In a healthy market, you get many indirect benefits.

In an unhealthy one, you get all these stealthy taxes that go along with the product. Short obsoletion cycles, subscriptions, shady practices, maintenance..

I've been noticing how much more time I spend researching products before buying them today and I thought to myself "was this the case in the past?"

Granted I didn't buy expensive things back then so it didn't matter.

But I remember clearly when you really didn't need to research that much since you got somewhat good, lasting products that didn't always try to trick you in some way.

Maybe the markets changed, maybe it's post-pandemic, but I think it's a worldwide phenomenon where companies have to push stealthy taxes on us in any way they can, similar to how governments find novel ways to tax us "(Inflation is a stealthy tax on the money you earn and don't immediately spend for an example)