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Because the market is not a perfectly efficient discriminator of quality. In a more extreme way, why do homeopathic products exist?

The real question here is whether customer satisfaction is a fully sufficient criterion to determine whether or not something is a "ripoff".

For medical goods the answer is a fairly universal "no". For everything else it's more controversial. Is it correct to shortchange your customers as long as they don't know about it and are happy with their purchase? Are Bose's products actually shortchanging their customers, or is it simply satisfying a different set of priorities?

I don't think we'll ever come to anything resembling consensus on the above.



I think it's satisfying a different set of priorities.

That's a very good way to put it, now that you mention it. I think Apple fits this category pretty well too.


I like the way Warren Buffet explains markets: in the short term, they're a popularity contest. In the long term, they're a weighing machine.


How would you say the quote explains the context of Bose products?


What exactly is "quality", and in what sense does it exist outside of human perceptions?




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