Also, TVs went from dumb to smart, so empirically,
sufficient buyers voted for smart even when they
had an option for dumb
This is one of those areas where consumerism/capitalism trips over itself and leads to sub-optimal outcomes.
The implicit assumption here is that this must be what consumers want, because it's what they "voted" for.
But voting (whether democratic elections, or just free-market consumer spending choices) only leads to optimal outcomes when the "voters" are sufficently knowledgeable in terms of both general domain knowledge and the choices themselves.
For all but the simplest choices (say, a choice between a bucket with a hole in the bottom and a bucket without a hole in the bottom) this is difficult.
There's no reasonable way for consumers to know how shitty the inbuilt OS/apps of a "smart TV" will become over time, or what onerous software updates the manufacturer will pump out, etc. A lot of this stuff is difficult or impossible to know even for savvy, educated people looking for a TV.
I wonder what sort of reaction you have when a successful, legally approved medicine turns out to cause death or injury in the long run, or merely proves to be ineffective. Or when a specific model of car develops problems after a couple of years.
Do you say, "well... this is clearly what consumers voted for?"
> There's no reasonable way for consumers to know how shitty the inbuilt OS/apps of a "smart TV" will become over time, or what onerous software updates the manufacturer will pump out, etc. A lot of this stuff is difficult or impossible to know even for savvy, educated people looking for a TV.
Maybe, but it has been a decade since smart TVs became prevalent, and I would bet everything I have that if you put a dumb TV for sale next to a smart TV in Costco, no matter how shitty the software on the smart TV is, the smart TV will be chosen enough times that the dumb TV maker goes out of business.
This is not about what should the consumer do. This is about what the consumer will do. And they will choose to pay $30 less in exchange for giving all their viewing data to the TV manufacturer. Try to educate them otherwise, I doubt it will be successful.
There is also more data out there than ever before in history about TVs, but I doubt most people would ever care enough to read in depth reviews on rtings or whatever.
Right. Capitalism often leads to suboptimal outcomes (everybody owns a TV somewhere between "mildly annoying" and "downright terrible") because there's no reasonable way to know better, so consumers choose based on the one thing everybody understands: price.
There is also more data out there than ever
before in history about TVs, but I doubt most
people would ever care enough to read in depth
reviews on rtings or whatever.
You can read all of the reviews you like, but the conclusion is the same: you effectively cannot buy a non-smart TV now.
There's also the larger issue of whether it's reasonable for consumers to do so. Educated, informed consumers are always the goal, but at some point this is not reasonable.
1. Consumers can't be experts on everything. Cars, prescription eyeglasses, medicine, home repairs, computers, shoes - there are simply not enough hours in one's life to become a domain expert at everything.
2. A lot of people are, frankly, not the brightest. As the saying goes, half of the people in the world are below average. I don't mean this insultingly, in fact: quite the opposite. Human beings are human beings. We are all worthy of dignity and respect. But being an uber-savvy consumer is less practical for some.
Akerlof's paper shows how prices can determine the quality of goods traded on the market. Low prices drive away sellers of high-quality goods, leaving only lemons behind. In 2001, Akerlof, along with Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz, jointly received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, for their research on issues related to asymmetric information.
> There's no reasonable way for consumers to know how shitty the inbuilt OS/apps of a "smart TV" will become over time, or what onerous software updates the manufacturer will pump out, etc. A lot of this stuff is difficult or impossible to know even for savvy, educated people looking for a TV.
You read a few TV reviews, see that LG OLEDs have been the best choice for many years. Hard to get this wrong.
The implicit assumption here is that this must be what consumers want, because it's what they "voted" for.
But voting (whether democratic elections, or just free-market consumer spending choices) only leads to optimal outcomes when the "voters" are sufficently knowledgeable in terms of both general domain knowledge and the choices themselves.
For all but the simplest choices (say, a choice between a bucket with a hole in the bottom and a bucket without a hole in the bottom) this is difficult.
There's no reasonable way for consumers to know how shitty the inbuilt OS/apps of a "smart TV" will become over time, or what onerous software updates the manufacturer will pump out, etc. A lot of this stuff is difficult or impossible to know even for savvy, educated people looking for a TV.
I wonder what sort of reaction you have when a successful, legally approved medicine turns out to cause death or injury in the long run, or merely proves to be ineffective. Or when a specific model of car develops problems after a couple of years.
Do you say, "well... this is clearly what consumers voted for?"