The aguments about American “culture” (McDonalds fast food, music, etc.) displacing native cultures, made me think that perhaps the real question is:do mass-market products/services displace local products and services? Take the case of France: the French feel that their culture of good local food (bistro restaurants) is threatened by american fast food chains. These chains have the advantage of being economically efficient, but deliver low-quality food. Yet, their convenience and cheapness allow them to drive the bistros out of business. The same goes for ntertainment-the French movie industry maes high-quality films-but expensive. Hollywood churns out mass-market crap-and because it is so cheap, it displaces the locally made product.
So, is this a fact of life? Will cheap always win over costly (high quality)? Is this “Gresham’s Law” at work?
What is your definition of “quality”?
The short answer is no. In a properly functioning market, if it is dominated by low-priced, low quality goods, all that means is that the majority of the buyers prefer trading off quality for low prices. But a market still exists for the high priced stuff as well, and it’s available in direct proportion to how many people want to buy it. Wal-Mart may own a big chunk of the market, but Holt Renfrew and Abercrombie and Fitch still find their niche.
Likewise, there may be a plethora of fast food restaurants, but if you want a $50 steak you can find one in all but the smallest of towns. So the market simply reflects the desires of the people. The ‘fears’ of the hoi-polloi are nothing more than snobbishness and derision aimed at those who have less money and less discrimination. You hear the same thing from old-time air travelers - they talk wistfully about the old days of air travel when it was very genteel and you didn’t have to listen to screaming babies and get jammed into tiny seats. But of course, it was much more expensive then and the poor simply couldn’t afford it. Now they can, so the market adjusts to accomodate them.
All that said, there is a class of market that actually does prevent quality goods from being available: The “Lemon Market”, which exists when there is an asymmetry of information between producers and sellers. The used car market is typically used as an example of a lemon market, but others have pointed to health insurance as another example. Basically, when you can’t know the real quality of the product you are buying, you won’t pay high-quality prices. That means high-quality products can’t get the price they need, and they leave the market. This causes the average quality to go down further, which reduces the price peoople are willing to pay even more, which drives the next-best products out, etc. Eventually, you’re left with a market of nothing but shoddy products at low prices.
We don’t have lemon markets in most goods because we don’t have an asymmetry of information. The markets have evolved in a way that makes the true quality of the product transparent to the users, or quality is filtered through an intermediary, or the product has an intrinsically visible level of quality.
Yes, as well it should.
“High quality” (by which we mean low production volumes created by special craftsmen and artisans) products, whether they are cars, restaurants, or home furniture are time consuming and expensive to make. Mass production allows goods to be made so affordably that mostly everyone has access to them. The reason we enjoy such a high standard of living in the US is that most goods are mass produced.
Another way to think of it is everyone wouldn’t be able to eat out if every restaurant was Nobu.
Another advantage of mass production is that you geta consistent product. Your IKEA chair will be the same no matter where you buy it.
Movies are a bad example. American movies are more popular because they ARE a high quality product, at least in terms of production values. They are also designed for mass appeal. The French film industry is largely a niche business that appeals to a small audience.
Also, France is full of pretentious assholes.
Who told you Hollywood movies were cheap? He was lying to you, big-time.
This is so bizarre; it’s like saying low-cost Jaguars are driving Hyundai out of business. The Americans make the most expensive movies in the world.
In what alternate universe are American movies CHEAP? And, for that matter, in what alternate universe do the Americans not make a lot of great movies?
It seems like such arguments imply that “American culture” always equals “cheap”, and that everything from Europe always equals “high quality”.
What about the growing range of ethnic restaurants and cuisine in the United States? Does the plethora of new restaurants serving northern Italian, Mexican, Thai, Indian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, and other ethnic cuisines drive out meat-and-three diners and lunch counters? Why aren’t the tens of thousands of lookalike, tastealike “Happy Panda Dragon Jade Golden Wok Lucky Gardens” Chinese carryout joints that are proliferating every nook and cranny of the US ever cited in arguments but displacing local culture, or even displacing other regional Chinese cuisines from the dining scene? How many old-school Cantonese-style restaurants are still around outside of very large cities?
Wait … I forgot. In the US, it’s called “diversity”, and is generally considered to be a good thing; an integral part of the melting pot or mosaic that comprises the spirit of American culture. In other cultures, it’s considered “watering down the local culture”, “cultural imperialism”, and so on. US culture is bland and boring by default; the culture of every other nation and people is exotic, deep and valued.
Well, is the (complaining Frenchman) right when his neighborhood bistro closes down, and gets replaced by a McDonalds? I’d much prefer a lunch of coq au vin, or a croque monseur, to a big mac and fries. The point is: once McDonalds drives out the local restaurant, you don’t have a choice anymore.Likewisw with the "B’ movies-they can be sold and distributed much cheaper than an art house movie.
How about when the neighborhood diner closes down, and gets replaced by Royal Happy Lucky Golden Jade Dragon Panda Tiger Garden Court?
Amercian culture is like the dandelion.
If the dandelion only grew on the west part of the Alps at greater than 10000 feet in altitude, it would be considered a treasure.
The fact that it grow everywhere and anywhere makes it a weed…and not as ‘valued’.
Doesn’t change the dandelion though…still looks the same.
No, it means that more of his neighbors want to spend $5 and get a Big Mac, rather then the coq au vin. No one is forcing the customers to go to McDonalds. They are making their choices. It just happens to be a different one then the complainer.
You can still get a croque monseur in France even though McDonalds has restaurants there. If there is interest in having good food, local restaurants (and choice) will survive.
Restaurants represent one of the most robust business models for the local shop to compete against a worldwide chain. People will always pay extra for good food, they know good food from bad, and have to eat every day to survive. You sell good food, that people in your region want to eat, and you’ll have customers.
As has already been said about movies, you can claim that US movies suck, or are soulless mass-appeal ventures, but they are not “cheap”. Chances are the great French movie cost 1/100th what the US movie cost to make, the same way great independent movies cost next to nothing compared to a stupid summer “blockbuster”.
You have a decent general point, cheap mediocre products often drive more expensive high quality products into a small niche market, but your examples are lacking.
It’s equally true that you didn’t have a choice before the McDonald’s came into the neighborhood. There are people who would rather have a Big Mac & fries than coq au vin (my parents are two of them). Why is their not having a choice and having to eat at the bistro worse than someone who would like to eat at a bistro not having a choice and having to eat at McDonald’s?
But the short answer is always no for a properly functioning market–a properly functioning market will always accurately reflect what consumers want and the whole world becomes happy and pure. The real question is what happens in reality, and I think there are a lot more factors to consider than you pointed out.
A big one is when a low-cost/low-quality firm uses their market share to bully out other firms (by pushing around wholesalers, dropping prices until the competitors fail and then raising them, etc.).
The dynamic here is not just about cost and quality. Often the dynamic is a large national or multinational company versus a local company. The bigger company can leverage various market and non-market factors that having nothing to do with the quality of its products or consumer demand for them (see Wal-Mart).
I think it’s a given. Yes, cheap mediocre products drive out high-quality products.
The average person is no longer willing to pay extra to get very sturdy products. If you can buy it for half the price and it breaks in a few years, do it. Replace it later. I could list anecdotes all day long of high-quality long-lasting products that simply aren’t available anymore because they’ve been driven out by the cheap stuff.
Ditto service. I’m happy to pay a little more to get good service, and sales people in retail stores that know what they’re doing. The average American isn’t, so the stores with good service and knowledgeable staff are slowly (or sometimes not-so-slowly) being destroyed by Wal*Mart et al.
Floppy disk drives, and their media, are my favorite example of a product that started out as expensive and reliable, and over a number of years, declined in price and quality until they were useless junk. The low-cost manufacturers repeatedly drove out the high-cost manufacturers, even if they cut too many corners in reducing costs. If all you knew was today’s product, you would never believe that they had once been a reliable mass storage device.
No, all it means is that low priced, low quality goods make the manufacturers more money, not that people prefer them. The manufacturers aren’t motivated by altruism.
Sometime yes, sometimes no. If the manufacturers collectively decide that it isn’t profitable to make a product, then no market exists. The same goes for low price, high quality products, for that matter.
This happens on occasion when it come to durability; like the original nylons or corningware, the original high quality version is too durable, which makes repeat sales too low to make a profit. So, the original version is discontinued; either without acknowledgement, or with a sales campaign to convince people that the new, lower quality product is superior ( like with “sheer” pantyhose" ).
As an aside, IMHO this is one reason why our present system is doomed, one way or another. It is structured so that wastefulness is mandatory, and that’s simply unsustainable.
The airline market is another good example for those who think cheap trumps quality. I sincerely hope Virgin Atlantic can gain some viable market share here in the States, and I personally would be willing to spring an extra $100 if it means avoiding the kinds of hassles that other airlines give you, along with high-quality service.
I disagree with you on this one. I don’t know about floppy disks (does anyone still use these with their 1.44 mb limit?) but I have a fair bit of experience with recordable DVDs. There is a definite difference in the quality and price available. I consider Taiyo Yuden DVDs to be top of the line and they are a little bit more expensive. They have excellent ratings and feel heavier and sturdier in your hand. As consumers try to retrieve data from DVDs that have failed, they will start to demand quality.
I could list high-quality products that are out there right now.
Jeez, have we not has this discussion a thousand times? They always made things as crappily as they do today; the crappy stuff isn’t around anymore because it’s crappy, so the only things left from the old days are the good ones.
I don’t know what planet people are living on that they think products used to be better. The cars of 40 years ago were absolute shit compared to what you can buy today for an equivalent price. I still remember the toys I had as a kid and they were cheap plastic shit just like today except worse. Restaurants weren’t any better before, and neither were clothes or anything else I can think of. What we’ve got here are a bunch of old people whining about a good old days that never existed.