While stumbling across yet another Black Friday deal it hit me that electronics are ridiculously cheap. One can get state of the art computers for about a thousand dollars and huge flat panel TVs for a few hundred dollars. I grew up in the 90s and it never felt that comparable gadgets were that cheap. It may be that I didn’t have a job and nearly everything was out of reach but I suspect electronic goods really are that much cheaper now. Even if a product launches at a higher price it doesn’t stay that way for long and drops much quicker than before. No price has staying power and there are always more efficient competitors catching up.

I haven’t dug into why but the modern supply chain must play a part. There are tons of factories in Asia specializing in the manufacture of sophisticated circuitry that can be reorganized as needed for new designs. Shipping both the raw materials and final products is more efficient than it has ever been and as consumers we’re all benefiting from this efficiency.