But imagine how it was 50 years ago. Pretty much the same, minus health security.
My father and grandfather were both in the trade. 50 years ago there were some safety concerns, especially around scaffolding (asbestos too, but that's its own story). However they all lamented about how much easier it was to feed your family then.
I’m old enough that one of my earliest memories of advice being given on house buying (not to me, I was still to young for that) was of people advising against buying anything from around the time you were praising (which at the time of the advice, wasn't brand new but still newish), making exactly the same comparison of that time to the time a few decades before (though I thing then it was usually 20-30 and not 50 years before held up as a model) as you make of now to then.
At the same time there is nowhere to put any insulation on external walls meaning that during the winter were leaking huge amounts of heat and during the summer we live in an oven. Compare that to my friends modern new build in the same city (Edinburgh) their internal temperature is mostly stable.
There's also things like "you can't run any extra cabling"- adding ethernet to my existing cabling isn't happening without replastering my entire home. And lets not start with modern 5GHz WiFi not passing through my internal walls.
Needs have changed, materials are more consistent and easier to get, efficiency standards have changed. All of these things have had a huge impact on materials and costs. It's unfair to just say that buildings are built worse without considering anything else.
I think this is very much subjective in the end though. Also because current building techniques still make use of stone, bricks and concrete which all have the same downsides. But as you said they can be an overkill for some people who don’t mind the walls being quite soft for instance.
I don't think that's a fair takeaway - drywall lets you do things like insulate, run cabling, provide moisture barriers, easily change room layouts. These are all things that people want to do in their homes today that are straightforward (mostly) with drywall, and borderline impossible for a DIY'er in an older building.
From 100 years ago most of the houses that you see are either stone/brick houses, or timber-framed houses (thick post and beam, not what people in the UK call timber framing today). Those houses are always impressive compared to todays 2”x4” frames
My in laws just built a new home with an average builder. I got to watch the house go up - know what’s in the walls, etc. Their house is higher quality than mine. New construction seems to be better than buying old homes on average, and prices reflect that - new costs more and you get less.
This lead me to a somewhat startling revelation: houses do not appreciate in value. The house looses value but is offset by the dollar losing buying power in the housing market.
Edit: My memory was wobbly the title was simply"Money". This (carte blanche for lousy work) created the next housing crisis that's created the currently forty years old UK housing crisis. My father ran the largest mortgage book of that era so saw the disaster up close and filthy.