Off Topic: Decline in Pride & Craftsmanship in the 21st Century

[phoenix]

Hi electricrelish,

Maybe I’m looking at the past with rose colored glasses, but I don’t remember ever having to worry so much about purchasing a mattress. Perhaps, I just got lucky, but I have a 15-year old innerspring double-sided Lennox mattress from the Dilworth Mattress Factory that I have never thought about replacing once,. I did no research. I laid on it in the store, liked it, and purchased it. Today, it seems like purchasing a mattress is more complicated than ever, and the majority of the major brand mattresses are actually engineered to fail more rapidly by design. Spending more money does not necessarily correlate with higher quality or extended life. As a result, the consumer must be more knowledgeable than ever, which is why The Mattress Underground (TMU) is such a wonderful resource.

I completely agree that there have been many changes in the industry in the last 15 - 20 years and that IMO as well, many if not most of them are for the worse (see post #3 here and post #3 here along with post #12 here and post #404 here among others on the forum that have discussed this).

I also agree with you that while the mattress industry may have some of its own unique reasons for some of the lower quality products that are so common now … that it’s also a significant issue in many other industries.

A serious and meaningful discussion about all the reasons for this would be a good candidate for a forum of it’s own and is a huge topic in and of itself.

While it’s only touching the surface or a much larger topic … I think that some of the reasons are closely connected to the reasons behind the decline of privately owned entrepreneurial businesses in general and the rise of larger or multinational businesses that are focused more on “financial manipulations” as a source of profit to shareholders which has often replaced their longer term reputation for the quality of their products as a primary measure of success and where marketing and advertising based on “what can you do for me now” has led to consumers “forgetting” their experience from even a few years previously.

Of course the regulatory environment that small and medium businesses can thrive in has also changed dramatically and government involvement with the market and business and the free market system along with corporate “influence” with government that is meant more to increase market share and profits has replaced legitimate and well thought out regulations with a legitimate “agenda” that are meant to encourage entrepreneurial effort rather than stifle it.

The rise of the internet has also been a two edged sword which has made huge amounts of information available to consumers but much of this information is trivial or meaningless and just “stories” meant to influence buying choices rather than information that can lead to more informed choices. Trying to sort the wheat from the chaff has become increasingly difficult.

Consumers themselves also need to take on a big part of the responsibility for change and “as a whole” seem to have lost some of their willingness to take the time to do meaningful research and replaced good research with reading reviews that only describe days or weeks of experience rather than take into account years of accumulated knowledge and experience and are often more focused on emotional considerations than factual information.

I have also noticed a greatly increased willingness on the part of people in general to believe anything that is repeated enough times (often only two or three) and quantitative information has replaced qualitative information in many areas. I also believe that this reduction of critical thinking and discernment is evident in many areas of life outside of just industry and the consumer market and the purchase of products and is part of why some types of advertising and “sound bytes” that are “served on a platter” for consumption have become so effective both in industry advertising as well as in the news conglomerates that no longer take the time to do legitimate in depth reporting and are more concerned with their ratings than the accuracy or depth of what they produce. They all know that no matter what they say or sell now it will be forgotten by the majority of people in just a few years (or often less) so they won’t need to be accountable for what they say or produce once consumers have “forgotten” it and it has been replaced by the newest “story”.

I could go on for many pages but again this is really outside the scope of a mattress forum and would take far more time than I have to even do justice to all my own thoughts and opinions much less everyone else’s thoughts and opinions that would be part of all of this as well.

Are there other sources of information to help consumers make other similar high purchase items such as furniture (i.e.) couches and chairs? If so, I’d like to know.

There are a few furniture forums listed in post #2 here.

I have also come across some very good forums about computers including one that I have spent considerable time on here.

There are even some surprisingly large and busy forums about more “niche” topics such as the hammock forum here or the bed bug forum here.

Of course there are many more but it’s probably time for me to climb down off of my soapbox

Phoenix