Our Columnists

On Consumerism: A race to the bottom?

By Arthur Vidro
By Arthur Vidro

Buying the cheapest version of a product has become the American way.

But always choosing the lowest price sacrifices quality for the sake of minimal expenditure. As we chase after the lowest price, we keep lowering the threshold of expected quality. That’s how we ended up with no-frills airlines.

It’s a race to the bottom. Bottom price, bottom quality.

Some cities contract out work to the lowest bidder, regardless of work quality. So, when fixing a bridge or repairing a road, the fix typically won’t last as long as one provided by a higher bidder. No matter. The decision-makers only care about this year’s budget.

For a time, I found occasional work as an editor/proofreader/writer through a web-based company called elance. People looking for work to be done posted a job description, along with deadlines, price limits, and sometimes language restrictions.

Anyone registered with elance could submit a bid on the job. Elance made its money by taking the full contract price from the employer, holding it in escrow, then keeping a percentage for itself before turning the remainder over to the worker upon completion of the job.

Nothing illegal about it. Just unpleasant.

No matter how often I bid, no matter how low my bid, there were always others – from all over the globe – eager to underbid me. Employers gravitated to the lowest bids, regardless of those bidders’ skills or experience. Some employers regularly accepted the rock-bottom lowest bid.

Once in a great while, I was fortunate enough to hook up with a person more concerned with good work than lowest price.

But by and large, to compete with folks willing to work for a dollar an hour, I had to keep lowering my rates. I once edited an entire novel for $60. At least that client was so pleased with my work (he had been extremely displeased with the work of others he had hired previously through elance) that he gave me a generous bonus, plus additional business – at $500 or $600 a novel – as he wrote more.

So in that case, elance hooked me up with a client, and we came to respect each other’s skills enough that I could charge him almost full price, and he gladly paid it. After the first project, we worked directly with each other, without any go-between. For we trusted each other.

But I won’t bid for work again. After elance was gobbled up by a competitor called Upwork, I gave up on their work model. Sure, they satisfied some customers, but they facilitated those seeking to hire the cheapest possible labor, which led to workers constantly lowering their prices. They perpetuated the race to the bottom.

It’s a race in which I no longer take part.

Imagine if we handled all expenditures that way.

Need new shoes? Never mind what fits you properly or is comfortable to wear or what will last. Just buy the lowest-bid version, sight unseen, even if wearing the shoes causes you hammertoes and other horrible foot deformities.

Need a criminal lawyer to avoid a long prison term? Don’t bother looking for someone with a successful record. Just choose the lowest bidder, the one whose clients have all been executed.

That tooth that’s bothering you? Have it filled for a mere $20 by the lowest bidder. Sure, the filling might fall out the next day, but hey, that’s part of the routine when your mind-set is on always choosing the cheapest possible option.

Need a surgeon? Never mind how many operations anyone has performed, or what their success rate might be. Just choose the lowest bidder. Maybe someone who’s never operated before.

If you do need a surgeon, you might also need an anesthesiologist. If you take the lowest bidder, you could end up with someone built like Mike Tyson waiting to punch your lights out.

I imagine there are many excellent plumbers, carpenters, and handymen who make a good living by repairing the damages, and cleaning up after the colossal messes, caused by inept but lowest-bid plumbers, carpenters, and handymen.

Would you submit to having something fixed if you knew the repair wouldn’t last a year? Some of us might. But if you get as permanent a fix as possible, you’ll be hiring repair people far less often. That’s called long-term thinking.

Too many of us think only short term, focused on the here and now. So when we need help, we take the lowest bid and end up with the equivalent of the amazingly inept Larry, Darryl, and Darryl (from the Newhart television show).

Arthur Vidro’s latest short story, “Which Casino?” appears in the November 2020 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.

Avatar photo

As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.