Advert for Gillette razors

I enjoyed this rant that starts off talking about shaving being too expensive, and ends by giving examples of things that have replaced other things, and are worse.

(FWIW I’ve found that Bulldog razors seem to last a lot longer than other cartridge-based options)

So, does this matter? I assume that for most of the people reading this, the sums of money involved may seem pretty trivial. But I think the changes in the razor market are obviously bad, and reflect similar changes that can be seen in many other markets. We see new products launched which promise minor benefits in convenience, and which crowd out older, cheaper, and better products. Those older products are deliberately marginalised, and more money is captured from consumers without them really gaining any value from their expenditure.

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Tea bags replace loose leaf tea. Allows for lower quality tea to be sold, diminishes the re-use of tea leaves. Also ludicrous product differentiation along the lines of ‘we have a special shaped tea bag’.

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Subscription services like Hello Fresh, where you can pay well over the odds to have some vegetables delivered to you.

Source: John’s blog