O Holy Crap

I have most things that are made nowadays. The arguments for the status quo "you're getting it cheaper, it will actually last quite a bit, it's greener" etc are not really valid.

Even if an item is cheaper as a one off purchase, if I have to buy 3-4-5-10 more of the same, am I not paying now for the same higher quality product, but in the meantime the waste I generated is there, pilling up somewhere "else" where it doesn't bother my Western sensibilities.

The research part doesn't work that well either. I spent days researching a variety of products we have around our house and a bunch of different items a few friends asked me about. It's brutal.

Days of reading reviews, days of looking for the faults, days for trying to find the factory that doesn't abuse people or pay them garbage forcing them into slavery. For nothing. Some products work out, some don't, I pay more than the average guy to get maybe an extra year out of the "thing".

I used to have a Logitech MX518 (the original one that came out in 2006 if I remember correctly) and it still works. One of my parents is using it. It handled over 5000 games of Warcraft 3, over 4000 games of CS 1.6, easily 2500-3000 games of Dota and about 16 years in total of browsing websites and general usage. I replaced the skates once and that was about it. The new M590 I bought to keep quiet around the house had a faulty left switch within months... It also cost about half, but that would mean it should work... 8ish years then.

I had an O'Neill backpack bought in the early 2000s and used it for almost 20 years. It's currently being used by a friend who needed a small and simple backpack. I recommended another backpack to a friend, it fell apart in 10 months after costing 100$+. Twice the price of the O'Neill...

I'm tired. I'm tired of having to spend days to figure out if your product will fail within the year. I'm tired of having gone through about 6 milk hand-held frothers until I found a manual one that is a piece of glass and a handle... I had gone through 2 coffee grinders until I found a manual one made out of glass and metal.

Just...

A broken fridge ruins lots of food, worth lots of money.

A broken washing machine or dishwasher can flood your house, costing 10s of thousands of dollars.

A broken dryer can burn your house down.

And even if some of those aren’t common failure modes (fridge is common), it is incredibly inconvenient and expensive to be without a major appliance for (insert supply chain guesstimate number of) weeks every year or so.

Our expectations have also changed over the years. Despite the perception of a downward spiral in quality, cars have, in general, become much better. Remember when fuel injection was exotic (well, you probably don't). My first car, a 1971 Plymouth fury, required a special little ritual just to get it started, involving pumping the accelerator a precise number of times, then turning the key. When I started driving it in only it's 7th year of life, nothing smaller than a softball could be put in the trunk, because the thing was seemingly designed to soak up road salt and rot the rear quarter panels, and there were holes that large on both sides of the body work. Have to say that after that, driving a Toyota for the first time in 1985 was... a revelation. Today, cars last longer, have more features. Most econoboxes will make it past 100K miles no problem.

But when today's cars break, there's generally no high school shop class knowledge to fall back on to fix the every-day small things, and anything major requires information, tools, and parts that are beyond most consumers. Remember that the people that work for the car repair places probably didn't have vocational courses in high school, either.

Modern society's items have been value engineered, and it seems like the operating tolerances are narrower as well. Unless there's aggressive maintenance, today's stuff just breaks vs. limping along at some reduced performance level. And some items that previously were built to allow for maintenance are built for wholesale replacement now instead.

It's rare for today's consumers to fix anything, let alone their electronics, but it used to be common for people to try to repair their own TVs by testing and swapping tubes until the 1980s. Of course, before digital TV and cable EVERYONE fiddled with their "sets" to get a good picture. "Snow" and "Rabbit Ears" are not terms associated with TV watching today. I couldn't buy a 40" color TV that spied on my viewing habits in the 90's for the equivalent of today's $299 either.

Shop wisely for your kitchen appliances (mixers, toaster, blenders), high-end cutlery, and tools at thrift shops in neighborhoods transitioning from older demographics. Learn how to sharpen knives and maintain stuff.

Use all your senses: learn what your major appliances and vehicles sound like when they're operating correctly, and listen to them periodically. Extra squeaks or rumbles when the furnace runs? Maybe a new blower motor is in your future. Notice the refrigerator cycling more frequently? You ARE vacuuming the cooling coils periodically, right? Dishwasher door seem easier to operate? Bet one of your balancing springs has failed.

Troubleshooting and maintenance is a life skill.

We were fortunate to be able to buy our first "new" house with new everything 8 years ago. Having all-new stuff was great for a while. The gas water heater lasted 5 years. A nephew plumber replaced it for the cost of the new unit (~1K) vs quoted $5K job by plumbing outfit. Took him 4 hours. The expansion tank started to fail two years later; $69 plus a few minutes of labor. The forced-air ducting between 1st and 2nd floor is undersized, so the single-glower furnace is inadequate to keep the house at a consistent temperature. Finally put in a heat pump this year to partially remedy that situation. Original wall timers for various fans failed about every 2-3 years. Choice is replacing the $20 wall timer with now $25 wall timer, or fixing the original electronics ($1 with a replacement part from Digikey). Original washer, a front loader that came with the new home, failed 1 month (yes, 1 month) out of warranty, with a bad trunion. To fix this required a literal complete tear-down and rebuild with the new tub. GE would do nothing other than send free parts. Our trusted appliance guy said he wouldn't do it, because it took too long (8 hours) and was uneconomic. I did it in about seven, but replaced the washer a few years later, since front loaders just don't get clothes as clean.

> Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the quality of new and old items.

Indeed. So I skim the article and wind up agreeing with how some things seem to be built to fall apart or under perform (modern HE washers, I'm looking at you). Then I get called to the shop floor to check a machine and the operator, an older gentleman gets to talking with and starts the same conversation! He is in his mid 60's his you'd think he'd go on lamenting the loss of the sturdy goods from his youth but nope! He too said there was plenty of cheap flimsy crap to be had.

Though one thing I will say has changed: the ability to repair stuff. Computers stuffed with proprietary code have taken control of even the simplest appliances (washers, stoves, refrigerators). Things that were made from multiple pieces of stamped or cast metal are now made from a single piece of plastic that is less sturdy which melts or deforms under heat (some eventually become brittle and crumble). I can see how it makes things cheaper and easier to make but they don't sell the plastic bits separately requiring me to toss everything over a single broken piece. And even if something is made of metal, the stamping or casting is so thin that it might as well be made of plastic (e.g. the tin foil harbor freight stock carts.)

But the retailers and consumers are adjusting to this model: goods are so cheap they are disposable. Don't bother returning it, just toss it. This has lead to people buying new items and tossing them right into the trash because amazon will ship another. Or maybe return the broken item in its place. Or you buy a new item to take a part off and toss it because amazon told you to. Consumers get to keep buying cheap crap and companies keep the money rolling in. This low effort thinking is filling landfills with unused or barely used items at an alarming rate which is a great example of unchecked capitalism. Whats worse is I guarantee you most people could live happily without most of the shit they buy.

Maybe, but I would prefer they just sent me a proper pair of jeans. I do agree though, sewing appears to be a dying art in laymen.