So of course the news that Juicero is selling a $400 juicer that doesn’t really seem to improve on squeezing their bags with your hands has set off lots and lots of snide thinkpieces about how most Silicon Valley companies produce nothing of value and get investor capital poured on them anyway. These are pretty reasonable. It makes sense that investors would take lots of failed bets in the hopes of hitting on the next big success, and it’s sometimes hard to predict which product will actually fill a niche for a lot of people, but there are also a lot of bad ideas getting lots of cash.
But then that genre of thinkpiece spawned another genre of thinkpiece, which drops the ‘marvelling at how poorly-conceived or scammy products get hundreds of millions in investor funding’ to just settle on ‘sneering at the fact things are sold which I, an enlightened consumer who sees past the horrors of late-stage capitalism, would never buy’.
I’m thinking in particular of Freddie DeBoer’s ‘the three hot trends in Silicon Valley horseshit’, which is just - declaring that companies he wouldn’t personally use are stupid:
Are you the kind of person who is so worn down by the numbing drudgery of late capitalism that you can’t summon the energy to drag a 2 ounce toothbrush across your gums for 90 seconds a day?
- uh, yes, Freddie, I am. You’re kind of coming across as if you think disabled people or people who struggle with basic daily routines are hilarious but also fictional.
Quip sells electric toothbrushes for $25 with $5 refills every three months (comes with toothpaste!); Freddie is outraged.
Of course, you’re also buying the convenience of automation — who wants to run down stairs to the bodega for a toothbrush when you can hand over your banking info to a toothbrush company?
But, like, electric toothbrushes do reduce the rate of cavities, which if you don’t have good dental insurance will cost you a whole lot more than $25. And, uh, yes, there exist people for whom getting a package regularly is way less stress and way more convenient than running out to the nearest convenience store. Not everyone lives in cities where the nearest toothbrush is ‘down stairs to the bodega’, not everyone has access to a means of transportation, not everyone can leave their house or pick things up at the store. The store’s hours might be hours you are working. You might be a single parent who can’t nip out for a shopping trip without packing up the kids. You might be disabled. Literally all of those things at once might be true, and are true for many people!
You could arrange the same thing with Amazon Subscribe and Save and save yourself maybe $10/year, but Amazon Subscribe and Save is kind of obnoxious about price changes/product discontinuations. It seems plausible to me that Quip adds value for some people. And if it doesn’t then it’ll go bankrupt. Loudly declaring that automatic delivery of electric toothbrushes is Everything Wrong With America Today is just obnoxious typical-minding your way into erasing the needs of anyone in a different life situation than you.
And declaring that it’s Everything Wrong With Capitalism is even worse. Quip is selling a product. If they aren’t adding any value then no one will buy it and they will go bankrupt. if they are adding value to peoples’ lives, then they’ll succeed no matter how much Freddie deBoer insists that people should just ‘run downstairs to the bodega’. The availability of products being determined by whether people want them, instead of whether other people think they ought to want them: that is everything right with capitalism.