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I liked reading this essay, but, I get the same vibe as a lot of PG essays. Which is, great writing and really intelligent thinking on an interesting subject, but without really being aware of ther stuff people have previously said/thought on the topic.

For instance:

> Brand is what's left when the substantive differences between products disappear.

I think, for better and worse, brands are a lot more than that.

Brands at least start out as a designation of quality, but in modern society, they're an important part in companies avoiding legal liability, and having more distributed supply chains.

Nike couldn't be the global brand it was today if it directly managed all its factories. Modern brands are a part of the economic landscape that is fundamental for making the kind of distributed supply chains that allow globalisation to be possible.

I think the essay mixes brands a little with conspicuous consumption, which can also happen without brands, like with artists or jewels. Its just that brands are so ever present, its not always obvious to see these examples.

So yeah, we definitely are in "the brand age", but brands definitely aren't non-functional at all. The world really would operate very differently without them.

There is a fantastic book on this topic called "By Design : Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV" that cover the inception of modern brands. It's a very similar story to what happened to watches. The industrial revolution made quality clothing accesible for everyone, so the cloth appearance no longer was a clear indicative of status, so brands started placing their emblems on the outside of the fabric inside of the inside. At the time it was seen as gross, obvious and bad taste. Guess we had a century to normalize it.

Looks great. I just ordered it. Thanks for the recommendation.

    > Nike couldn't be the global brand it was today if it directly managed all its factories.

Intel is definitely the exception. For most companies, like Nike or Apple to take two, they in-house design work, but then contract out manufacturing to external companies, who often themselves subcontract out work further.

I'm speculating now, but it seems really likely if that type of distributed supply chain didn't exist, we'd see a closer coupling of design and manufacturing (at an extreme end factories designing and producing their own product).

That outsourcing of manufacturing has let US companies like Nike and Apple stay dominant in the design field, despite almost all their manufacturing being carried out by Asian companies.

Ultimately the global economy is very complicated, but a lot of it is predicated on that design/manufacturing split, which is only enabled by distributed manufacturing contracted out by brands.

I'm not trying to argue any of this is good/bad, but just that the concept of a 'brand' plays a huge function in determining what the world economy looks like, and isn't an empty concept.

I'm not sure I agree with your analysis.

It's true that branding gains importance as a differentiator when the product moves towards being a commodity or if its innovation has reached its peak . But I disagree that it's always the driving factor for how a company is structured.

There are some industries where the franchise model is most dominant (eg fast food chains) and some others where tight control over the value chain is the norm (eg apple). And funnily enough, one of the distinctive differentiators those luxury swiss watchmakers have, is: "We make every part ourselves. Everything is manufactured in Switzerland.". Then you have the OG multinational companies like P&G or Unilever, where branding definitely plays an important role but a lot of their brands are regional so it's yet another structure.

I really think it's mainly the specific industry and geopolitics that shape supply chains and not the branding.

> I'm speculating now, but it seems really likely if that type of distributed supply chain didn't exist, we'd see a closer coupling of design and manufacturing (at an extreme end factories designing and producing their own product).

It's an interesting question. I think it's safe to say that the main driver to outsource manufacturing was cost. But nowadays companies also benefit from things like reduced accountability. Even if we assume every part of the supply chain could be done within the US, wouldn't companies like Apple still eventually outsource the ugly parts of the supply chain to some third party within the US? Simply for the appearances.

Aren’t we talking about a company being “virtually integrated”.

> Brands at least start out as a designation of quality, but in modern society, they're an important part in companies avoiding legal liability, and having more distributed supply chains.

This isn't brand; this is legal company structure. Brand is "what people think of when they hear the word Nike".

I suppose we're just disagreeing on definition here - but I'd at least try to make the case that if people having a single thing they think of when they hear the word Nike, is necessary for a company to be able to structure itself that way legally.

Otherwise, individual manufacturing companies, don't have the financial incentive to give companies like Nike as big a portion of the profits as they do. Currently that system works, because the brand association of "Nike" gives people some kind of status/quality-assurance/whatever that they are happy to pay for.

I think you have a different understanding of what exactly a brand is than do most people. Every profession has the right to develop its own jargon that subtly redefines common words in its own way so I'm not going to say that you're wrong about what "brand" means in any absolute way, just that you're wrong to say that pg is wrong.

Fair enough - although I'd add in my defense that my take wasn't "Paul Graham is wrong", in fact I really liked the essay and agreed with a lot of it. It was more that I think there's a lot more going on with brands than the essay makes out (although you might disagree with this take too)

> Which is, great writing and really intelligent thinking on an interesting subject, but without really being aware of ther stuff people have previously said/thought on the topic.

This seems likely accurate; but you know, I enjoy reading intelligent people work things out from first principles in their own voice.

> I think, for better and worse, brands are a lot more than that.

There is a great quote about this:

"For things that are visible to other people when you use them, there are many brands. e.g clothes, cars, watches, skis, furniture etc

For things that are not visible, there are much fewer brands e.g. underwear.

> For things that are not visible, there are much fewer brands e.g. underwear.

Personal care products - shampoos, soaps, lotions

Nutritional supplements

are counterexamples

does it apply to restaurants?

I thought lots of restaurants behind-the-scenes either got food from external suppliers either in part or all the way to ghost kitchens.

This might be social stigma, we will be stigmatized by society if we dont have appropriate clothes for right situations as such, we buy so many clothes that are visible depending on the number of occasions and everything because we have to look appropriate for that and this is where number of brands can stem up from too and this brand has brand value, because oh, you got that X company shirt nice.

Nobody cares what brand your underwear is because its hidden.

Such products are usually fewer brands because what matters is a huge chain supply. You most likely buy it if its available retail or not, you don't go look at an ad and say, wow I want that brand but the idea is to make familiar with it.

But even if you aren't. There are just so few brands with supply chain directly to retails that such things usually end up getting centralized and convenience of buying is the largest factor. You want to drive less to get this stuff whereas you might go far away just to get a nice pair of shirt and jeans for example something which, again has to do with the visibility of the product/social stigma

Technically, the supply chain thing also directs itself to products like cole drinks for example. You are probably drinking coke/pepsi because its available everywhere and usually the choice that you see in different drinks is just some permutation of a drink/brand which is owned by the parent company (coke/pepsi). The amounts of brands owned by pepsi/coca cola are quite a lot to be honest.

Ask a woman if she agrees that "Nobody cares what brand your underwear is because its(sic) hidden."

PG’s idea here is that when substantive differences disappear between products, brand is what’s left, not that brand is defined by the absence of these differences.

I don't think the Brand Age is as bleak as this essay suggests.

Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate, but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.

As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and labeling that work as "button-pushing" is… dismissive, to say the least.

What I got from the essay: "brand is the only way to beat competition when you can't significantly beat them on quality". It's basically the market suffering from success. You can buy a cheap quality watch today.

For some product types there is no better alternative, like ISPs. But I'd argue this is because of monopoly, which is different from brand. Most monopolies (like ISPs) usually have negative brands, and there's no alternative not because one can't create a better brand (that's easy), but because the upfront cost to become profitable is too high.

So the cutting edge things are happening in places where brand doesn’t matter. I could think of better examples but moldbot/clawdworld comes to mind. Or ASML, or national lab physics, or cheap attack drones, or.. idk can anyone think of better examples?

And “brand age” (as a broad moniker) is another way of saying innovation has stagnated.

OpenClaw is an exception to your list. It’s easy to spin up an OpenClaw alternative (you can even fork it), but not clear how to significantly improve its function. You may argue that name recognition (what OpenClaw relies on today) is separate from brand; but if a competitor becomes popular (perhaps by offering slightly better security), unless OpenClaw can make a significant functional improvement (like better OpenAI integration, since OpenAI hired its creator), the only way I can imagine it regaining market is via brand.

innovation has stagnated because businesses have driven us to stagnation. Very few businesses provide any real value - the ones that do are running circles around everyone else - given the lack of ability, businesses turns to other, less useful methods of prying our money away from us and largely succeed because consumers are gullible and malleable.

ah the classic "most people are mere sheep, unlike us Great Minds"

apologies if my comment came off this way, it was not intended. I think all consumers (myself included!) are vulnerable to being swayed by commercial propaganda

Where did you get that from that comment?. It seems clear to me that it was meant were all consumers.

yes, thank you - I did mean to include myself in the 'customers' category, apologies if it came off as holier-than-thou

Apart from the issue is omega (swatch group) has 3x the turnover of patek.

The other part of the story is swatch is also quite successful at the shit tier watches as well.

So this article misses the point really.

I took pg's point to mean that just because consumers see value in the purchase, that is not the same thing as the purchase being valuable - the race changed from 'provide the best function/value for the thing' to 'provide the most differentiated value to the consumer as an identity' and that is, for the most part, less useful.

Defining your identity to other humans is incredibly useful. It's one of the essential tasks a human faces, and it makes all other tasks easier if done effectively.

I suppose my question with it is will our identity be associated with brands who can/do spend billions and billions of dollars on advertisements or a brand of more authenticity.

Do we as humans feel more at ease with our identity/purchases buying a brand which is known by other people because it spends billions on it/ or a niche brand/smaller shop which is more authentic but people don't know about it.

To me, it feels like the david vs goliath story. My intuition says a mix of small but not too small / something which has history that you compromise on like support/quality of product etc. and sometimes price efficacy.

It's true that consumer choice is what defines the market. So really, yours is a cultural question. What do we as a society value? If it's brand identity, like today, then we will get branded products with as little purpose as possible. If we value authenticity, then brands will start building more authentic products. There's obviously a delay between what we value and what they offer, but its clear that building what customers want always yields a place in the market.

Yeah, I agree. This sentiment is weird to me. As a counterpoint, look at Ben and Jerry's ice cream from the 1990s. It was such a cool brand back in the day, and made delicious high-fat ice cream. (I know, I know: They sold out. But I am talking about before the sell-out.) Also, look at Chobani Yogurt in this generation. Amazing product and stellar brand.

By the way, how much more do we need a watch to do? Do we really need notifications, messages, phone calls, cameras, bluetooth, snapchat, remote control, heart rate monitoring and more in our wristwatches? I'm quite satisfied with just seeing the time on my arm. Anything else I can do with my phone or laptop. Even seeing the time is kinda redundant, as I could just check my phone.

> Do we really need notifications, messages, phone calls, cameras, bluetooth, snapchat, remote control, heart rate monitoring and more in our wristwatches?

We? Maybe? Maybe not? Me? Yes, 100% Well, except Snapchat.

(Pro tip: Try not using your experience and desires as a guide/requirement for the larger populace - you'll feel a lot better about the world and yourself when you get the hang of it.)

> Anything else I can do with my phone or laptop.

The heart rate monitoring? Not nearly as accurate using a phone camera as a wrist-mounted multi-LED watch. Also I tend not to have my finger over my phone camera with a heartrate app running 24/7 - I find it gets in the way of actually using my phone for other stuff.

> Anything else I can do with my phone or laptop

Most stuff, sure, but probably not -

> heart rate monitoring

So as someone who is cantering through middle age to a point in life close to where males in my family in older generations have experienced atrial fibrillation and other heart problems, having a heart rate monitor built into my watch that is capable of spotting early signs of this stuff is pretty cool. Having it (crudely) monitor blood oxygen lets me know that for all I snore, I don't seem to have terrible sleep apnea, and I'm considering an upgrade to one that does blood pressure too.

I know this is going to be of limited interest to the young, but these devices becoming more widespread is likely very helpful to an older cohort like myself (I'm 47), making them 'just part of the package' with smart watches puts this sort of health monitoring and information in reach for a lot of people who would otherwise probably not be interested in wearing an ugly medical device, and whose first sign of trouble might be a fibrillation episode or falling asleep at the wheel.

> I'm considering an upgrade to one that does blood pressure too.

I've got the Aktiia/Hilo band and I'd recommend it if you're wanting to keep vague[0] track of your 24/7[0] blood pressure. Needs calibrating every couple of weeks against the band but that's not an onerous procedure[1][2].

(Probably worth getting a cheapo monitor as a secondary check though - I've got a Renpho bluetooth one.)

[0] It only really takes measurements when you're not "moving" and that can be "running around", "jumping up and down", "typing furiously", etc. which does lead to gaps and only 3-4 measurements every 2 hour slot. Also their app is a bit rubbish and they don't have a decent export story - if you want more than their "daily average → Health", you need BPExtract to OCR the monthly PDF reports (which you have to request by hand, BTW!)

[1] Protip! DO NOT drop the band onto its on/off switch because it's fragile and will BORKEN itself. Mine got stuck in the on position but I've subverted the problem by sticking a magnetic MicroUSB end into the charging point[3] - applying power kicks it into charging mode and removing it leaves it in "ready to use" mode for 5-10 minutes which is more than enough for standard calibrations and testing.

[2] Although their new "BP via the camera and finger" doesn't work AT ALL for me. Almost never gets a reading.

[3] Which I've started doing for all MicroUSB devices because I've somehow managed to snap off 3 MicroUSB ports internally. Shoddy workmanship.

So I have an old fashioned "Salter" inflatable BP cuff unit that takes a few AA batteries, that I take readings on sporadically, and as I am borderline problematic (the diastolic number is usually a little high, systolic is not amazing but could be worse, no meds currently) I'm kinda/sorta looking at something that can keep track a bit more often and less intrusively.

But I was hoping that would be an updated Apple watch, as I have an 8 at the moment that does the other stuff :)

That said I understand that the BP measurements on smart watches are pretty execrable. Thanks for the info!

> But I was hoping that would be an updated Apple watch

Yeah, I think that might come in the future but it's probably a patent minefield[0]. That said I think Ringconn mentioned that they were looking at implementing it for their smart rings in the "near future" - who knows?

[0] There's also the "calibration against the smart cuff" step which I'm guessing any solution would need and that's probably a whole other FDA/patent minefield. Also tricky to have to sell a watch model with a required cuff and have to disable the BP functionality on watches that don't have a matched cuff. You can imagine the HN headlines...

I used to use smart watch. Then I got a cheap old school one ... and concluded I do not want smart watch again, ever. There is something liberating about putting a watch on your hand, not having to charge it every other day, seeing the time whenever I look at it (no matter what light conditions or which gesture I just made).

I do not want notifications buzzing on hand either. That is what the phone is for. I have a phone too, really, it is always next to me.

> A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.

I have no idea what these brands sell and I give it so much importance I won't even bother make a search.

To my mind, this is a lose lose game. Society at large is being engaged into wasteful goals, and as all means are going to be useful in the game where all that matter is displaying more personal material whealths, general social outcomes are undermined: first bribery, then use of other mental coercion tools, then threats, then bare physical aggressions.

>As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed.

No that's not about technology and engineering blindness. Technologies of course can serve best interests of general public and humanity at large. Or a improve efficiency of genocide. And social engineering can be used either to create isolation and hate between groups, or spread more solidarity, diversity being loved where it's open to reciprocal appreciation of differences, and many other virtuous bounds beyond local groups.

Not all life is story telling. Behind, there are real people with actual suffering and joys that goes beyond what even the most eloquent narrator can convey.

> identity-productive

This word scares me because if identity is dependent on the type of product that you have or becomes larger part than it already is, especially within my generation at times. Then its quite scary to think.

A gaping hole of loneliness being filled with shallow identity being generated by and for consumerism.

As much as I think that what you meant was products alleviating the identity of the person, I think the chances of the identity itself being replaced by something more hollow is more likely as well.

Quite frankly,This word truly feels like something which comes out of American Psycho or reminds me so much of it.

Also, another point but I also feel the same feelings of hollowness from creating stuff with AI if we leave it autonomously as I mentioned with some aspect of consumerism although I am frugal. The similarities are quite a lot.

Money --> (Choice on what prompt/model you want your identity more associated with) --> (time) --> Product

Money --> (Choice on what product you want your identity more associated with) --> (time) --> product

And then repeat the cycle.

This has been a boom for capitalism but a loss for humanity, in my opinion.

Respectfully disagree - using PG's own wisdom.

1. You don't find a golden age by looking for interesting problems. You find it by solving customer problems, even if they're boring.

2. Luxury watches, or anything luxury or fashion, are almost by definition using brand for status signaling. That's a business where you don't control your destiny but jump in front of the crowd.

The most important thing about brand is that it reduces the information costs of reliance, which only gets more important as customer reliance is deeper and more complicated. Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Netflix, McDonalds, Halliburton, even Berkshire: they're somewhat distinguished by quality, but mainly get their premiums by their reliability at serving complicated needs.

(Indeed, the problem with the beautiful luxury mechanical watches is that they require good care and maintenance - high cost of reliability. Quartz watches just work, reducing the market for mechanicals to status symbols.)

This is (yCombinator's) golden age because software/ai and devices/(mainly Arm, somewhat robots) now can reach many more customer needs. But being reliable means marriage: lifelong devotion to this one problem. Already taken: the transferable-skill opportunities of general-purpose computers, frameworks and infrastructure, consumer internet and cloud compute. Now available: small and complex niches.

He's definitely conflating two things: watches changed from utilities to fashion items, and watchmakers changed from engineering to branding. In this example, the one change caused the other, but it's just one example. It's no excuse to paint all of branding with the same brush and ignore how, say, Milwaukee's branding provides a valuable signal of real utility.

I think it's tempting to be equally dismissive of branding and fashion because they are both forms of virtue signaling and therefore have all its perversions. However, they're operating on different actors. Branding is virtue signaling by companies to its customers. Fashion is virtue signaling by customers to other people.

Aren't luxury swiss watches extremely well engineered though? They seem to be really well made. It gets to the point they turn into family heirlooms.

In an age of planned obsolescence, cost reduction and cheap materials, something that's known for being well made has a lot of value.

The argument assumes that there is one platonic ideal wristwatch, and that it is maximally thin and maximally precise.

But I know a lot of people who wear watches for different reasons. Some people's idea of "brand" is the frugality of the F-91W. Some people wear obnoxiously large watches. Some people go for something more classy and subtle.

And then there's a great deal of difference in taste. Some watches are works of art. Some are made of wood. Some are full of diamonds.

I think a lot of these niches are underserved, and so your brand can be "the one that owns this niche."

"Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list."

Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury" brands like Louis Vuitton. Why bother?

PS I'll stick to my Casios: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/06/the-discreet-charm-of-infrastru...

Humans are status-seeking creatures, and status is expressed through signaling. If you're rich and so are the people around you, money alone ceases to be a differentiator. Ultra-luxury brands appeal to this by adding hoops that money alone can't clear: time, loyalty, relationships. The signal shifts from "I can afford this" to "I was invited to spend my money here."

Lines outside Louis Vuitton are more down-market, aspirational luxury - an ultra-wealthy person wouldn't be caught dead queuing on a sidewalk. Patek and Ferrari operate at the level above, where the signal isn't wealth but access. (HBS calls Ferrari's version "deprivation marketing.")

Is it a game worth bothering with? Enough people think so to sustain billion-dollar brands.

(Of course, PG writing an essay about being too smart for fancy watches - while knowing a lot about them - is its own signaling game, just aimed at a different audience)

Status is a tool for the working wealthy, but ultra-luxury brands are only appealing to a subset of wealthy people.

There’s a great number of people with 100+M and even far beyond that who enjoy nobody knowing just what kind of wealth they have. This doesn’t mean looking poor, but there’s plenty of value in anonymity.

> (Of course, PG writing an essay about being too smart for fancy watches - while knowing a lot about them - is its own signaling game, just aimed at a different audience)

He was aiming at people like the people commenting on this thread and who read the essay.

Also to the startup/entrepreneur founder-types that are actually interested in building a business that makes a qualitative improvement in the market that it works in.

But mechanical watches are very appealing to nerd/geek types as well, purely in terms of the design and engineering of the movements and the precision of the manufacture.

Complications are absolutely pointless, but making a movement that can deliver them is very appealing.

"The signal shifts from «I can afford this» to «I was invited to spend my money here.»" "the signal isn't wealth but access"

The most shocking aspect here is the mindset of these people that come to value this access, and the fact that they have to have their own self-perceived worth at some lower (i.e. improvable) level in comparison. It has to be, otherwise the value of that access can't make much sense, otherwise that association to a brand (as chosen not chooser) can't be perceived as something of value. The only (sane) question worth asking, knowing that about the people falling into this game is - do I want to count myself as one of them?

I think it just sounds like a fun game to be honest. By a goofy little overengineered piece of jewellery. Buy a bunch of them and join the club. Compare to your friends. Reminds me of pokemon cards on the school playground...

He’s probably also too rich for fancy watches to actually be a useful signal of wealth amongst his peers.

I had a coworker who became nouveau riche a while back- he made fuck you money day trading during the roaringkitty debacle - and one interesting thing he said about the experience was that he learned certain luxury goods, such as high end watches, don't depreciate. Like gold jewelry one can usually resell them for cost plus inflation. As such, his logic was that a fancy watch is essentially free while a cheap watch costs whatever it costs.

Not sure if that's the truth or clever marketing by purveyors of luxury goods, but it changes the wealth signaling dynamics of fancy watches if it is.

Patek and Rolex have generally always held value well. The internet has brought price transparency and created a secondary market that has made this true for most well-known brands these days, with the caveat that there is not a high degree of liquidity (yes you can sell a Rolex same-day at a pawn shop but you'll take a big hit, otherwise you are waiting a while for a buyer and navigating various risks like scammers).

So you likely won't get rich day-trading (or even collecting) watches, but besides the initial capital investment it is not as irrational as it seems at first.

Of course, that only adds to the signaling power for the classes where merely having money isn't enough, and being a "savvy investor" is a status marker (ie. the upper-middle and nouveau riche).

The Patek Nautilus PG mentions is particularly interesting as a status symbol as it has not only held value but, for various reasons, been an outlier that has appreciated drastically in value. It'd be gauche even on Sand Hill Rd to wear a hat that says "My investments beat the S&P 500" — but for the last few years, flashing a Nautilus (~413% investment return from 2016-2026 vs ~322% in the S&P) is the equivalent of that, a self-reinforcing cycle boosting its value as a Veblen good where the high price is the point.

I don't think that's really any more true of watches and gold jewellery than it is cars - which is to say it's true of some models, or over time and especially what comes to be considered a classic.

Maybe he meant second-hand though? If someone else has already taken the 'used' depreciation on a watch, the 'art' added value on the gold price, then yes I think it's probably fair to say they hold their residual value better than a lot of things that continue to depreciate.

I dunno about that. I bought a Casio at a garage sale in the late eighties for 20 cents, and sold it to a mate 10 years later, give or take, for a couple of bucks. It was still running, still keeping time.

Expensive watches are way closer to bitcoins than useful assets. They inherently rely on the gullibility of other rich prick wanna be's. Still a good bet probably.. sadly..

The price isn’t keeping anyone at that level of wealth from buying a Nautilus or a Lange 1 or a panda Daytona. But they can still flex with ultralimited pieces like Zuck’s Greubel Forsey.

I didn't realize that "fools and their money will soon be parted" was a flex.

“There are three of these things made in a year, and I’ve got the juice to get one of them” is. Zuck doesn’t care about a million dollar price tag, any more than I would care about a couple bucks.

If he was buying a solid gold furby would you have the same take? That's great that he doesn't care, still looks like an idiot to me.

>>> ...PG writing an essay about being too smart for fancy watches

Stealthy, like a submarine.

While the ultra rich do buy from luxury brands, they're often spending the most on unique items, such as ordering a custom yacht.

Having the most expensive item in some category, or close to it, often gets you news coverage, which is something a normal purchase can't really offer.

> Of course, PG writing an essay about being too smart for fancy watches - while knowing a lot about them - is its own signaling game, just aimed at a different audience

So you're saying that everyone seeks status, and even the people who say they don't are seeking status by not seeking status? That argument seems like you are overreaching. What, then, would you consider evidence that falsifies your theory?

Yes - though this isn't my theory so much as settled science. There are no substantial counter-theories to the concept that status desire is a fundamental and universal human motive.

As for falsification: you'd need evidence like subjects showing no well-being drop (self-esteem, cortisol) from lab-induced status demotions, or entire cultures genuinely indifferent to respect. Neither holds up in the data: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25774679/

John Adams put it well in Discourses on Davila (1790): "The desire of the esteem of others is as real a want of nature as hunger — and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain as the gout or stone."

status-seeking isn't inherently bad or good, depends who's appreciation you are seeking

I know I’m being sold something when someone declares the science of human nature.

> If you're rich and so are the people around you, money alone ceases to be a differentiator.

You could differentiate based on your personality. It costs nothing at all, and is far more interesting than a trinket.

Strive to be Warren Buffet, not Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

Actually in many cases it is for social KPI storytelling. I know some wealthy people and at gatherings they love to tell 5-10min long stories of exclusive processes that they followed to gain something exclusive while dropping names and numbers. The processes are easy to understand for the entire social circle (i.e. not technical or business achievements which they can't easily disclose).

Being wealthy solves virtually all problems of consumption, so the invisible hand provides new problems to serve the market need. Beautiful, really.

It's a formalized, sanitized simulacrum of striving! Like sports is for competition

So, hobbies. You're talking about hobbies.

No, he talks about status signalling.

They might pass the time doing those things, but not as a mere passtime or hobby, like if they were sewing or playing CoD. Unlike those, doing them and telling about doing them serves a specific social purpose.

I'm not arguing with you - you have a valid point.

But I don't view hobbies as that separate from status signals within the hobbying group. Oh you play games? What games? Did you beat it? etc etc.

Esoteric knowledge/practices here are status signls (Oh you reached shattered planet without xyz??).

That starts to sound a lot like "Oh you aquired a lambo XYZ without usual steps abc" and that's a really fun convo in the in-group, and a total miss with the out-group.

>But I don't view hobbies as that separate from status signals within the hobbying group.

The difference though is that this is not meant to serve "within the hobbying group".

They serves the status signal purpose when showing them to "laymen" and other rich people in general, not necessarily to other expensive car buyers or luxury watch buyers.

In other words, the, typically quiet, flaunting, is done to people otherwise uninterested about the specific ting, that nonetheless recognize the exclusivity and the knowledge that it's a subtle signal of "elevated taste" and that they belong to the tasteful-rich club.

I have several hobbies, and none of them revolve around artifical scarcity or gatekeeping.

(Well, the way that _some_ people play Magic: The Gathering does - but I wouldn't want to play with anyone who raised a stink about proxies)

Look, I dont want to be argumentative, but my (perhaps cynical) view on people who say they don't do status signaling when they "avoid status signaling" is it's just like the fish who goes "what's water"? It's worth thinking about whether you're doing it by accident.

"Let's see Paul Allen's card"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlYH-hmxOqc

I wonder if it's intentional that they all say "Aquisitions", with no "c".

As for fonts etc: https://hobancards.com/blogs/thoughts-and-curiosities/americ...

They all have the same phone number too.

This could be explained away by them working for the same place and assuming to contact them you call the same switchboard and ask for the person, but even back in the 90s it would have been strange for wall street "Vice Presidents" (even if it was somewhat of a ceremonial title) to not have their own unique business number.

Also, Paul Allen giving his card to someone else with the same contact number for the purposes of being in touch to plan to play squash doesn't make much sense unless you get meta and assume Paul Allen was aware this had no practical value and just wanted to ego-drop the card.

Economists have a term for these kinds of things where the demand rises as prices rise: Veblen goods

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Buying unnecessary expensive stuff is one thing. But it's hard to understand why anybody would want to display that total loyalty to a brand signal.

Harley Davidson, anyone?

"There is only sex. Everything is sex" - Robert California

It taps into a very primordial "I'm better than you" urge some people need.

It's exclusivity and sales schticks. Artificial scarcity, social status, conspicuous consumption. Same things that drive influencers to rent limos, pose on other people's private jets, pretend to buy bottles in clubs, flash fake cash, wear bling.

From a birds-eye view it's less a hedonistic treadmill and more a feeding frenzy.

It's a game you can play, but for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why you'd want to, there are so many other better things in life.

>>> Why bother?

Exactly - go give someone you love a hug, that's worth infinitely more than flexing an expensive watch.

> Exactly - go give someone you love a hug, that's worth infinitely more than flexing an expensive watch.

Hugs are massive signals of status (who, where, initiator, awkwardness, yada yada).

My fascination with the politics of hugs might be called autistic by some.

I wonder whether my own status avoidance is on account of being bad at playing at ladders.

>I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?)

It's called relationship-based allocation or more simply purchase history requirement, and its practiced by both Patek and Rolex but add to the list famously Hermes, Bugatti, high jewelry from VCA/Bulgari etc, getting access to prestigious artists at galleries, etc.

The devil's advocate/ other side of the coin is that it's not just a moneygrab, it protects the brand image by controlling who is seen wearing / using your products. When the value of these goods is so influenced by who else has them, that kind of control is intrinsically important for the seller.

Because the people bothering are precisely those that want to differentiate themselves from those who'd rather stick to their Casios :)

Ah, so these products are useful to me after all!

Genuinely. All fashion, all accessories, whatever you put on your body is a signal, even if you don’t intend it to be. Your outfit is a costume, and so is everyone else’s.

and all the world is a stage

Jay Leno, perhaps the world's most famous car collector refuses to buy a Ferrari due to practices like that.

Anyone with $(80,00-250,000) (which is a lot of you) can buy a Nautilus today[1].

This status-through-martyrdom ritual to get it from retail at MSRP is utterly bizarre.

[1] https://www.chrono24.com/patekphilippe/nautilus--mod106.htm

More and more I realize I am completely obvlious to all of the class signaling happening here. I couldn't imagine spending that much on anything, let alone a watch. And I certainly wouldn't think someone wearing that did, either.

I feel bad for the folks who pick up on stuff like this, that must be a heavy weight to bear constantly comparing yourself to other people.

Ironically a desire for such social signalling requires being poor enough that you believe the item is worth a vast and near unobtainable amount of money making it seem like a very impressive signal to you. That’s what makes these items desirable. As in these signals can be a sign of just how poor you are as opposed to how wealthy.

A classic case is when you observe teenager targeted status signalling trends. This can be as low value as an expensive shirt, ie shirts branded ‘supreme’ costing $300 which isn’t worth signalling to anyone who pays rent or a mortgage. But to a teenager? Wow man $300! such status!!! On the flip side if we see someone above teenager age wearing such teenager targeted status symbols we reasonably subconsciously assume they live with their parents and have very little income.

This continues up the wealth chain forever. Status symbols are invariably a way to see just how little people actually have because the person wearing the status symbol clearly believes the value of what they are flaunting is impressive.

Status symbols aren’t a signal of how much money you have so much as signal of what you believe to be an incredible amount of wealth to flaunt.

Well framed. I will add though that it's not entirely indicative of how much one thinks is a lot; it can also be, as was explained to me, that for ultra wealthy people, the price, at any magnitude becomes a rounding error.

half a million for a car sounds absurd to me, but it's 0.5% of $100M. Compare that to $50k car on a ~$200k median net-worth US household.

Yep. I'm in a European city, most of the people driving Mercedes and BMW cars are, if not outright poor, low-status, low-education, low long-term wealth.

The old money drives beat-up cars (often Swedish made, US imports for enthusiasts, or old-style 4x4s for outdoor pursuits) and are more likely to take taxis. Young, highly-educated BoBo types walk, take transit or cycle.

Just-above-poor neighbourhoods have a much higher proportion of flash cars than rich ones.

I mean, you just wrote that rich people buy vanity cars and poor people buy cars that are for daily use. US imports for enthusiasts and old-style 4x4s for outdoor pursuits are both definition of vanity car.

> I am completely oblivious to all of the class signaling happening here.

If you're comfortably middle class and in a demographic recognized to "deserve" to be middle class, then you can afford to be oblivious to a whole lot of class signaling. You aren't striving to reach a higher station, and you aren't likely to get demoted out of your current one, so you can mostly ignore it.

People that are lower-class and trying to move up, or in demographic categories that are often shunned access to higher social classes don't have that luxury and are incentivized to be savvy to this kind of stuff.

This is one of the kinds of things that people talk about when they talk about "privilege". It's not that you should feel bad because you don't have to worry about this stuff. It's just an acknowledgement that some people have the privilege of not having to worry about this stuff because they were born into a level of class security that others lack.

>I feel bad for the folks who pick up on stuff like this, that must be a heavy weight to bear constantly comparing yourself to other people.

You can have that heavy weight while living on the suburbs or even the ghetto too. The objects are prices mostly change with the wealth level, not the game.

I dunno, I'd probably spend that much on a house.

Holy shit that's an ugly watch too, looks like something outta chinatown lmao.

It being an "acquired taste" is part of the appeal. A lot of high-end stuff is ass-ugly on purpose. If everyone liked it because it simply looked nice, you couldn't tell who's "in the club" of other rich people. Brands will attach elaborate stories and histories to objects to make people feel cultured that they have invested time in acquiring the knowledge, but really it comes down to in-group object recognition.

My least favorite of that eras Gerald Genta designs. The original Royal Oak is comparatively far more attractive. Both are outdone by the 222 (different designer though), but it's all subjective.

Ads for Patek Philippe on the back of The Economist get more and more annoying over time. (e.g. the president writes "How Happy I am to be a Nepo Baby")

Clothes, wristwatches, cars, you name it. It's a very common play on luxury brands, Hermes Birkins is the most famous that comes to my mind and follow a very similar playbook.

Apart from the KYC aspect of the process it's their way of solving the problem of artificial scarcity on the second-hand market as the article explains. They want a second hand market to exist to indicate that this is a luxury item, but too many and the price tanking with excess supply.

It also solves the real problem of labor scarcity. If you have X master watchmakers available to make a halo product you can only get so much output from them. You can increase X, increase production efficiencies (reduce labor input), or limit supply. The first two reduce exclusivity and perceived quality so the third makes sense if you can live without growth or can grow via high pricing strategies.

I just want low maintenance cars. Everything else is a waste.

> Casios

I've got three Oceanus watches (Casio's boutique brand). I never wear them, anymore, because of Apple Watch.

I brought a couple of them in Japan. There, the G-Shock brand is very popular. They sell G-Shock watches for ridiculously (to Americans, who are used to cheap G-Shocks) high prices.

> Why bother?

ego, of course

Vanity. Ego is something else.

> ego, of course

This is so silly. Do you really not have any hobbies where you spend inordinate time or money on things you could objectively accomplish quicker and cheaper, but having less fun, in other ways? Like, I ski. It’s a silly way to get up and down a hill in the 21st century.

I’m not a watch guy. But mechanical watches are beautiful. There are idiots who buy them. But that doesn’t mean everyone who does is an idiot.

Collecting watches isn't a hobby, it's pure consumerism. Sure many hobbies have (recently?) gotten way more people spending top dollars for no reason but with watch collecting there's nothing else. You're not tweaking the dials, you don't know how to make the watch, you just watch it and wear it while a technologically superior version is 500 times cheaper. There's also no natural shortage of them, they can make a trillion of these watches.

At least with cars or audio equipment there's some marginal benefits once you get to crazy numbers, not the case with watches.

> You're not tweaking the dials, you don't know how to make the watch, you just watch it and wear it while a technologically superior version is 500 times cheaper

This describes precisely zero watch enthusiasts I know. Each of them can open up the watch and understand what's happening. In one case, he'll disassemble the major components to clean them. (Analogous to how riders can take care of their horses and gear, or I can tune and wax my skis.)

Your dismissal could be just as accurately be applied to the various programming languages many of us learn for fun. We don't know how to write its compiler. We can barely do anything useful in it. We just play with it while a technologically-superior version would take a fraction of the effort.

> There's also no natural shortage of them, they can make a trillion of these watches

Quartz? Obviously. Aegler/Rolex? Probably. Handmade movements? No.

> At least with cars or audio equipment there's some marginal benefits once you get to crazy numbers, not the case with watches

As an enthusiast of neither cars nor watches, I call total bullshit on this comparison. Anyone arguing they're getting utility out of their Ferrarri, Pagani, Omega or Audemars is full of themselves.

What is wrong with watch consumerism? It isn't like it's ruining the planet and hurting anyone. Like you said, there is no shortage and nobody will die without them.

We can say all the same things about cars, but nobody thinks it’s odd that there’s a status culture about cars worth more than $75,000.

Because that’s only 2-5x the price of a new cheap car.

A watch at $80,000 is what, 10,000x what a new cheap one is?

But good for them! It’s really hard to be angry at them for buying said watch without it being some form of jealousy.

> nobody thinks it’s odd that there’s a status culture about cars worth more than $75,000

Sure. To each their own. I drive a Subaru. I don’t think it’s weird that others like a nice car. (I also think there are douchebags who drive both.)

[dead]

>Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

pg dr. This is the answer. A pg article is clickbait at best, harmful at worst. Keep in mind this is the same man who chose to write his antiwokeness hit peace right at the cusp of the election.

> Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

What a tired aphorism. Just like PG's 50 year old insights.

I only skimmed, and I was expecting a treaty on how "brand" is the new currency, but instead the thesis is the opposite:

> ... Is there some edifying lesson we can salvage from the wreckage? ... One obvious lesson is to stay away from brand. ... Sure, you might be able to make money this way ... but pushing people's brand buttons is just not a good problem to work on ...

> Go where interesting problems are, and you'll probably find that other smart and ambitious people have turned up there too. And later they'll look back on what you did together and call it a golden age.

His point of Omega doubling-down on the things that would progressively harder to establish a moat on made me think about what we have been seeing with higher ed. It seems the "smart ones" definitely read the book that making the "education better," in a world where it is mostly free, was a fool's errand, and now the margins that they all compete it stray far, far away from the quality of the schooling. I work in K-12, and see the same things happening here too.

P.S.: It is odd to me to have such a length pg essay been up for such a long time with just a handful of comments. Did something happen? I would've expected a wealth of discussion on a post like this by now.

I think there are a number of reasons for this, but a couple come to mind. First, pg seems distant from YC now (to those not at office hours, I guess), and rarely publishes new essays, so he's rarely discussed or present in the minds of commenters here. Also, pg has the fortune or misfortune to write in a way that feels like some LLM writing, when he's writing well. I haven't gone back to earlier essays to check this notion, but I think he's going out of his way to break up thoughts into less likely sentence fragments, now, which give his recent writing a choppier, less well-written feel, with standalone sentences like

> But you could recognize one from across the room.

and

> Or maybe not so lucky.

and starting a paragraph with

> For men, at least.

> pg has the fortune or misfortune to write in a way that feels like some LLM writing, when he's writing well.

It pains me to think how simplistic some peoples' LLM writing detection heuristics are (or at least appear to be). Prose such as in TFA is really obviously human-written to me. It's using those choppy sentences properly. It doesn't strike me as "less well-written" at all; the resulting contrast is clearly very intentional.

Although, of course, what you describe is still a couple levels above "Behold, what doth mine Ctrl-F espy but U+2014 EM DASH! Hie thee hence, O wretched automaton!"

Omega's entire brand was accurate tool watches. The megaquartz was peak luxury for someone that wanted accuracy and style https://chronomaddox.com/omega_megaquartz_2400.html

yeah they were force merged with ETA, longines, Hamilton and eterna, which basically dominated the swiss watch industry .

Patek Phillipe was all about just being expensive with other people's movements. They were the balenciaga of watches (subjective view point there.)

case in point - the "ivy league" schools are some of the most established "Brands" in existence today.

They are not really in the education business anymore — they're in the exclusivity and signaling business

The something that happened was ChatGPT. Enough commenters didn't like the idea that everything they write publicly online is fed in as training data for AI that there's been a shift in this site's community. That, and everyone got laid off, either for section 174 or AI reasons, but Twitter employees are no longer collecting that fast paycheck and posting here. I'm sure a data scientist could make a good analysis of if what I'm saying is backed by actual data, but that's my feel based on spending more time on here than is healthy.

> Enough commenters didn't like the idea that everything they write publicly online is fed in as training data for AI that there's been a shift in this site's community.

Pardon; your theory is that this attitude was prevalent among people who like discussing pg's writing, and that they have left in favour of a new crowd that doesn't care about pg but is also pro- the AI companies?

... Because that doesn't seem to line up with the general tenor of discussion in threads about AI companies doing things.

Looking at the stats, there's been a huge influx of accounts. The theory that fits that isn't internal inconsistent is then there are multiple people using the sites that can be grouped into a set of people that don't care for pg, and a set of people that are pro-AI. How much of an intersection there is between those two groups, you get to imagine for yourself. The individuals in the group that see a PG essay, and go "Ooh, lemme dump my unfiltered opinion of him and not read the essay" and the individuals that won't bother with that link, and the individuals that comment on AI stories is a small set. The sata science query to prove me wrong wrong is left as an exercise for the reader.

Innovation brings a golden age, then innovation flattens, competition arises and branding becomes more important

Flying was having its golden age around the times of Concorde and 747, coffee bars were great when Starbucks reinvented the 3rd place and social media was cool when it just came out

It very much relates to that Steve Jobs clip about what happens when the marketing people take over the company

Many countries have avoided the complete brand/chain-ification of the US market.

Cafes and coffee places are still great, Starbucks did for them what McDonalds did for food. They're a known standard of quality. It might be low, but it's known. Starbucks didn't invent the 3rd place, or re-invent it.

As jobs moved from manufacturing to services, more people were able to work in a way that the "3rd place" offers. The ultimate extension of that is WFH.

The actual planes are much better today than in the "golden age ... of Concorde and 747", what ruined it was the security theater as a result of 9/11, and the race to the bottom of the service offerings.

Business classes (especially international and Asian airlines) is much much better, economy has more services (individual entertainment, USB, power etc), better seats, but much worse seat pitches, and nickel-and-diming every item possible (ticket transfers/changes, luggage, seat selection, meals, etc).

So not so much "Brand Age" for air travel, it's more a stratification.

> The actual planes are much better today than in the "golden age ... of Concorde and 747"

Although if what I learnt from QI is to be believed[0], the internal air quality is now much worse than when smoking was allowed because they don't recycle the air through filters as much (if at all) these days.

[0] I believe they're about 90% reliable with their "wacky" facts.

Hoping to add to this perspective:

The ability to transfer a lot of money in the physical shape of brand watches costing 200k per piece may have added to their appeal. AppleTV’s show Friends and Neighbours upselling their value as Jon Hamm tries to steal them from neighbours may be product placement. But these were all tactics from the 50s and 60s where relatively few media sources meant you could buy your way into the hearts of the masses with an ads campaign.

Today we have a massively accelerated pace of society burning through fads and information - largely due to social media. The artificial scarcity trick is no longer an MBA secret. A brand, especially an AI brand, can burn in and out of favor in days. Transparency in society helps maybe bring out authenticity. Advertising of the past was often “advertising to your weaknesses” and that game is over.

If we can structure the transparency and apply it to politicians and other less transparent institutions that count on “Brand” to the list (especially ones with high margins and large networks) maybe the world will see true competition that benefits everyone more. Lack of transparency (and liqidity, and availability) are what make trust bubbles that distort markets.

I actually dislike most "branding", by which I mean, I dislike when the name/logo of the brand is on the product itself. I get that puts me in the minority.

For me, partly because I don't want to be seen as showing off and partly because I feel like if you want me to advertise your brand then you should be paying me, not the me paying you.

And, once noticed, it's on so many products I wish it wasn't. The sink in my bathroom says "Sterling" as does my toilet. The saddles (seats) on my two bicycles have their name on them. So do the front forks on one. One that's most silly to me, the tires have huge branding but the actual useful info, what pressure they need, is nearly impossible to read without perfect lighting and then me taking a photo and zooming in.

My phone holder, basket holder, rear racks, and pannier are all branded. My toaster oven, rice cooker, electric kettle, stove, refrigerator, even the garbage disposal has it's name stamped into the top visible part. All my casual shoes have a visible exposed tag at a minimum. Fortunately dress shoes don't but I rarely have a chance to wear those.

My computer case, my monitor, my hub, my KVM, my laptop holder, my headphones, my mouse, they're all advertising their brand at me.

I'd be fine if it's in some hidden area (inside the fridge, under the rice cooker, under the laptop holder, etc...) but ultimately I'd prefer no branding. But, there just aren't any choices. Most people either want to show off the brand they bought or they don't care. Few are like me that would prefer no visible branding. And so you can't get unbranded things (or I can't)

I felt this way until I worked at Essential, the now shut down phone maker.

One of the core company design principles was to have minimal branding. The phone design had no logo. When you show it to people they are looking for the identifier and it's completely missing. When you are in a market where most of the products look largely the same, branding is very important.

It's unfortunate, but absolutely necessary.

Ironically, because phone designs have converged so much and innovation had plateaued, a phone with no branding whatsoever represents a brand in and of itself. Think about it, even the worst, cheapest no-name phones built from old parts in some small Chinese factory have something written on them. The absence of a logo is so unique that it performs the same function, because no one else is doing that. The catch is that it only works if people know this gimmick in advance, but this also applies to brands with textless logos.

I don't doubt your experience, but out of curiosity, what led you to the conclusion that branding is "absolutely necessary"? It seems to me that the presence of a name on black rectangle wouldn't matter to the average consumer. I get that there's a percentage of the consumer market that wants to advertise that they're rocking an Apple/Samsung/whatever device, but I would think that price/performance would be the major factor. Of course, that's probably why no one has ever put me in charge of marketing strategy.

Yeah I feel completely the same and largely do not understand when people are obsessed with branding. I'm assuming it's some primitive brain social hierarchy stuff where we seek to have everything be stratified by social value.

Also I have a related point on consumerism. A lot of things don't really need a brand to begin with because there is little need for so many options. Like if you have to advertise your brand identity to me to have your product be a success, I generally assume your product is a solution in search of a proper problem. (Yes often they do solve problems, but I will argue many modern day problems are bullshit/fake.)

Good branding is recognizable without the logo, especially to the target audience.

For HN, macs are a good example. You can remove all the apples and we’ll recognize the laptop.

My Triumph motorcycle has a similar property. You could remove all the logos (there’s just 2 stickers anyway) and even my girlfriend who is not into bikes will recognize it by the engine sound alone.

Kitchenaid and Smeg appliances have a similar property. BBC hides all the logos and you can still recognize the standup mixers in their baking shows.

In the age of infinite aliexpress slop, brand is the fastest way to assess quality. There's a difference between branding on a toilet vs branding on clothing. No one is flexing their wealth with a toilet brand. The brand exists so someone in the market to buy a toilet notices the brand on lots of other toilets they see around which gives it more trust over a no name direct from China toilet.

To me, a product with no visible brand at all feels like a drive by operation that shouldn't be taken seriously. You can see this all over, nice cutlery will always have a brand stamped in the metal, while cheap junky stuff will be unbranded since it's sold on price rather than quality and trust.

> One that's most silly to me, the tires have huge branding but the actual useful info, what pressure they need, is nearly impossible to read without perfect lighting and then me taking a photo and zooming in.

Sadly, the writing isn't there for (only) you. Anywhere you go and park your car now has a billboard for the tire company. Far more eyeballs that interest the ones putting the writing on it will be looking at it for reasons other than looking for the pressure than ones who are actually trying to get anything done with them.

What does this have to do with the article?

From the friendly article:

> One obvious lesson is to stay away from brand. Indeed it's probably a good idea not just to avoid buying brand, but to avoid selling it too.

You misunderstood the article. Paul Graham isn't saying "Don't buy things based on brand", he's saying "Don't buy brand."

It's perfectly healthy to use brand as a heuristic to help yourself more easily buy products that work well.

And yet tons of people do buy brand. Specifically to show it off. "Look at me! I'm rich! See, I'm wearing LV pants, Jimmy Choo shoes, I've got tUMI luggage, a Rolex watch, and a Prada bag.

Seems related to me.

You can buy this Prada keychain, only $525!

https://www.prada.com/us/en/p/saffiano-leather-keychain/2PP0...

Or you can buy some other that will be just as functional

https://www.etsy.com/search?q=keychain+leather+black+triangl...

But not advertise your $$$$.

Maybe a better example: Is this $2950 Prada bag

https://www.prada.com/us/en/p/re-nylon-and-saffiano-leather-...

Any better than 1000s of < $100 bags? It's not more durable. It's not going to last longer. It's not going to carry more or less stuff. You can find 100s of not 1000s of bags who if you slapped a Prada tag on would be considered just as stylish (meaning if you did a double blind test and either put the logo on both or removed it from both, no one would tell which was which)

> It's perfectly healthy to use brand as a heuristic to help yourself more easily buy products that work well.

Sure, though I know lots of people that assume expensive = quality and confuse that with expensive brand = quality. It doesn't. The chintziest items I've owned have been expensive "high end" brands. That's not to say all expensive brands are bad. Only that expensive well known brand only means they're good at marketing. It does not mean their product are quality. They might be, they might not.

[dead]

Interesting historical anecdote: the Swiss became the world's best watchmakers because, in Protestant Geneva under the leadership of John Calvin, jewelry was banned as ostentation. But you were allowed to wear a watch - it was important to get to church and work on time - so people starting wearing expensive watches instead of jewelry.

Interesting. It's my understanding that in a similar vein, one of the reasons Belgium got so good at making tasty, stronger beers because wine and spirits were banned in the past.

It's not quite 'necessity' being the mother of invention, but perhaps desire.

combining the previous two comments, I once heard that there are chips/french fries all over the ground in Belgium because if you ask a Belge the time, they look at their wristwatch, immediately inverting the container of fries they are undoubtedly carrying.

Not sure about Belgian potato or watch branding.

From the title and the beginning, I was sure this was going to be about the imminent brand age in software with the commoditization of the software engineering discipline brought on by AI.

Yeah, either that or the commoditization of LLMs.

I.e. in the early days (2023-2025, lol), companies were mostly differentiated by the quality of their LLM, i.e. GPT-3.5 was leagues ahead of anyone else, so was for serious work the only game in town. Until recently it was basically only the US based companies (OpenAI/Anthropic) with models worth using.

Now, Anthropic and OpenAI are neck-and-neck, and Chinese models are catching up fast, and the models are becoming commodities, and as long as they reach some threshold of quality/capability, it doesn't really matter to most customers.

So now we might be reaching the branding stage of LLMs. I.e. do you go for Anthropic, who are branding themselves as the responsible ones, or OpenAI, who are branding themselves as... the innovators? Not sure what they are going for these days.

If all models are roughly equally capable, all that's left is branding.

At least those are the thoughts it provoked in me. If that's what Paul Graham meant or not I have no idea.

I think you’re right about the impetus for the piece. I’ll say that branding is for things consumed in public, I expect vendor lock in before branding. But as you know this site is awash in speculation about how the lack of differentiation will play out

Classic PG essay in a lot of ways, but I was expecting (a) the entire watch discussion to be 1/10th of its length, and (b) lead DIRECTLY into a social commentary around how every area -- politics, software dev, music creation & distribution etc -- are now firmly in their terminal brand ages.

A political admin lies directly to your face daily - well, the base doesn't care because they've bought into the brand. The Truth and principles are irrelevant.

A talented musician is making innovative, fresh music - but hasn't yet learned the ability to market herself on IG/TikTok - well, she won't reach an audience because she can't compete in a brand game dominated by marketers and AI-driven beat-makers. The music is irrelevant.

Creating software used to be a very human thing - empathetic understanding of the user's problems, a dash of inspiration and good taste, and you get some cool stuff and possibly a valuable company; but now, if all that's automated, what is it? The craft is irrelevant.

Hmmmm. Perhaps his essay wasn't dark enough.

I thought the essay would get into current events, but I felt sad that it didn't. And I don't feel it was dark, it was just just a chapter of history.

Kudos! This comment really gave simplicity to my feelings on this whole thing too! (Favourited your comment)

I just want to add a minor point that the marketing/advertising industry in general just sometimes feels very unethical to me and I am worried about that too.

Increasingly so, The only way to survive in brand age is to connect to two or three centralized platforms. Authenticity feels redundant.

> A talented musician is making innovative, fresh music - but hasn't yet learned the ability to market herself on IG/TikTok - well, she won't reach an audience because she can't compete in a brand game dominated by marketers and AI-driven beat-makers. The music is irrelevant.

Although I could've ended my comment previously, I do think that there are just very few cracks and ripples within the algorithm. At some point we have to step up to preserve authenticity. It isn't as if those people aren't trying but that you can't find them.

I found this person who makes music[0] on my youtube shorts on how his genz cousin told him to make videos of his everday life with his music in background (He sells pizzas and left college to make music) and there is a small community of viewers/music listeners who have joined him now. It made me genuinely think and stop from the doom scroll, Although small but it was one sure of an experience.

I do think that if there is a race to the bottom for code/infra/even marketing. At some point, the idea becomes of fulfilling/creating an experience but I do think that the passion of the people who create things isn't gone to waste because the passion that they applied into creating any form of software now, can be reflected back to the user in form of experience.

Atleast that's my take. Another product I found interesting like this was fluxer.gg[1](discord alternative)

Maybe there can be a platform/mass adoption of the thing where one can just share cool people doing cool things and have links of them which can say "hey check them out! What they are doing is cool"

(I actually tried out some bookmark app just right now but funny thing happened haha where it accidentally destroyed my whole collection as I tried to have a collection name be All, and they don't have support so that I can't even guide them to fix it :/ so its better if we use open source solutions in this maybe, Luckily I was only trying it out but this actually makes me feel like this sharing should be made easier and less error prone

it would be hard to see if average people realize this and if they do end up doing it at decent scale where it makes meaningful difference tho.)

Edit: I rediscovered Linkhut, it feels really good as well. I will be having some fun with it especially with the social elements of it, its front page is about what the official logo of html should be :D (https://ln.ht)

[0]Fuji Gateway - Tuesdays, Am I Right? (Official Lyric Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijjb_0RW28c

[1]Fluxer: https://fluxer.gg

I petition to rename "feature" as "complication" on software teams.

Complication parity across all platforms

Hahaha seconded. Followup terminology:

- Complication creep

- Complication-complete

- Complication requests

"It's not a bug, it's a complication."

>That's not why brand age watches look strange. Brand age watches look strange because they have no practical function. Their function is to express brand, and while that is certainly a constraint, it's not the clean kind of constraint that generates good things. The constraints imposed by brand ultimately depend on some of the worst features of human psychology. So when you have a world defined only by brand, it's going to be a weird, bad world.

This is a wild thing to say. Brand age watches don't look strange. They look beautiful. Incredible thought and care and intention is put into their design. The people who buy them love them. It's so funny to me to get this far into one of PGs blogs and sort of realise "Oh right, you don't actually understand beauty". It's very hard to read this as much more than a slightly autistic man not understanding that it's ok for people to like beautiful things. It is not worth it to me to spend £100k on a watch, but I don't deny it is to other people, I'm not going to pretend the watch is undesirable.

But it does make me wonder whether Paul things that YC is successful today because it has a better design than other startup programmes, or is it successful today because of it's brand?

I disagree. It's worth asking why some people find brand watches beautiful? Where did they get their sense of aesthetic? Were they born with a congenital preference for RM 16-01 Citron?

Culture shapes our taste. Companies go on multi-decade billion-dollar campaigns to shape our culture. We like certain things because famous actors or athletes endorse them; because hip hop artists rap about them; because influencers talk about them; because Hollywood portrays them a certain way. This extends to all modern aesthetic preferences from architecture to watches to cars to furniture to dating.

I think the argument pg is making is that brand-obsessed cultures are not maximally truth/beauty-seeking and gets really weird. e.g. Japanese Ohaguro, Chinese foot binding, various cranial deformation practices from the Mayans to the Huns, high-heels, ugly (to outside observers) watches.

It's a really thought-provoking essay. But it's too heterodox and "autistic" to share with most of my friends. Socially speaking, it's best to outwardly embrace the current zeitgeist.

> I disagree. It's worth asking why some people find brand watches beautiful? Where did they get their sense of aesthetic? Were they born with a congenital preference for RM 16-01 Citron?

There's plenty of art that's celebrated, but also kinda weird and ugly. Is "Vertumnus" by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1591) also a product of the "brand age"? What about various gargoyles and grotesques on old church buildings?

Some people just like weird art, maybe because they think it reflects their own quirky or rebellious nature. Some of these people have money. I don't see why we need some sort of a cynical theory of a "brand-obsessed culture" at the center of it. How many people in your social circle are obsessed with brands? We might have a brand or two we like, typically because we like the way the products look or work. That's about it.

I know some people who like expensive watches. They talk about the design a lot more than they talk about who made it.

Citron is obviously a weird watch but you can always find weird expensive examples of anything. Most expensive watches look normal and they look really beautiful thanks to the attention that goes into building them.

Yes, what I find beautiful is the craftsmanship, dedication, and the singular, almost monastic focus required to become a master in some human pursuit, whether its software, sushi, or making watches. I find dedication and sacrifice deeply moving and eternally beautiful.

> RM 16-01 Citron

Wow that is certainly a look.

They may be beautiful, but the fact remains if you could produce and sell Patek Philippe Nautilus for $200 no one would be interested in it. The same is not true for most other beautiful objects

Well firstly, they don't charge $200 for them because they can't produce them for $200. But the point I'm making is he seems to be trying to say they aren't beautiful. He says he's describing this "dark" world or "strange" watches. I do actually think he probably thinks the watches look strange. I don't think he thinks they're beautiful, maybe he'll find a brand to fall in love with one day. I doubt it because he seems to have too much of himself invested in this. But the people buying them don't think they're strange, they think they're beautiful. I don't go out telling everyone that they shouldn't buy a Ferrari because my Honda Civic can do the same job.

> But the people buying them don't think they're strange, they think they're beautiful.

Can you reflect on why they think those designs are more beautiful than others?

I think you are missing his point - the items are desireable because of the brand. The stories, the movie stars, the songs and so on.

They don’t possess a universal, objectively valuable beauty that motivates the desire. If they did, fakes would be equally desireable and they are not.

I have a set of very expensive hand made japanese irons (golf clubs). I assure you I did not buy them from social influence or clout. In fact, nobody ever really sees them except me. I bought them because the craftsmanship and how truly beautiful they are. They make me smile.

No one is saying that beautiful things don't exist. Just that watches specifically are rarely worth $100k because of their beauty.

You're confusing the price of something with how much it costs to make it. Prices are just a made up number. Hopefully, the amount someone will pay you for the watch you made is more than it costs you to make it, and you have a sustainable business, but the funny thing about capitalism is that is not at all guaranteed. If the company wants to juice sales, they'll have a limited time discount. Or how about when the company is bankrupt and out of business? Then theres a fire sale and the price of something is pennies on the dollar. So they could sell the watches for $200, or they could give them away for free, or they can charge $100k, or they could barter for them. It's all a matter of business.

So you’re saying that $200 watches don’t sell?

But here - https://spechtandsohne.com/product-category/icon-quartz/

And they are pretty popular with folks who like watches.

They’re only popular because they appeal to the real luxury product, like counterfeit Rolexes.

Heh.

Just today I went to a watch repair person because the keeper on my strap broke. He said the only option is to buy the exact strap from the manufacturer.

The strap costs $120.

My watch costs $340 (although I got it on a discount for $220).

This is the most expensive watch I've ever bought. I typically would pay $50 or less (with the exception of one G-Shock that cost $80). I finally decide to buy something "pricey" and the darn thing breaks in less than 2 years - something that never happens with the cheap watches I've bought.

No thanks. I'm not paying $120 for a new strap. I'm getting a cheap watch that will last me over a decade (as most of my watches do).

I had the same experience with fountain pens. Every fountain pen I've paid more than $50 for has been worse than my favorite cheap ones.

If I were to plot quality on the y-axis, and price on the x-axis, I think I'll find a U or V curve, where on the very cheap end things are reliable and last long, and likewise on the very expensive end. But in the middle, you're just paying extra for crap.

Arguably, you could say I'm not paying enough. A $330 watch isn't expensive. I should have paid $3000. A $90 pen isn't expensive. I should have paid $250.

No thanks. When the <$50 products perform as well as the expensive ones, I'm not paying more.

To everyone else who reads this and thinks to themselves "Man, this guy has a refined palate that PG doesn't have. PG can't appreciate beauty", go take a look at the Nautilus yourself https://glennbradford.com/products/patek-philippe-nautilus-0...

It looks like an Aliexpress Timex.

Where do you think the Aliexpress Timex designs came from?

Guy who still wears high-heels because they originated in men using them in stirrups. "No, babe, this is normal. It's actually good men's fashion. Where did you think your heels originated?"

You are pointing to an outlier that is not expensive due to its beauty but historical significance. Typical expensive watches look normal and beautiful:

https://www.iwc.com/gb-en/watches/pilot-watches/iw388106-pil...

https://www.omegawatches.com/en-gb/watch-omega-speedmaster-m...

https://www.rolex.com/watches/submariner/m124060-0001

dang why did I click, they are gorgeous...

Is this trolling or are you serious? Those are all, imo, hideous! They are blocky and unrefined and like they’re uncomfortable to wear.

While I wouldn't call them ugly, I agree that they look just like, well, watches to me. I wouldn't pay a premium for any of them.

Since I'm not into luxury watches, a common occurrence is:

Me to a stranger: "Wow, cool watch! Which one is it?"

Stranger: "Random cheap brand I found on Amazon."

If you've never heard of Omega, Rolex, etc, chances are you won't be able to distinguish a cheap watch from an expensive watch. It's just the brand.

(OK, OK, chances are the material is a lot better - scratchproof, etc - but probably still costs less than 10% to make than what they sell for).

Of course, they look like normal watches, that’s the point. However, if you paid for, you would get an extremely polished watch, rares/high-quality materials, hand-checked for every imperfection etc. as opposed to an almost the same looking watch for a brand, say Orient, which you would be able to find minor imperfections even as a non-enthusiast.

I dunno. Having looked at cheaper watches, I don't see imperfections. I'll grant that over time they'll show up (quicker wear and tear).

Here's the thing: Ever since I was a kid, the following features were basic:

1. Tells time

2. Tells date

3. Stopwatch

4. Alarm

5. Chrono (yes, I used that a lot for years).

All this for $50 or less.

I'm assuming the >$100 watches have all this? If not, IMO, the watch is simply failing at the very basics. It shouldn't even be called a watch.

Then Tier 2:

- Timer

- Multiple alarms

- World time

I pay extra for these (and use all of them).

The next tier (Tier 3):

- No batteries and/or solar. Definitely no manual winding.

The next tier:

- Stuff like GPS, sunrise/sunset, etc.

Personally, only after Tier 3 would I consider paying extra for all the things you mentioned. But paying $300+ for a watch without a timer or world time? You've been scammed.

How much have you paid for a pen? Montblanc ball point pens can exceed $1000. Apply everything you said to a (ballpoint) pen - one that most likely will write poorer than a good $50 fountain pen - and you'll see how people view what you are saying.

These particular watches are not my taste as well (I do not find them ugly though) but these are some of the most popular examples watch community find very pretty.

I was not expecting it to be this ugly.

Really?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/comments/187srga/what_watch...

Clunky AF. The guy wearing this watch edited the OP's article, amongst other things. To any reasonable person the vast majority of these watches look like absolute dogshit. You know what looks good? The watches that these brands make for women!

PG described exactly the intention that goes into the design of these watches, in this very article. It's not what you say it is!

I agree with several things in TFA but you're right that some people just love these because they look beautiful.

TFA says this:

> If mechanical watches had only been accurate to a minute a day they couldn't have made the leap from keeping time to displaying wealth.

I don't think it's necessarily about displaying wealth: we could discuss humans (not just women but also men) wearing some kind of jewelry since thousands of years, including poor people who don't do it to display wealth but just because they enjoy the look of it. There was an article about monkeys enjoying the looks of crystals the other day I think.

One example would be people who don't dress nicely and who drive a cheap car and overal look like they just don't care about what others do think, and yet wear a dive watch. There are countless dive watches, be it a cheap no-name one, a perfect chinese replica of a Rolex Submariner (some replicas have most parts that can be exchanged with real Rolexes, which created the entire "frankenwatch" thing: where some parts are from the true brand and others have been swapped by chinese parts) or a real Rolex Submariner or Sea-Dweller costing $10 K to $20 K (for the base models).

Also in an age of alienating technology, something has to be said about a 100% mechanical device that's not connected to anything and doesn't require a battery to work, however imprecisely: it's not just about the beauty of the object when you look at it. It's also the beauty in having something that's not spying on you.

Just like there are people who, for a variety of reason, only ever take out their old Ferrari for a spin at night (when there's no trafic).

I take it you could very probably say: "Most people own fancy mechanical watches and high-end sport cars to flaunt wealth". But you can't generalize to 100% of watch owners and Ferrari owners.

> The people who buy them love them.

Yeah, when you spend half a million dollars on a watch, the sunk-cost fallacy has gotta hit hard.

I agree. Following his x account and posts, intellectuality in PG’s content has gone massively downhill (starting from slightly earlier than his recent rants about ‘wokeness’).

Once one of my favourite writers is really hard to read now.

It feels to me like he is so overconfident now that he thinks he gets it in any topic, even on the ones he has very little understanding of.

I’d wish for a more pointed rebuttal than merely a post complaining that the writer now sucks on here. It seems substantial to a degree of a post to me at least even if not whole in its conclusions.

Fair enough.

This particular article, I would say compherensive, but lacking substance.

The very promise of this article, that people primarily paying for brand name is simply wrong and it does not take too much time to spend in watch circles to know this.

What people pay is not performance/features/value, obviously. But the prime factor is also not the brand name. With the exception of Rolex, practically nobody knows if your watch costed $100 or $100,000.

What people pay for is artistry, reliability, and level-of-polish. These all have a cost that justify the price of the watch. Nobody pays $10,000 for a watch that could be produced for $100 just because of its brand name.

> They look beautiful.

I dunno there. I think that Paul Graham does not know much about what he talks about ... but these watches are not beautiful. I give you that there was care and intention put into them, but they are just ugly as a result.

And I did went through period of trying to find cool good looking old school watch. For some reason, the current watch style is ranging between "meh" and "ugly".

> "Brand is what's left when the substantive differences between products disappear. But making the substantive differences between products disappear is what technology naturally tends to do. So what happened to the Swiss watch industry is not merely an interesting outlier. It's very much a story of our times."

Really interesting parallel between decidedly traditional technology and today.

> Now they cost a lot because brands spend a lot on advertising and use tricks to limit supply, and what the buyer gets in return is an expensive status symbol.

Sounds a hell of a lot like the diamond industry. Also, the top fashion houses, but both industries are taking a drubbing from artificial competition (artificial diamonds, and knockoffs, of various stripes).

I'm a believer in branding. I worked for many years, for a company with a "top-shelf" brand, and saw what it took, to maintain. But it takes a huge amount of discipline and "silly" stuff. Brand damage can come from a million different directions. I have found very few people are willing to do what it takes to maintain a top brand.

For quite a while, there have been "brand-only" products, like Von Dutch, or Life Is Good™. They are the two-dollar hat, with the twenty-dollar logo. Like Izod Lacoste or Members Only, in the last century.

How do "big brands" deal with efforts pretty clearly (but deniably) aimed at sabotaging their brand? Besides the ebay approach.

Like pissing in beer vats?[0]

Sometimes, you can't fight it, but other times, trying to correct can only make things worse.

This is where having sober, experienced PR people and CEOs comes into play. There's no "textbook" way to deal with this stuff. It is different, each time, so you need smart leaders (something in short supply, these days).

The company that I worked for, was a camera company. One of their brand-protection strategies, was to have as much control as possible over any images made public from their cameras.

They went waaaaaay out of their way to help photographers get the best results, and it was a bitch to get test images from prerelease kit.

[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/corona-urine-rumor-cou...

I watched the Macbook Neo launch video yesterday and while the product is not very exciting, the video has great production value and it showed this: People want to pay for marketing.

Not that Apple's only appeal is marketing, Mac laptops certainly have pros over the bottom and mid tier Windows laptops. But having seen that video, and knowing that other have seen it, are aware of Apple and its positioning, makes people feel better while using and owning their devices.

People absolutely want that feeling and they're willing to pay for it.

Apple clearly positions themselves as a premium product. There is some luxury element to it to (e.g., my friends will look down on me if I have an android), but it's not really the same as a true luxury product where brand is the main thing you are paying for. If you offered to sell me a macbook for 25% cheapr on condition that I remove the branding, I'd be happy to do so. I'm not a watch person, but I suspect that most Rolex buyers would not pay anything close for an identical watch without the crown logo.

My main point can be put a little more clearly: it is not just that we are willing to pay for the brand experience and the marketing that builds it, but we actively want to pay for it.

Macbook Neo customers want Apple to put out creative product marketing videos, they believe it is part of the offer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3SIKAmPXY4

I have to disagree - I have seen the video, and I also have ordered the product, but the marketing isn't what sold me, and I don't see any evidence that the marketing is what is responsible for people's desire of the product. It's affordable in a world where all prices are increasing everywhere. That's my theory on why people want this product.

It's also just a good product for the price. My only real gripe is the non-haptic trackpad.

Is there data to prove or disprove this?

I haven't given a shit about Apple marketing since I was a teenager, and I have bought many Apple products since then. If they could turn their marketing spend into a discount on the price instead I'd happily pay less. (Of course, this would reduce their sales, so it wouldn't work that way, but I'm not in it for the videos I've never watched.)

Obviously I'm aware they still have their fanatics, but how much of their sales is that really?

The data is Apple's margins on smartphones and other devices, compared to competitors in respective vertical.

Actually most watch collectors do not wear their most expensive watches, they have daily or travel watches to wear that carry less risk.

Also, watches are status symbols to a really narrow niche. Vast majority of people cannot name a non-Rolex expensive watch and would assume Seiko (and maybe Tissot) are the best watches after Rolex, followed by Swatch (and maybe Timex).

I don't think either of these points change the fact that if you bought a Rolex (or IWC or whatever) that someone slipped you out the side door of the factory, identical in every way except missing the logos, for a substantial discount, it would not be nearly as valuable or prestigious in your collection as a genuine one that other collectors would want. How much would a serious collector splash out on an unofficial - and very unspecial - version of a 100k watch?

I'd do that in a heartbeat for a MacBook, though. Same as with any other consumer good.

Apple is competing in the "premium fit and finish" product space, not the "luxury good" space, so the brand is significantly less of a factor of the value for their devices than it is for Rolex, IWC, etc.

And despite the essay linked here—which seems like a lot of words spilled on a fairly mundane history lesson—I don't think "luxury goods are driven by name value" is anything new. Goes back to the wealthy being patrons of the arts for hundreds, thousands of years... They wanted their name associated with those works, and they wanted those works to be famous. Status all the way down. "When telling the time became ubiquitous, the luxury goods part of the watch market became an increasingly large part of it" is uninteresting.

I’d do that in a heartbeat for IWC!

There are of course people who buy Rolexes or whatever for the brand. There are probably more people who buy Mac Books for the logo.

But most people are rational. Most people would pay that much money for a watch only if it does not impact their finances in a meaningful way, but within that, they would want to buy the highest quality they can. And for some people that means an IWC, Omega, Longines, or whatever. If they could buy the same quality from a less known brand, they would. Lots of people buy Grand Seikos at Rolex prices. I buy normal Seikos at $300. We all pay for the quality we can afford.

Brand is important because it is an insurance that you are not being scammed. Besides that, it is not the main factor let alone “era defining” as the article is trying to make it out.

not to tangent off from your point too much but I think in reality one might in fact pay more for a logoless macbook just because it would in itself be a pretty unique and cool artefact, and a good story as to how you acquired it!

Thank you for missing the point of the essay.

Casio is the best watch brand in the world. This is measurable - most features, battery life, versatility, utility, and durability for the lowest possible price. It's an objective truth. Given this, other watch brands have had to differentiate, and since they cannot compete on pure functionality alone, they offer luxury or, as pg points out, brand identity as a differentiatior.

I would argue Garmins are better value for the money for fitness features but I agree. I excluded Casio because they build “brand era” watches as well as extremely cheap watches, not to mention all the other things they do. So I’m not sure where Casio is to average consumer when it comes to watches.

Tudor says they'll pay around a third to a half for something pretty close made by the same parent company but with a different movement and branding.

Yes, but Tudor's brand is "it's built by the same company as Rolex".

I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to bring Apple up. I'm clearly behind.

The MacBook Neo is the opposite of pg's "Brand Age". It's very subtly branded, the Apple is no longer shiny and "MacBook" isn't written anywhere in it. There are no identifiably-Apple design quirks, no notch. It's just the platonic ideal of a laptop. Screen, keyboard, trackpad. Nothing extra.

The cutesy intro video will be the main driver of ~0 sales for it.

> It's very subtly branded,

Except for the gigantic Apple logo plastered all over the lid?

Don't get me wrong, I like Apple design (and I adore early Braun), but subtly branded it is not. You're supposed to recognize it instantly at any distance. Apple knows their brand value.

Branding does not mean "logo on a product body".

What I noticed was that when I was at dinner tonight with my young twenties down to 14 nieces and nephews, every one of them knew what the Macbook Neo was, including the colors.

There was a big argument about iPad w/Pencil vs laptop, but they all said it was a good laptop for highschool/uni.

None of them have seen or used one.

The video is four minutes of a voice over talking about all the features and use cases of the new laptop, while the video is showing only the computer software and hardware. That's exactly how ads used to be and should be, and to me there's not much about branding in it.

There's no beautiful people, no successful lifestyle or even a face in the launch video.

The watches mentioned carry status for a certain sub-group of the population.

The utility stems not from the functionality of watch itself but from what it signals to other people.

It’s a simple status games. PG, like every other human being, also plays status game. But not with watches.

He plays with a different group of people. With different rules for status gain/loss.

Maybe it's: who has the better blog, or the better investments. I don’t know because I don’t live in his world.

> Branding is centrifugal; design is centripetal

So they’re the same thing but from two frames of reference?

I’m not sure this metaphor holds.

Yeah it really felt hammered in as a way for the author to try to look literate and punchy, but it does not work.

Maybe the phone market is still in its golden age? It's a wonder you can get the best phone in the world for only a little over $1000. And everyone can buy it. Online without a line.

Comparing with luxury watches which cost a magnitude or two more and are beaten in precision by a $10 casio.

I guess the thing to watch out for is technical stagnation and "good enough"? Uh..

Naomi Klein’s famous book No Logo* does a great job diving into the expansion of branding that happened around the 80s and into the 90s. As someone who’s lived in the post-branding world my whole life, it reads like an anthropological text about my culture from an outsider. It’s fascinating the kinds of things we take for granted.

* https://bookshop.org/p/books/no-logo-no-space-no-choice-no-j...

I kept thinking that he'd eventually compare it to writing software by hand, and how we're at the end of one golden age. But he never did. So I wonder what the impetus for the essay was.

About a quarter in I figured out, if there was a point to the article he should have gotten to it already, if it's taking this long maybe he just wants to write about watches. So I skimmed and I was mostly right, the way it's presented I think you can probably draw comparisons to a few other things, not just writing software, but it's more of an optional exercise for the reader.

There was even a post on HN yesterday making a similar comparison of LLMs and the impact of quartz in watchmaking.

I think the comparison is warranted, and human-crafted code will perhaps become a brand differentiator in the future too.

Ditto. I kept waiting for the AI comparison. My interpretation was less agentic coding than the commodification of LLMs, forcing Anthropic and OpenAI into a pivot to focus on brand. Anthropic's spat with the DoD could be viewed through that lens: losing money on a deal to better position the brand.

I like a lot of the points made here, and I think they likely hold truth in many scenarios.

That said, in the case of watches (no pun intended), Grand Seiko seems like a counterexample to a few of the points made. First, they are very much still sold on the basis of both brand/design and engineering. Spring drive is an engineering marvel, and a lot of people appreciate such works of human ingenuity even if they are not technically the optimal approach to solving the underlying problem. (Though it is nice never having to change batteries.) Even their notably high frequency mechanical movements are desirable on that basis.

More importantly, GS watches have very distinctive design elements that are easily recognized (ie. branding), and I would argue they sacrifice nothing in terms of usability to achieve that. Their dials in particular are works of art, but they make the watch no more difficult to read, just more enjoyable.

I too felt like the omission of GS was a miss.

While the Swiss are competing for exclusivity, GS's UFA is clearly generations ahead of anything else in the market.

That said, as a GS owner, I still think their marketing sucks, the watch photos on their website are garbage, and no one except us watch nerds are going to remember SBGA211.

Brand are brittle. It takes a single CEO associated to some pedophile network or make a nazi salute and it's ready to plummet.

If the business really mainly on the technical merits of the product/service, even blank brand is an option. Many brand as a façade to a single plant is a different tradeoff.

> Obsolete technologies don't usually get adopted as ways to display wealth.

Is this really true? Mechanical watches. Sailing yachts. Fountain pens. Analog audio...

VHS, The Dewey Decimal system, punchtape programming, fletching, sailmaking

> Jaeger-LeCoultre's web site says that one of their current collections "takes its inspiration from the classic designs of the golden age of watchmaking." In saying this they're implicitly saying something that present-day watchmakers all know but rarely come so close to saying outright: whatever age we're in now, it's not the golden age.

not sure what tfa is trying to say here, but this is far from being an indictment of the current age. the term "golden age" is (from what I've seen) usually used for the time when an industry or field was taking the leap from niche to mainstream, and in the process defining some of the things that would later come to be considered characteristic. by that token, of course the golden age of watchmaking is not today - the field has already gone mainstream and indeed does retain a lot of the characteristic features that the golden age innovated upon and defined.

> Obsolete technologies don't usually get adopted as ways to display wealth. Why did it happen with mechanical watches?

For many men, the wristwatch is the only socially acceptable jewelry they can wear. Jewelry is usually used to signify some combination of status and taste, so it makes a lot of sense to spend more on watches with nerdy features like automatic windup, spring drive, etc. Women have other ways of displaying status and taste.

Obviously not the main point, but I've been reading watch media online for over a decade now, I've read or heard this "Quartz Crisis" story hundreds of times and never ONCE read about the coincidence with the Bretton Woods agreement. Makes sense though, its basically oral history.

I'd love to read more about the coincidence with the Bretton Woods agreement.

Wdym 'oral history'? Who has been talking about this history orally?

> Of course they don't call them golden ages as they're happening. "Golden age" is a term people use later, after they're over. That doesn't mean that golden ages aren't real, but rather that their participants take them for granted at the time. They don't know how good they have it. But while it's usually a mistake to take one's good fortune for granted, it's not in this case. What a golden age feels like, at the time, is just that smart people are working hard on interesting problems and getting results.

Is he talking about software development here? Are we going to call the pre-LLM era the golden age where relatively limited set of individuals had to be paid a lot to craft artisanal "code" which with LLMs became super cheap?

Arguably, not even the pre-LLM era, enterprise sales started dominating over technical excellence some time before LLMs were invented.

Enterprise sales predate the 2000s-2010s when B2C work really took off with places like Google, Amazon, and platforms like mobile. Mainframes in the 1960s. Relational databases in the 1980s. Productivity in the 1990s.

i love the analogy. the golden age of the web was before javascript, when only people who knew how to code html were able to make websites.

however things come in cycles, so who knows maybe the next will come by

> only people who knew how to code html were able to make websites

And the people who were able to click Save as HTML in Word creating a complete jumble that only worked in IE

But js didn't make it any easier, html is in fact simpler (and you still needed to write html post-js).

A good time to remind any of the "watch nerds" mentioned that this exists: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

What an amazing post, thank you for sharing

Man he must really be getting older. Getting into watches (even in his own way lol) is a telltale sign

An aside but there is a wonderful article on how the swiss watchmaking industry won the "brand age" here - https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-we-still-have-mechani...

Apparently this was written to wrap the AI promotion:

"The more subtle lesson is that fields have natural rhythms that are beyond the power of individuals to resist. Fields have golden ages and not so golden ages, and you're much more likely to do good work in a field that's on the way up."

Cigarettes were resisted, leaded fuel was resisted, nuclear energy was resisted. AI is already being resisted and the resistance will grow.

If the author had been paying attention _while it was happening_, rather than looking back at history and re-stating it to fit his mental model, he would have seen something else.

Namely, the whole story of the rebound is Nicolas Hayek and Swatch. You see, at the explosion of quartz watches, everyone already had a drawer full of Rolexes and Pateks and AP's. They had done that. But telling time? More accurately? That was actually pretty boring.

Nicolas Hayek became a hero. It's fair to say, yes, he consolidated ASUAG + SSIH and built volume and all that. But really? It was about Emotion and redefining the Essential Function of a watch.

Swatch made Swiss watches cool again. The marketplace was saying Japan vs. Switzerland and quartz vs. old fashioned gears. Swatch rejected that and said "fun, whimsical. Wear not one, but several. You be you." What landed the message was wealthy Swiss keeping the Rolex in the drawer and believing in the the $19 Swatch. Aston Martin and Swatch. That was the way to roll.

It became a thing, the kids bought in, and the Swiss Watch Industry (Big Watch, lol) stayed relevant vs. Japan. It was a country vs. country fight and Swiss prevailed on creativity.

Swatch was such a watershed moment, tha that across Europe the key to Industrial Success became "Personalized Mass Production." Why? Because swatch quickly grew to be able to launch 2x70 models a year. The German Industrialists included personalized mass production and innovation in every slide deck for the next 20 years. And if you don't think that matters, look at Zara, and then Shein. Same playbook as Swatch. Swatch changed everything.

Are we in "A Brand Age" or does The Brand Age occur only in different spaces after a technology becomes ubiquitous and like a utility, so the only way to command a premium is branding?

What things are not quite there but will have their Brand Age next? AI? Spaceships?

I'm also a bit confused as to whether there's judgment in the article though. He's applauding branding as a survival technique, but also saying it's silly and vestigial. So if we find ourselves in a Brand Age because we've succeeded in solving the last really hard problem we should... drop everything and find another problem so we can move it into the Brand Age?

Either way - thoughts were provoked so thx for that.

My crackpot theory: USB chargers and cables. Right now, a quality USB charger is cheap, but it's indistinguishable from a shitty USB charger, and there's a practical difference. And it's frequently on your desk. And it's got a lot of space for branding. A luxury USB cable would be identifiable and also (hopefully) also work well for whatever you might plug it into, until they invent the next new USB standard.

Of course, there are downsides. Nobody's gonna just walk away with your watch, but a cable on your desk that also costs $1000? And also, a lot of us would look at your diamond-encrusted USB adapter and think "this man is a moron."

Good points, but implicitly equating good design with functional design irks me. You can define your terms as you wish, but at least be upfront about it.

> Branding is centrifugal; design is centripetal.

Functional design is centripetal. "Good" design is one which achieves the designer's goals, which are often much more complicated than that.

I've been reading Rory Sutherland's book Alchemy and it's full of fascinating insights about marketing/branding etc

Case in point:

- company was testing out their mail based fundraising drive

- they randomly tested cheap vs expensive envelopes, regular envelopers vs side opening envelopes etc for how people could send back a check

- they found that expensive envelopes beat cheap and side envelopes beat top loading

The part that was fascinating is that many folks would think "what difference does it make what kind of envelope you use?". Sutherland points out that putting a check for a large amount in a cheap envelope somehow feels "wrong" even if people can't verbalize this.

Another example is how in the 1950s many food engineers were obsessed with the idea of "food nutrient pills" and how they would replace cooking and eating out in restaurants. While it's true that things like Soylent and Huel made inroads with the tech crowd, most people still love going out to restaurants. The point being b/c eating out isn't only about eating: it's also about taking your wife out for your anniversary or meeting your siblings who are visiting from abroad.

I mention this b/c the HN crowd tends to be very logical/rational (including myself) and this book was a real eye opener around how people actually make decisions.

0 - https://amzn.to/3Plf65m

Similarly, when I was a teenager I knew a guy who built guitars by hand. He is a master craftsman who makes beautiful instruments, but he told me one time that he had customers sometimes lose interest because his guitars were cheaper than similar competitors (5k vs 10k as I recall). He wound up raising his prices, and got more sales as a result, even though the guitars hadn't changed at all. It was a really interesting (and to me, bizarre) demonstration of how people can make decisions very irrationally at times.

Couple of other interesting pricing stories:

1. Cereal

Apparently cereal makers were losing money b/c they priced their product at a much lower price point than, at the time, the regular breakfast of bacon and eggs.

They hired a consultant who pointed out they could raise their prices as long as it was lower than bacon and eggs, make more money and still be cheaper.

2. Raising prices

There is a story in one of the pricing/economics books about a store keeper who told her assistant to halve the price of jewelry that wasn't selling. The assistant misheard and doubled the price. The jewelry immediately sold.

3. The shelf that always sells

In the book about Shopsin's in NYC, the author and owner mentions that certain shelves in a store will sell out of whatever is on that shelf. Regardless of price, product, time of year etc.

Apparently, putting things right by the front door in supermarkets is the opposite: very few people buy anything that is there. I noticed that one of the Real Housewives of NJ had her food product there and thought to myself: someone is giving you bad advice and/or humoring you by putting your product there.

veblen goods

He's omitting the most important bit. Data from the OECD shows highly unequal societies tend to be more status-obsessed, leading to higher spending on "positional goods" (items bought to signal status). These economies often have higher advertising expenditures (as a percentage of GDP) to fuel that competition. Inequality is quite corrosive in many ways, including leading to fascism.

true. This is a good essay but there’s, as to be expected, not too much of an acknowledgement of the economic and political backdrop of the arena this played out in. A lot of discussions of this essay therefore get diluted into musings about aspects of human nature and its tendency to obsess over status and while missing the broader point about the role these sorts of corpo strategies play in modern societal wellbeing.

One of my favorite books about inequality is The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett). It asks how this country can be so incredibly rich, unprecedented in human history, but still create so much physical and mental suffering

https://ibb.co/jZs6NhLt

Interesting that this comes out after this podcast

https://www.econtalk.org/seiko-swatch-and-the-swiss-watch-in...

The question in the zeitgeist is whether coding agents will be to software engineers as the quartz revolution was to expert watchmakers.

Commoditized software is here. Will there be a market for high-end, luxury software? Becoming an artificially scarce veblen good is unlikely to work for digital goods the way it has for watches.

Sounds like pg is trying to justify an expensive new hobby :)

No, he's advising us that we software developers might be coming to an end of a golden age, that if so, resistance is futile, and how to find another.

Sounds like pg is trying to deduct an expensive new hobby :)

FTFY!

EconTalk from last month on the topic: https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/seiko-swatch-and-the-s...

Just missed the part where the Swiss decided to cancel the competition than allow Seiko to win in 1968.

Also explains why German cars look the way they do today. Emphasizing the brand, so everyone can see it.

> So the only thing distinguishing one top brand from another was the name printed on the dial

Respectfully disagree.

Since the 60's (and one could argue, even long before that), watches are 1) fashion, and 2) male wealth-signaling fashion. That's it. Nothing more. And for males who subscribe to this wealth-signaling cult, they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist.

Okay, today's brands signal maybe a little differently than just wealth. Casio G-Shock watches aren't substantially different than their non-G-Shock counterparts in any significant way, but they cost way more. The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-ness? Maybe it is closer to a pure fashion brand here.

I think we've been in "The Brand Age" since the advent of advertising. There are plenty of products that have virtually no differentiation besides brand, and there (almost) always has been.

> they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist

No, they didn’t. The makers of movements and makers of cases were separate. From far away you only know the case on the wrist. Not the movement. (I think Rolex was the first mass-market Swiss watch brand to vertically integrate. Patek may have been the first boutique.)

The movement isn't part of the brand. It's not part of the signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand. And if you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them.

> movement isn't part of the brand. It's not part of the signal. The case/dial/sometimes band are the brand

The movement was the expensive part. Audemars, Vacheron and Patek only made movements. The retailer would then put it in a case. That’s the entire point of PG’s essay.

> if you couldn't tell them apart, they wouldn't be any good at signaling, the entire point of wearing them

Which might lead you to revise your hypothesis around why these watches were bought and made in the “golden age of watches.” Then as now there is such a thing as quiet luxury.

> Patek only made movements

I don't think thats really true, Audemars & Patek deffo made entire watches in the 50s.

Don't get me wrong they also designed movements, but by the time of the quartz crisis, Patek bought in movements from outside.

It doesn't really help that omega and tissolt were merged with Certina, ETA, hamilton when then turned into swatch, which basically dominates the entire swiss watch industry along with rolex and richemont(who own Vacheron)

It’s sort of hard to unravel what’s part of the brand, it’s all imagination anyway.

The watch manufacturer, as part of their reputation, buys “premium” internal components. And then the hardcore watch-heads get to know that this model has that premium movement. Everybody in the club gets to signal to each other by knowing internal details that outsiders don’t notice (or even details that can’t be noticed, I mean, I assume by nowadays non-premium-brand movements are functionally identical to the premium ones).

The whole point of pg's essay is that signaling transitioned into being the entire point of wearing them primarily in the 1980s.

They were. The Acquired podcast on Rolex really opened my eyes to this whole world. They defined the playbook in the 1930s that Apple repeated in the 80s and especially 2000s.

I entered this cult last year. It’s been super fun to spot and infer from a distance, as you say, these hidden signals that men have chosen to spend $20,000 to $120,000 on.

G-Shock says “I do things that are so dangerous and so off the grid your Rolex or Apple Ultra would shatter and die”. And it’s true, out of my whole collection, that’s the one that will still be within a ms of true time 25 years after the power goes out after the nukes go off.

my g-shock frogman is 10+ years old, still sits by the window, charging itself everyday (solar powered), and it's the watch I would grab if the proverbial hit the fan. I'd grab my self-winding analog jlc watch too, just in case I needed it as a bribe (not sure which would be better as a bribe if that happens, maybe the g-shock!)

>The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-ness? Maybe it is closer to a pure fashion brand here.

I own (among other, nicer time pieces) a G-Shock. I bought it when I was in the military and frankly it's a great watch that has withstood some serious abuse. Maybe a cheaper watch would have also survived? I'd happily buy another but mine's still literally and figuratively ticking.

A rich relative arranges charity balls. Her friends buy 20K tickets to them and in return she buys tickets to their balls.

The money presumably goes to some good cause ( her thing at the moment is some rare pediatric neurological disorder ) and the organisers get to socialise with each other and wear millions in clothing and jewels.

I never understood the demand for luxury watch businesses. From what I have heard, it is widely used as a tool to transfer value (read $$ laundering). I do not know how prominent it is but if so then we might want to look at it from the utility perspective (to achieve that goal) than the "brand" story.

With the exception of a few brands that have the artificial scarcity that PG wrote about here, pre-owned watches have the same kind of value decline that pre-owned cars do. If you are ever in the market for a nice watch that is actually available at retail, you should probably buy it used instead.

Wild timing on this. Been seeing a huge uptick in people "trying to learn opsec" as they fumble around for ways to make money with openclaw and land on "selling fake bags/shoes/watches", seemingly emboldened by those who value these brands trying to use openclaw to secure mispriced items or snipe auctions.

Funny thing is, I'm not sure anyone is actually doing either thing successfully. Every time I've looked into an openclaw success story it's ended up being complete fiction.

Could it be that fake success stories (and, perhaps, associated "training material") are the real product there?

I'd bet good money the whole reason for this essay is PG tried to buy a Patek and was told to fuck off. This is his way of getting back at them.

The last paragraph goes so far as to predict/hope that the whole sector will at some point simply die:

> mechanical watches would start to be seen by the next cohort of young rich people as an old guy thing. It's hard to imagine a luxury watch brand surviving that.

In cauda venenum if there ever was one.

> So what happened to the Swiss watch industry is not merely an interesting outlier. It's very much a story of our times.

I am not saying it is, but it sounds like the first paragraph of every Gemini deep research.

Considering he is one of the most prominent tech writers, PG's articles are likely among the most impactful to have influenced AI writing styles.

Calvin: I wish my shirt had a logo or a product on it.

Hobbes: …

Calvin: A good shirt turns the wearer into a walking corporate billboard!

Hobbes: …

Calvin: It says to the world, “My identity is so wrapped up in what I buy that I paid the company to advertise its products!”

Hobbes: You’d admit that?

Calvin: Oh, sure. Endorsing products is the American way to express individuality.

https://i.imgur.com/dY2hkOJ.gif

While I mostly agree with the grim conclusion, I think there's an important aspect ignored that in every domain the very first and very best brands could leverage as good design and purpose: art and fun.

Remember winamp skins?

"The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged." - Shklovsky on defamiliarization

What pg is really writing about is enshittification, consumerism.

I care about as much for the brands' movements as my own.

Where I thought this was going: entering the Brand Age of AI. LLMs become commoditized, so the big labs increasingly focus on marketing and rhetoric to maintain market share. See the Anthropic spat with DoD (though I do applaud them for that, whatever their motivations).

What was the interesting problem that Swiss watchmakers could have focused on, instead of pursuing brand?

Thank you for enabling the reader mode on this blog!

"When our time traveler peered into the windows of these shops, the first thing he'd notice was how large all the watches were."

My only question about this entire essay is... where did this time traveler came from???

"Our" time traveler was never mentioned until this line.

Not true:

> The best way to answer that might be to imagine what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine. [...] The first thing he'd notice, if he walked through a fancy shopping district, is that all the prominent watchmakers of the golden age seem to be doing better than ever.

Clearly, the time traveler went back in time to get inserted into a paragraph that GP overlooked the first time.

It was several paragraphs before that, where pg said "[...] what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine."

Although PG isn't wrong here, people also have larger wrists nowadays that are able to comfortably support larger watches compared to ~50 years a go, never mind at the 1940s or 1950s.

I think the challenge of the PG essay (which to me is defined by an attempt to take the particulars of a cultural moment, romanticize the individual, and attempt generalize toward universal laws and principles) is that they are too idealistic for this cultural moment

There was a time when software was closer to a freer market and there was room for anyone to be the next google. But this moment is deeply political, tactical, and the existing incumbents have so much power that learning the intricacies of their systems may be make or break for any of your goals (e.g. how to advertise on google, or get featured on the app store, how to secure a government contract, etc). It isn't a time for abstract generalities (like chasing "golden ages")

At least I don't think anybody is or should be asking how to build "great" stuff anymore, great hasn't won in many categories. Most things that were great were so only to gain a moat and then enshittify.

I'd be really curious if he's happy where the tech-world is now, if he sees it as an oligopoly, if he sees it as meritocratic, and if he sees any hope of it getting better.

Or BYD vs BMW.

BYD is more reliable and arguably better by metrics that matter to people.

BMW still has more cachet and is bought largely for the brand value.

very interesting article but i was surprised pg’s conclusion was the opposite of what i expected. to me it was like oh this is brilliant, instead of trading effort linearly for money you can just control image and be paid outside for it. reminded me of, e.g. chamberlain canned coffee, which tastes terrible but has emma chamberlain’s personal brand lifting for it in the aisle every time you see it.

https://www.econtalk.org/seiko-swatch-and-the-swiss-watch-in...

Don't worry, Seiko learned: https://www.grand-seiko.com/us-en/collections/sbgd223j

Grand Seiko makes some truly beautiful watches, and also some terribly gaudy horrors.

I expected this essay to end with a note about software's golden age.

It seems to be trying to make the same point (about AI as a "disruptor" analogous to quartz movements) but more subtly.

When the tech tops out, the ecosystem moves from natural selection to sexual selection.

Watch nerd here. Watched this just yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYMWRUMOeA

Looks like PG drew inspiration from there. Or just a coincidence

> One obvious lesson is to stay away from brand.

Wow, that is… not what I would recommend. Brand is one of the few things that will give you pricing power in the age of AI.

software is becoming like the fashion industry. you go to Prada vs Hermess because you think one does better shoes and the other better bags. But is not because neither could do better shoes or bad it isb ecause your mind positioning is set.

Software. everyone can do it now. but you still buy lets say Crowdstrike for security, because is in your brain for years as security software.

Because he focuses in the story of luxury watches, Graham sees only the brand tricks that work mostly for rich people.

There are brands for non-rich: Linux is a very strong brand but virtually free and non-exclusive at all (think Android phones). Patriotism and country reputation might also be thought as brands. E.g. would Portugal's tourist boom happen without the Portuguese tarts popularity?

Edit: my watch is a Pebble.

warren buffett always said brand was the only moat. only IP can be protected. Everything else can be replaced, rebuilt.

“Why is the Patek Philippe Nautilus so expensive?”

If you have to explain why your product is expensive, maybe it shouldn’t be.

I think this is the age of craftsmen.

> It's hard to do good work without a good problem.

This is an amazing quote, and I'm immediately adding it to my repertoire. Thank you!

Such analysis always presupposes an anthropology (and a psychology) and a metaphysics. Without at least a good, sound intuition of these, you are bound to fall into all sorts of traps. Materialism will move you toward reductionism, pseudo-mysticism will move you toward reification or projection, and so on.

So, when we talk about the real and imagined value of a watch, we can consider it from different angles. You cannot pick one (like the first) and reduce all value judgements to just that measure.

1. the utility of a watch as a timekeeping artifact

2. the aesthetic quality as a work of art

3. the quality as ornament/jewelry

4. the effectiveness as signal of wealth

5. the quality as a particular kind of technology (mechanical vs. quartz), perhaps as an expression of historical techniques

The aim and measure are critical.

The trouble, then, is not that Patek is bad. A nice Patek watch is of excellent quality as (2), (3), and (5). As (1), for everyday use, yes; along an absolute axis concerned only with accuracy and precision, not so much. (4) is where the pathological and deceptive begins to creep. Where the market price with respect to (1), (2), (3), and (5) would reflect a just price, (4) becomes a race to the bottom of the most vulgar and base and irrational sort.

Somebody's getting into watch collecting! Quartz watches were also developed in Switzerland: check out the story of the Beta: https://goldammer.me/blogs/articles/beta-21-history-guide

finally, a new essay. and coincidently, its about something i have been thinking about all week.

I'm still not really clear on what the point PG is driving at.

However swatch group(omega was force merged in the 80s to form the swatch group) has 3x the turnover of Patek.

More over Swatch caters to both high end and the poors + kids. So brand is.. good? so long as you only cater for the rich? I'm not getting that really.

Essay's very insightful, but it misses a big distinction. Watches are straight-up B2C consumer luxury. Once the real engineering edge vanished brand and scarcity could carry everything forever. Buyers pay extra precisely because it's status jewelry that doesn't need to improve year after year.

Most software especially SaaS like Salesforce or Shopify is B2B infrastructure. Brand loyalty there is way thinner and more fragile. Businesses don't pick tools to feel cool or exclusive. They pick what actually runs the operation better keeps their data safe and doesn't screw them long-term. Unlike a finished watch you own outright, software is a live service. You never know if tomorrow they'll yank a feature you rely on, hide it behind a new paywall, churn the UI, or jack up prices to please shareholders. Enshittification is brutal in this space because companies have to keep growing revenue forever. Open-source or self-hosted options keep winning ground for exactly that reason. True ownership and predictability beat any brand when it's your P&L on the line.

In almost every category meaningful differentiation is a myth. It sounds nice to tell yourself you've got it and talk about moats or whatever, but it misses the point.

What people usually mean when they talk about differentiation is distinctiveness [1]. Design isn't a differentiator for these watches it's about being distinctive. At the end of the day when telling the time is commoditized, and expensive watches are just a status symbol it's all you've got.

[1] - https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/differentiat...

Chinese models are indeed cheaper!

pg no longer in his golden age

> That turns out to be a profitable business though.

He does not disappoint. Also, not buying the watch industry parable.

I agree with the premise, and note well: food has just finished its Brand Age. The combination of dark kitchens and last mile delivery has shown clearly that consumers have little loyalty to brands and simply want convenience at a reasonable cost. From this lens, nearly the entire QSR industry which dominates food particularly in America is about to tank, and indeed many of them already lost 30-80% value in 2025 (Sweetgreen, Krispy Kreme, JITB, Cava, Shake Shack, Portillo's), but the new reality isn't yet priced in. The vast majority of them operate on a brand and franchisee model meaning they're structurally incapable of exiting the paradigm. We're about to use automation exploit that: zero brand investment, 100% CVP. Now seeking capital partners for at-scale GTM. https://infinite-food.com/

Observing people from Silicon Valley discover the concepts of "brand" and "taste" is quite amusing.

It's like watching a hyper-rational alien species trying to understand humans.

> "Wait...So you purchased this at 5X the price of another product because of how it makes you feel about yourself, and not for its utility? Fascinating!"

We've been in the brand age for 200 years. This is nothing new. Technology products have just been so uniquely useful due to fast innovation that silicon valley has largely been able to ignore the centuries old techniques of Madison Avenue.

Every single market as it matures ultimately turns into a marketing competition, not a product competition. It has always been this way. Silicon Valley is the new Detroit.

Is it just me or are an increasing number of (high profile) people in the tech industry into luxury watches these days?

Gotta do something with those RSUs.

I asked Claude to psychoanalyze why I got obsessed with them and it said I’m likely striving for something tangible that appeals to my engineer mindset that isn’t now obsolete in the age of AI. It’s my career’s existentialism.

That sounds overly edgy. Tangibility has value, like buttons making a comeback in cars.

Status games are evergreen, and a lot of conspicuous consumption has fallen out of fashion. They've gotta flaunt their wealth and position somehow, and lambos are just too crypto-bro and gauche.

It's also a sales tactic - a watch can be a schelling point if you're looking to network with someone who's into it.

Watches were understated in the 70s and turned more to gold in the 80s and a super proliferation of diversity in the 90s. 90s also had machismo Schwarzenegger sized cases for steroid men.

2000s brought Hiphop bling culture to them which embraced maximalism with size further increasing and 85 diamonds and rubies being something worthy of showing.

2010s austerity led to a retreat all the way to 1940s style trench and dress watches, cases back to 38mm.

Post Covid, boldness is having a comeback. See the newest Planet Ocean. We are seeing bling and ostentatious gold again on celebrities this year.

Anecdotally, in the trenches, I'm seeing a proliferation of Casio F-91w and AE-1200s. Maybe a counter response, lol.

I feel like the F-91w is as much of a brand-driven symbol as the luxury watches. The F-91w has come to represent this scrappy, minimal, no-nonsense mentality - but it's not the cheapest watch you can get, and I don't think it's even the cheapest Casio anymore. It's more expensive than it used to be, so you need to go out of your way to pay more to get this specific model. Because customers know that people will recognize it, and that will better project the way they want to be seen.

pg blind spot about brands: they cohere with a very specific but common lifestyle.

1. TV (TikTok)

2. Cars (and parking)

3. Buying shit is fun

I don't own a TV or use TikTok, and I don't use a car, and I don't shop. My experience with brands is very limited but also not that unusual. It's very San Francisco, a town whose nice parts (and problems) are very much, the future of your community, not its past.

In contrast, there's Reno. It has 10 lane roads criss crossing a business district that is as big as the whole of San Francisco, and it's all brand stores with ample parking. There's no like, La Taqueria. There's Qdoba and Chipotle and Target. Are you getting it? You drive everywhere and you watch TikTok while you drive, and Costco and other brands pay TikTok to tip the scales to make videos mentioning them go viral (that's their ads business, to people who don't know how it really works or get hopelessly fixated on requiring a citation for every fact they learn online), and it's a brand culture. It's videos of cute girls - they weren't paid to do this! - but they're in Costco buying shit, and there are a lot of cute girls on TikTok, but curiously it's the videos of theirs interacting with brands that go viral. And most of all, parking. There's so much parking to buy your brand shit. Driving around in your really cozy car, spending your whole day never elevating your heart rate.

And it works! Your life is really great with brands and cars and TV, because likes and wirecutter recommendations are a very secular, very nonjudgmental form of truth, it looks like objectivity and requires little brain power to digest.

So brands and cars and TikTok all synergize together like a cheeseburger's interior. It doesn't really have much at all to do with trade or innovation nowadays.

Oops. I may have written too long trying to respond to it that it got too long for hackernews haha.

I have written that comment on here now[0]

The TLDR tho of my post/comment is that Brand age that PG mentions is essentially something so linked to marketing and advertising and spending money/injecting money and becoming the differentiating factor. This can be a big thing for pure capitalists but the current forms of advertising rely on black boxes attention centralized which you have to go to ads for and this whole system feels rent seeking for the existence of livelihood/businesses extracting money from them small or large and very famously, Adam smith was against forms of rent-seeking.

Marketing to me seems like converting everything to a statistic and everything related to marketing subsequently starts having infinitely looser morals which I don't think I need to be telling everybody of. It feels like trying to capitalize on top of anything or everything without any regards to anything.

I do think that we do have some say in it. The nature of AI is that its out and there is no way of putting it back in the box especially with OSS models reaching parity and no company is putting their frontier models back and this means that AI slop is something that we just have to deal with. But instead of dealing it with brands which can inject money because they got money. It's better if we try to filter things on top of authenticity and I do feel like we have a say in this.

have a nice day.

[0]:https://smileplease.mataroa.blog/blog/i-dont-want-brand-age-...

[flagged]

Nike is a useful test case (1) here. Brand was the whole competitive moat for them and once athletic gear commoditized, then management spent five years cutting the things that sustain it: athlete relationships, premium positioning, product development. Each cut looked (somewhat) rational on its own but none of them were, taken together.

(1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-economi...

EDIT: Nevermind comments are apparently just a pg meta discussion..

The question is, in this new software world order, how much do brands matter vs what they've done vs network effects. I could have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter clone, or an Uber clone, and have none of the baggage of Cambridge Analytica, being owned by Elon Musk, or Travis kalanick of Greyball and S. Fowler legacy. An Uber driver-turned-dev could easily stand up a competitor and give way more money to the drivers simply by not having the overhead that Uber has with lawyers and executive salaries in this age of ChatGPT. Drivers will go to where there's riders and money, and riders will go to where there's drivers and cheaper rides. (and no drivers.) If someone needs an app idea to work on, it's the incumbents, without the suck. Facebook without "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."

Because looking at Truth Social and Gab, people do adopt brands as part of their identity; and Uber but for drivers, or Facebook, without the spying, are trivial to make the software side of things on now. The fact that we haven't seen a dozen Uber competitors spring up is a testament to the fact that branding is a helluva moat. It's impossible to put a dollar value on it, but ChatGPT has no moat, except that it's Chat-fucking-GPT. The original chatbot and no matter how good Claude gets, it'll never be the original.

Also those vibe coded competitors will not make it. Feel free to try though

> those vibe coded competitors will not make it

Some of them will. And I suspect the set of markets in which they do will only increase—traditional SWE is probably dying, hard as that is to accept. But the fundamentals of engineering and business are nowhere close to going away. And those are the actually-hard parts of business.

> I could have Claude code shit out a... clone, and have none of the baggage...

Social media is different because of the network effects. Taking hold requires being there to catch refugees when something else collapses, and being sensitive to the fact of that collapse. It seems like quite a bit of luck is often required.

But you could also, you know, actually try to differentiate yourself. Figure out actual things that you'd want those sites to do differently, and have an opinion on which different approach to take.

And I especially wouldn't try with Twitter, because there are already at least two major competitors, and the people who have fled to them, in broad terms, seem to have done so based more on internal social strife than on any technical dissatisfaction. (Despite all the seemingly obvious technical issues to complain about!)

> I could have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter clone, or an Uber clone

No, you couldn’t. At best you’d turn out a video game simulating Uber. The idea that all of the business is in its software seems to be one Silicon Valley perennially unlearns.

As long as we agree that code generation is capable of creating a video game simulating Uber, we're on the same page. The fact that there's more to a business than a flashy bit of software is exactly my point! The idea that Silicon Valley is one dude who doesn't get it is as old as the valley itself.

I've found the newer generation of founders understand that. The issue is they don't use HN anymore.

I've noticed a significant tone and demographic shift on the site over the past 2-3 years with more Western Europeans and Midwesterners and fewer Bay Area+NYC users, and fewer decisionmakers or decisionmaking adjacent people using the site.

And the deeply technical types who used HN largely shifted to lobste.rs.

Karrot_Kream (another longtime HN user) identified this shift as well [0]

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Karrot_Kream

I agree. Where did they go? Blind? Private Slack/discords?

The Bay Area/NYC and founder adjacent folks I know are mostly on group chats and messaging apps. Fundamentally the signal on this site is too low to be of use in those conversations. It's difficult to discuss decisionmaking in a forum full of random Fortune 100 employee deep in a torrid company hierarchy complaining about what their management hierarchy wants them to do.

There's also a tension between the increasing "community building" happening on HN and the Bay Area/NYC crowd. A lot of them have an extant community largely based on in-person relationships. The more HN builds its own community, the more you alienate this set of people. In other words, Slashdotification is happening more and more to HN where a set of very online tech people who don't really make decisions generate most of the chatter on this site.

The younger generation of founders meets in-person and uses iMessage and Instagram. The older generation meets in-person and uses iMessage, Signal, or WhatsApp.

The reality is, most people are in-person now and conversations that were happening on HN because of the pandemic are now being done offline.

Blind is toxic, but at least the users are cynically realistic.

(I look over to the Coca-Cola Classic on my table that I picked because my taste buds prefer the classic brand)

Your taste buds prefer the flavor, not the brand. If they changed their name to "Caramel Diet Fanta" but kept the recipe identical, you'd still enjoy the taste.

The New Coke brand failed because people didn't like the taste, not the other way around.

New Coke is a very interesting counterpoint to the brand focus, but on the other hand, they did at the time make a very big push of it being "New" Coke. Hard to tell what would've happened if they had just swapped out the formula.

I drink Diet Coke, which is basically the same formula that became New Coke with chemical sludge instead of sugar, and it tastes pretty good to my tongue to the point where I drink it over Coke Zero, the one closer to "the real thing".

Every time I drink a Coke (or any other soft drink), the brand's baggage (good and bad) is present. Unless you're doing a blind taste test, it's impossible to avoid that.

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I can't respond to tzury's comment because it's already flagged and dead but I honestly don't think that's quite fair on this board.

The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong.

It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other side of the divide.

I don't find anything wrong or downvotable about people voicing perfectly valid criticisms about pg, his opinions, who he associates with and signal-boosts...unless these standards you all want to apply wrt cancellation are "for thee and not for me".

The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like…

First off, you might be right for some small number of cases, but I’d flag any and all rants such as this, regardless of the target. Off-topic, and doesn’t contribute to the conversation.

Second, for those as you describe, when they go off on an off-topic rant about DHH, someone else will conveniently flag it.

There is not a single discussion on this board about DHH that doesn't get overrun with posts about what people think about the guy, regardless of the posts' topic.

> The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH

You have no way of knowing that. The guidelines against off-topic controversy and generic tangents apply, no matter who the author.

You've got enough karma to click [vouch] on the comment if you think it shouldn't be dead. It's a bit of a rant, and while there are good points, they're lost in an emotional diatribe and, I mean, I feel for them, but I can also see why it was marked dead.

I did click vouch, but I also still stick by what I said because I see all sorts of personal, emotional crusades against various tech figures reposted, signal-boosted, amplified, etc. on this board. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm just asking people to pause and think about what the comments would look like if this were in response to some other characters...

People like being repetitive on this board. Read Google in title and say “I never use Google because killing Reader”. It’s not like LLM. It is worse. Like hashmap. Deterministic same answer. That’s fine for them. But I have no interest in starting everything with a litany, land acknowledgement, and whatever other modern preface required.

We acknowledge this message board is the rightful unceded home of the startup enthusiast people. We affirm their right to it and recognize their sovereignty.

See, you enjoy me bringing pet subject into discussion with nebulous relation? You want always to see it? Good. I will do so. No downvote it unfair.

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GPT doing a great job summarizing and providing a counter:

what's they key thesis here and the argument ?

*Key thesis:* When technology eliminates meaningful performance differences between products, industries shift from competing on *engineering and function* to competing on *brand and status*. The Swiss watch industry after the quartz crisis is a clear example: mechanical watches stopped being valuable tools and became *luxury symbols whose value comes mainly from branding, scarcity, and signaling wealth*.

*In one sentence:* The essay argues that when technology makes functional differences between products disappear, industries shift from engineering competition to branding competition, and the modern luxury watch market illustrates how that transformation works.

---

If you want, I can also explain *why this essay is controversial among economists and designers*—there are a few big assumptions in the argument.

And the counter A few places the argument is debatable (even if it’s persuasive as a narrative):

It treats “brand” and “engineering” as mostly opposed. In practice, luxury buyers often do pay for engineering (finishing, durability, serviceability, movement architecture), and those technical choices can reinforce brand rather than fight it. The tension is real, but not always zero-sum.

It downplays other drivers of the Swiss recovery. The rebound isn’t only “they discovered brand.” Things like Swatch’s role in recapitalizing distribution/production, industry consolidation, improvements in manufacturing, and globalization of luxury demand can explain a lot of the late-1980s revenue surge alongside marketing.

The “artificial scarcity = managed asset bubble” framing is provocative but contestable. Scarcity can be interpreted as: capacity constraints, quality control, long-term brand stewardship, or channel strategy—not necessarily “bubble management.” It may function bubble-like in resale markets, but that doesn’t prove intent or fragility in the way financial bubbles work.

Some claims are asserted more than demonstrated. Examples: Rolex “abandoned research” after ~1960; “only three survived as independents”; “most brands are owned by six holding companies”; “they rebuy hundreds per year.” These might be true in broad strokes, but the essay uses them as load-bearing supports without showing evidence in-text (beyond a couple notes).

The design-history claims are simplified. Watch size and shape trends aren’t only branding; they’re also driven by changing tastes, ergonomics, manufacturing norms, sport/tool styling, and shifting notions of masculinity. “Big = cheap historically” is directionally true in some eras, but not a universal law.

The gender section is especially shaky. “Women never really went for mechanical watches” and the steam-engine analogy read like overgeneralizations—there are strong counterexamples (and cultural variation) that complicate that story.

Please don't post like this. We could trivially get this take ourselves if we cared for it. It would be obvious that this is ChatGPT even without a disclaimer, and the analysis is exactly as formulaic and facile as you'd expect. (How could it reasonably conclude that pg's just-written essay is "controversial among economists and designers", let alone why? It's not making social media rounds; it was just published today; search engine results are mostly unrelated stuff and certainly aren't pointing to discussion...).

I'm struck by the utilitarian mindset of this essay. What Paul so disparagingly refers to as "brand" can also be referred to as "art". People _want_ art, and will indeed pay good money for it. Said differently, people _value_ art enough to differentiate it from "optimal design", and indeed a subset of people will pay top dollar for a suboptimal but artistic design.

It is possible to view the fact that capitalist markets can turn a desire for art, individuality, and "something special" into a business as a bad thing. I'm not entirely convinced that's particularly interesting, though... it seems just a localized restatement of a generic "capitalism is bad" take.

I think he makes two points:

- This change of what used be a functional object into a brand was done to appeal to one-upmanship (my watch is more expensive than yours) rather than the aesthetic urge which drives appreciation for art. He doesn't blame the watch brands, it may have been the only way they could survive after the triple shock. But..

- If you're an engineer and techie type and are drawn to the complexity and mechanistic elegance of mechanical watches, he's warning you that the problems being worked on in the brand age actually take you away from good functional design which attracted you there in the first place.

Do you normally associate the acquisition of "art" with spending years proving loyalty to a corporation?