Eh, whatever. That’s not a direct answer explaining what and where exactly is trickle-down economics in that phenomenon. At best, you’re just arguing off a fallacy: that because B happened after A, then A must have necessarily caused B.

I don't understand your point then. The original product exists because someone used their own or their investors money and made a bet on an idea.

Then they hope they can sell it at a profit.

Products becoming cheaper is a result of the processes getting more optimized ( on the production side and the supply side ) which is a function of the desire to increase the profit on a product.

Without any other player in the market this means the profit a company makes on that product increases over time.

With other players in that market that underprice your product it means that you have to reinvest parts of your profit into making the product cheaper ( or better ) for the consumer.

I used phones similar to this (a Nokia 2110 to be precise), BTW.

I can argue, from some aspects, yes. Given that you provide the infrastructure for these devices, they'll work exactly as they are designed today. On the other hand, a modern smartphone has a way shorter life span. OLED screens die, batteries, swell, electronics degrade.

Ni-Cad batteries, while being finicky and toxic, are much more longer lasting than Li-ion and Li-Poly batteries. If we want to talk Li-Poly batteries, my old Sony power bank (advertising 1000 recharge cycles with a proprietary Sony battery tech) is keeping its promise, capacity and shape 11 years after its stamped manufacturing date.

Can you give me an example of another battery/power pack which is built today and can continue operating for 11 years without degrading?

As electronics shrink, the number of atoms per gate decreases, and this also reduces the life of the things. My 35 y/o amplifier works pretty well, even today, but modern processors visibly degrade. A processor degrading to a limit of losing performance and stability was unthinkable a decade ago.

> you will find that prices have decreased, while quality has increased.

This is not primarily driven by the desire to create better products. First, cheaper and worse ones come, and somebody decides to use the design headroom to improve things later on, and put a way higher price tag.

Today, in most cases, speakers' quality has not improved, but the signal processed by DSP makes them appear sound better. This is cheaper, and OK for most people. IOW, enshittification, again. Psychoacoustics is what makes this possible, not better sounding drivers.

The last car I rented has a "sound focus mode" under its DSP settings. If you're the only one in the car, you can set it to focus to driver, and it "moves" the speakers around you. Otherwise, you select "everyone", and it "improves" sound stage. Digital (black) magic. In either case, that car does not sound better than my 25 year old car, made by the same manufacturer.

You want genuinely better sounding drivers, you'll pay top dollar in most cases.

What’s the connection between wealthy people getting wealthier and businesses like Aldi?

I like electric cars and solar panels and gigabit fiber as much as the next person, but they aren’t wealth.

I could ask the same of you. Do these things only exist because of trickle down? Do you have proof they wouldn’t have been invented and commercialized without it?

I don’t expect either of us to be able the answer the questions posed. Nobody in the 80s was asking for any of these inventions. People were living their lives happily ignorant to a better future. For that reason, most of these things do amount to just gadgets. They have shaped our lives in a dramatic way and had huge commercial success by solving huge problems or increasing conveniences, but they are still nonessential. That’s the way I’m using the term, don’t really care what Webster has to say about it tbh as I’m perhaps being dramatic precisely to highlight this point.

The continuation of R&D isn’t even a trickle down policy. If you’re a big manufacturer of CRT televisions, it’s in your interest to continue inventing better technology in that space just to remain competitive. If you’re really good at it, there’s a good chance you can steal market share. It’s good old fashioned business as usual in a competitive industry. I don’t see how they relate to one another. Not to mention that many things are invented in a garage somewhere and capital is infused later. Would this only happen if the rich uncles of the world benefited from economic policies aimed at making them rich? I think it would still find a way in most cases, good ideas typically always find a way. I don’t think a majority of gadgets can be linked to something like “brought to you by trickle down economics”.