And today I happened to get a reason to write about it. I use Etymotic ER6 earphones with my player. This is what they look like.
In other words, they’re in-ear plugs, but not ordinary ones: they’re built using balanced-armature technology, which gives them more or less decent sound. Incidentally, the widespread belief that in-ear earphones damage your hearing is wrong, especially when it comes to these. The thing is, they provide excellent isolation from the outside world (34–36 decibels, which is the volume of an ordinary conversation). So there’s no need to crank up the volume to drown out ambient noise, and your hearing stays in better shape.
But I digress.
So, the left earphone started playing strangely quietly. After looking into it, I learned that the filter protecting the inside of the earphone from earwax had become clogged. The filters in my picture are labelled accordingly: filters. Yes, those are the tiny little things made from a piece of plastic and a metal mesh. And to make the earphones play normally again, you have to replace them. Patience, we’re almost at the point.
So, do you know how much these filters cost?
15 fucking dollars!
This tiny fucking thing, when mass-produced—as Etymotic products are—surely has a production cost of about one tenth of a cent. And most likely even less.
In other words, the price increases 10,000-fold! Unbelievable. Especially considering that the earphones themselves aren’t cheap either. There’s one perfectly pragmatic reason not to like large corporations.
I understand that the company incurred substantial research and development costs. But why not make the price of the earphones cover those costs?
The answer is well known: the professional manipulation of human consciousness by marketers. Nobody is going to research a purchase so thoroughly that they uncover every tiny nuance. And afterwards it’s very easy to sell accessories at exorbitant prices, especially when there’s no alternative.
There’s another reason not to like large companies.
And my LiveJournal isn’t big enough to list all the other reasons.