Posted On: Wednesday - March 25th 2020 8:27AM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Cars
OK, there's lots of stupidity we have here ready to go on this Kung Flu, but it's time to take a break from that. I'm sick of hearing about it, you're sick of hearing about, but likely and hopefully, none of us are non-vitrually sick.
If this post bores you, well, we can always talk about the Kung Flu, I'm warning you. This one is about car parts, such as:
... the idiot on his phone just rammed me.*
I was reading some back-and-forth-commenting on the iSteve threads of unz.com. There are a lot of smart and practical people who write in. As the topic diverged to Cheap China-made crap, a commenter put it this way: He doesn't mind getting the cheap tail-light/brake-light/running-light bulbs for his car shipped from China at a buck or two a pop versus versus paying $5.99 at the local auto parts store.
It's gonna take a few weeks, coming from China. (Note those delivery estimates on eBay - anything like 2 weeks or longer likely means it's coming from China.) That's fine, if you are organized. You get ahead on the light bulbs, air and oil filters, and such. It is so nice to not even have to take the 20 minutes to go to the parts store when you want to get something done. Sometimes, the whole point of it is to buy what you may need ahead of time, as Peak Stupidity related in the humorous post DIY Tire Repair with Cheap China-made Crap.
I know what the reader is thinking here. Yes, you are right. Quality-wise, there's probably no difference, as that $5.99 bulb at Auto Zone was made in China too. They just mark it way up. This commenter figured, with the junky bulbs, he'd be replacing them often, but he'd get quick at it. If you CAN find some quality stuff, however, is your time not worth anything, to where it would make sense to get it? This is not the year 2000, though, when you still had a choice for lots of consumer items. Even the Chinese-made stuff was better then anyway, as I recall (especially regarding clothing).
No, we're stuck now, until a major retrenching goes on, and we bring industry back. This worry about the face masks and pharmaceuticals that come from China (oops, there's that Kung Flu talk again, sorry) may provide an impetus for such a retrenchment. There's a big assumption in that, though, about our "American" Globalist elites actually giving a shit.
The huge wastage of time that American DIYers and small business must go through with the choice of ONLY Cheap China-made crap probably costs us more in lost time than this whole virus infotainment panic-fest has. Is it actually brilliant plan by some CCP cadres? If so, that's more egregious to me, because, as Confucius wisely say, not all light bulbs are easy to get at.
* No, no, not really. I just couldn't come up with anything better.
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