the result of this is what I've started calling the "shittification" of everything, because well, everything's going to so you better grab a paddle. Actually, make that two, because one's probably going to break.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video. It's one that I've been wanting to make for a really long time now. So definitely leave me a comment down below because I'm really interested in hearing what you think about this topic. By the way, huge thank you for 100,000 subscribers. That is absolutely crazy. It feels like not that long ago, literally, it was a few years ago, that I was wondering if I was ever going to get to 1,000 subscribers. So the fact that I'm at 100,000, I truly never thought I'd get here. So thank you guys very much. I am going to be doing, by the way, a 100,000 subscriber Q&A. So if there's anything you want to ask me, a Q&A, an AMA, whatever, drop your comment down below and ask me whatever you want about money, minimalism, Levi life, whatever you want. Drop your comments down below. I'll be getting that video out to you guys in the next little while. Other than that, like, subscribe, all that good stuff. Follow me on Instagram. Thank you guys so much as always for watching. Take care. I'll see you next time. Yep, they still fit.