The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

Same. We had that phase were every manufacturer build their own tiny OS around 2007/2008. I had an LG KS360 and a Sony W200i. The LG would crash regularly. The W200i would work fine, but of course had all the proprietary Sony connectors. The W350i on the other hand was a catastrophic phone, that I had replaced twice, as evident in my Amazon account.

> On one side you have companies that are working hard 24/7 to have more money at any cost. On the other side you have average Joe who can barely work, have time for family and have time for relaxing.

You are taking that as a natural state of things, a law that can't be broken, while this is just the end effect of living under capitalism. It's not set in stone and can be changed. We just need to change the incentives:

> It is only natural that companies are pushing more and more as time goes on. And there is no reason it should stop other than companies messing it up?

Jail time for executives, breaking down monopolies, and enforcing of antitrust laws come to mind as an effective way that's worked in the past. Also unionizing and strikes for the workers for fair pay. State intervention and re-nationalization of companies that misbehave, especially water, utilities, transport and agriculture. Also progressive wealth tax up to 70%-99%, so there is less incentives to be greedy (if you think that's too much...well, that already happened in 50's USA).

> For some consumers — although we know there won’t be many — the Nokia’s extreme durability may be more valuable than the iPhone’s technological innovations

I still use a phone of the generation after Nokia - it must be 20 years old now. The thing is, for everyday use voicemail and SMS are enough for me. I don't need more technology. And certainly not the kind of technology that make people walk like zombies on the street. If you remember the old Youtube video about viewers not noticing a gorilla in the middle of basketball players because viewers were instructed to count something, this is exactly that.

> there’s another, lesser-known but even more effective method: convincing consumers that a product is outdated for aesthetic or symbolic reasons, even if it still works.

Long story short, durability is the greatest enemy for businesses. They have decades of experience of fighting against it. IIRC Europe introduced laws against planned obsolescence, but businesses probably did start to switch to "perceived obsolescence" when consumers proved the existence of planned obsolescence.

It's not even something evil to do for some categories of products. Good household appliances use less energy, even good ICE cars probably are more efficient than they used to be, etc. It seems that it defines a different metric for product quality, total cost of ownership.

> However, Rodríguez argues that, generally speaking, automation does improve customer service. [...] The initial investment in technology is extremely high, and the benefits remain practically the same. We have not detected any job losses in the sector either.

If companies really are investing in order to improve their customer service, that's big news.

I've got a pack of seemingly nice quality t-shirts that got a lot shorter and wider after first wash. I tried stretching them back to their original form but that doesn't work.

Used to be the cheap "three pairs for 10 euro" socks lasted a couple of years. Now I get, maybe, a year out of them before the holes get too obvious.

And price is not a reliable indicator of quality. Buying expensive can be just as much as a gamble as buying the cheap stuff.

I mean I bought an Ikea desk like, 15 years ago and have moved it through multiple home offices in that time and it's holding up fine. I also bought it because it was cheap enough I wouldn't worry about taking a jigsaw to it to get it customized just right for me (which was mostly cutting a hole for my tower computer case to sit just right in).

The problem with "you want real quality" people is they mostly seem to advocate buying expensive demonstrative items, rather then properly evaluating what they need.

If a desk has successful held my things and enabled me to work at it for over a decade, what exactly is "quality" meant to be and be bought for?