Remember my rant on HF

"Josh Welton" (watchtheprettylight)
08/30/2013 at 14:58 • Filed to: Failopnik, welding, philosophy, brown dog welding

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Harbor Freight FTL

DISCUSSION (13)

HammerheadFistpunch > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 15:02

dayum! Good thing was smart enough to use good towing chain and hooks. I know reese isn't anything special, but thats the cheapest I'll go when I put tow gear on my car, Can't afford stuff like this.

Dusty Ventures > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 15:04

Perfect timing, I'm supposed to hook up to the race trailer tonight...

dinobot666 > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 15:06

The JPG compression artifacts on that image make it appear as though it was converted to a .gif, then back to a .jpg, then a .gif then somehow back to a .jpg again.

Josh Welton > dinobot666
08/30/2013 at 15:21

No idea. There's a better pic on the page I linked to. I saved it to iphoto from FB then uploaded it here. Maybe I'll just use the FB page as the source.

Josh Welton > dinobot666
08/30/2013 at 15:22

Or not...the original post is pretty shitty too.

GhostZ > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 15:26

Here's some economic advice you might find interesting:

It's actually the reverse scenario. Advances in technology have made skill, knowledge, and ability obsolete.

This makes jobs that require high education exclusive and highly desirable, and jobs that do not need high education almost unnecessary. That's the origin of the current college-degree bubble. Such technology, like the internet, means building basic skills is a matter of a few minutes and a good connection.

This has made on-the-job training more and more desirable because educational training has become more and more inefficient during this bubble. Internships are the way into a business more than anything now, not just degrees.

In other words, knowledge has become cheap. Skill has become cheap. The individual who does not take advantage of those two things is the individual who does not succeed.

What you are seeing is not people being too cheap to hire "good" work, you're seeing people who spent (foolishly) time and money, even their entire life, to learning something when now it's virtually free to obtain the same knowledge. There people are way past the optimal amount of knowledge for their field. They have not adapted, they have not improved, and while they have what at one time was extremely valuable, they have invested poorly. It's a shame and sad that they did that, but just like how steam engine manufacturers went bankrupt when Henry Ford came around, if you spend your entire life doing something and feel happy about it, eventually you might wake up and realize how quickly your wealth is diminishing.

People have always been cheap. They just have far more information now to make an effective job of it now, so that skilled autobody craftsman is still valuable, but not nearly as much as he thinks he is.

deekster_caddy > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 15:28

Ooohhh how cheap shoddy towing hardware scares me. Good thing the chains worked.

Josh Welton > GhostZ
08/30/2013 at 15:37

Riiiiight......No, what you're seeing is people obtaining a little bit of knowledge, knowledge that is now more readily available than ever, and thinking that makes them a qualified expert. A little bit of knowledge is often more dangerous than no knowledge at all.

Skill isn't a product of a how to book or YouTube video. I do love the business from the guys that think it is though; it costs more to fix it the second time than if they would have paid a qualified professional the first time around.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 16:14

There are some things that you don't buy cheap. Tires and hitch components are just a couple that come to mind.

That is something to think about as I'm towing our 7,000 pound camper this evening. At least the hitch is a pretty solid piece of work on that.

GhostZ > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 16:25

I'm saying that getting a degree or doing job for five years doesn't guarantee you being a qualified expert, and isn't worth the money to find out. And even if it did, the cost of being "Qualified" is absurdly high compared to how little it's actually worth to a business.

Would you be willing to pay three times (or four times) as much for the same tool that has a slightly smaller chance of breaking? If so, then don't buy Harbor Freight. You want a tool that can do the job but not break, for the same price? Expect to have to go out of your way to find it, assuming its even possible to create. If its not possible, you won't find it. Want a tool that is a little more expensive, and "just good enough"? Let's hope its worth making for your own very special situation so you don't have to spend any more than necessary and you can have your cake and eat it too. Otherwise, get the one that's closest to your demands.

Prices aren't determined by supply and demand, that's kiddy-1789 economics that Gregory Mankiw teaches to undergraduates who have no idea what they're talking about. Prices are determined by energy. The energy cost of creating the product and the energy cost of buying it. It takes a certain amount of effort on your part to decide which product to buy. "price" is only the dollar amount, physical movement (how far are you willing to travel) time (how long will you wait?) knowledge (how much do you know about the competitors) risk (are you willing to take risk buying this product) all determine the price you're willing to pay. Making that price meet the cost of the manufacturing for the product is the point of pricing.

In the case of "shitty tools", the drop in price corresponds to an increase in risk. They sell more because people have a higher reserve price for their money, and less for risk. That's because, unlike 50 years ago, information (which drastically reduces risk) was a lot more expensive.

Suddenly, master craftsmen are no longer necessary. This drops the cost of manufacturing almost anything way down. The guy at McDonald's who takes your order is there because the overall energy cost of hiring him is almost exactly the difference in value that people place on human interaction vs a machine you use to order it for you.

Worried about Chinese steel? Go make sure everything you buy is "quality" US steel. Don't make enough money to do that? Then you haven't been working hard enough, learning enough, or doing enough to be worth the effort of other companies to cater to you, when all of those other people are using their resources to learn everything they can about what they are doing.

And if you buy quality US steel and it breaks, it's your fault for not doing research into just what goes into your "US" steel.

The economy is just the word we use to describe a billion people all trying to get what they want. If you think that the "economy" is against your favor, that means you're some of the % that isn't getting what they want, because another % has taken advantage of you. It's not pretty, it's not clean, and it's not happy, but that's how it works.

NaturallyAspirated > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 16:35

When it comes to tools, I try to buy Craftsman or better. I have a large set of Inch tools from Snap-On that I bought when I was an A&P mechanic. Working on cars, I needed a set of metric tools and I was in a hurry, so I bought a HF metric combo wrench set.

One of the poorly made box wrenches stripped the head off one of the camshaft cap bolts when I was changing the head gaskets on my Subaru. It cost me about 2 hours, fortunately all the parts I ruined were parts I was going to replace anyway.

The next day I ordered a full set of Williams metric wrenches and sockets. No way am I putting up with that garbage. I should have done that in the first place.

My mom lives across town from me, so I visit fairly regularly. I noticed she was going through $20 Mr Coffee coffee makers on a frequent basis. It turns out she couldn't justify spending any more than that on a coffee maker even though they only lasted a year at best.

I bought her a Zojirushi Zutto coffee maker from Japan for about $60. That was 3 years ago, and it still works just as well now as it did when it was brand new. It makes much better coffee than the Mr Coffee, too.

So I'm with you more or less. I very rarely buy the "best" of something, but I'm all about buying as close to the peak of the price/performance curve as I can afford.

Josh Welton > GhostZ
08/30/2013 at 17:05

I've read over your responses a few times, and I'm not really sure how to respond. You've gone down so many rabbit holes that I'm not sure which ones to follow.

I will say this: I completely disagree with your first statement. Skill, knowledge, and ability are as desirable as ever. Nothing advances in a vacuum.

GhostZ > Josh Welton
08/30/2013 at 17:19

I'll agree that skill, knowledge, and ability are desirable, but that it's not necessary human ability. And that skill, knowledge, and ability are all relative to what you can do with your resources. The standards to "stand out" are incredibly high because of how easy it is for people to be decent or mediocre at a particular job.