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this is one view that trying to start a company drilled into me. the rationality of starting a company at all is predicated on there being $100 bills lying around

many quality signals are not available from jpegs: texture, heft, quality of paint finish, quality of label printing, mould flashing, exact choice of materials; things that you unconsciously and quickly size up when you have the object in hand

(a) this is fraud (b) how would this be detected from an online product page? (c) how would this be detected in a physical store? (b) is difficult and readily gameable. (c) is comparatively easy, can only be faked with genuine signals of quality

another true story: I bought a bulk pack of [name brand] floss from amazon. the package arrived and it was a bundle of loose packages wrapped in saran wrap. the printing on the packages was shitty and they were hard to open, the floss inside was made with shitty crumbly paraffin and didn't work

if everything I wanted to know about a product was printed on a product page and was trustworthy, I would buy different things, and therefore different things would be available information asymmetry is a real problem that exists, and degrades market signals, thereby reducing market efficiency

(a) the transition to online purchasing (b) you cannot always tell everything you need to know about a product from a jpeg and a price listing to accurately enact your preferences at least some preferences are discovered (eg) only once you have physical access to the object

the point: "value provided to the customer" can be wildly out of equilibrium for significant stretches of time due to degraded information at the point of sale; the market will not correct until that channel is improved

Then at some point in the early 2000s standardized tests for toilet flushing capability were developed, and manufacturers began to publish this on toilets. Suddenly every toilet became functional again, once consumers could see whether their toilet would work before they bought it

Example: after toilet water use regulations went into effect, there was a period in the late 1990s where basically every toilet you could buy didn't work, and would clog with the slightest amount of solids. Toilet paper had to be babied down with multiple flushes. My house had such a toilet

tbc I am happy with the increased convenience and consumer options of online shopping, these are unequivocally improved. but I would claim that the quality signal to the market has been degraded

I also use that, but it isn't fully reliable. also sometimes all the options have >3% one star

is the claim that customers always _do_ have information on quality when making online buying choices? how do you personally tell quality from an online product page when you don't know the brands in the space?

I tend to aggressively return things that are shit, but my eyes were kind of opened by talking to other people who are unhappy but don't want to make waves by returning or leaving a bad review. Imv such people are getting taken advantage of

KINPTHY endoscope camera? Absolute shit, basically fraud. TESLONG camera? great product, works excellently. how do I know? there was no way to tell without buying and returning them [true story]

shoes are a good example of a product I have "solved", for the exact reason that there are reliable well known brands. the (significant) problem is in the margins

if you wanted a patio chair, or an outdoor doormat, or a set of automotive trim clips, or an endoscope camera, where would you look?

there are a lot of random items I need that do not have name brand options, and (at least on amazon) I'm left picking between several alphabet soup brands and some dubious star ratings

for this particular problem, I blame information asymmetry. price is very visible in an online product page, but quality is not. personally I would pay more to get higher quality products instead of getting bait-and-switched all the time with counterfeit products, but it's not clear how

(that is his only value in the public sphere, I would argue)

Bryan Johnson