The main problem is missing from your model here--
It's impossible for a consumer to asses the "quality" of an item at the time of purchase. We infer quality from reputation, price, and warranty, but there's no direct measure of it available. There's barely even a definition of quality. Even if we ignore the metaphysical aspects of quality, we are left with messy problem.
Price correlates to quality only in as much as the least expensive thing is most likely to be the worse thing, but imagine if we used price as our only measure of quality? The strategy people would arrive at is to charge the most for the least-- which is pretty much where we are now already.
This incentivizes products that work great for a little bit-- which is again exactly where we are now.
My point is only that we've arrived at a crappy capitalism stalemate. I'd love to make high quality products for high quality people, but, that market isn't out there due to... human nature.
It's impossible for a consumer to asses the "quality" of an item at the time of purchase. We infer quality from reputation, price, and warranty, but there's no direct measure of it available. There's barely even a definition of quality. Even if we ignore the metaphysical aspects of quality, we are left with messy problem.
Price correlates to quality only in as much as the least expensive thing is most likely to be the worse thing, but imagine if we used price as our only measure of quality? The strategy people would arrive at is to charge the most for the least-- which is pretty much where we are now already.
This incentivizes products that work great for a little bit-- which is again exactly where we are now.
My point is only that we've arrived at a crappy capitalism stalemate. I'd love to make high quality products for high quality people, but, that market isn't out there due to... human nature.