> The improvement from mediocre to good is larger than the improvement from good to better.
This is broadly true of a lot of things. And the price change from mediocre to good is generally way smaller than the price change from good to better.
Since you mentioned guitars (which are a nice microcosm), one thing that has changed from the past is that manufacturing is now super consistent so when quality tracks price it does so much more closely than in the past.
In the past, with guitars, you could find the "stage queen"--that one instrument that happened to be made by hands far more qualified than expected and consequently much better than expected at the price point. The cost, however, was that often at a price point you got some absolute dogs that were terrible instruments.
With modern manufacturing, that doesn't really happen anymore. But, while you lose the stage queen, you gain the fact that spending $X nets you practically the same guitar at the same price over and over. This is better for the amateurs (a guitar at a price point is roughly consistent and decent) but worse for the experts ("unique" instruments that they can distinguish are nowhere near as common).
This is broadly true of a lot of things. And the price change from mediocre to good is generally way smaller than the price change from good to better.
Since you mentioned guitars (which are a nice microcosm), one thing that has changed from the past is that manufacturing is now super consistent so when quality tracks price it does so much more closely than in the past.
In the past, with guitars, you could find the "stage queen"--that one instrument that happened to be made by hands far more qualified than expected and consequently much better than expected at the price point. The cost, however, was that often at a price point you got some absolute dogs that were terrible instruments.
With modern manufacturing, that doesn't really happen anymore. But, while you lose the stage queen, you gain the fact that spending $X nets you practically the same guitar at the same price over and over. This is better for the amateurs (a guitar at a price point is roughly consistent and decent) but worse for the experts ("unique" instruments that they can distinguish are nowhere near as common).