Generation Junk

But then he mentions a "hybrid sedan". Here I'm aware of the data. It's not close. Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-k...

[1] https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2021-us-vehi...

There are practically no entries occupying the middle of the market that are on the basic end regarding features & frills but also high-quality.

It’s incredibly annoying. I can either get an absolute trash sofa for less than $1,000 or I can get a high-end, high-quality one for $5000+. Now there are definitely sofas that occupy the price range between those, but they’re almost all just wildly overpriced garbage that’s no better than the sub-$1000 junk. The same goes for dining tables, cabinetry, window treatments, cooking appliances, etc. I end up just scouring for “vintage” stuff that’s in decent shape whenever possible. It’s like I have this whole other full-time job trying to find quality used goods because the only things I can just get new immediately are garbage.

My grandfather (1922-2006) opined: "Some folks say things aren't made like they used to be. But I remember those junky old cars that would break down every 50 or 100 miles. I remember that unreliable crap. I'd far rather have a modern car, even if I can't fix it." (He was more of a carpenter than an auto mechanic, built much of his own house)

My wife and I use a washer and drier set from the late 90's that are nothing to look at but work really well. They appear to be designed with service in mind and changing components is usually extremely easy - something I have done infrequently. These machines are used almost every day. Honestly, for a while I was kind of embarrassed by our beat up old machines. We discussed getting something new but dropped it after sticker shock set in. We also found it nearly impossible to get an honest review of any of the newer appliances. I also just hate "smart home" stuff that requires a wi-fi connection to work correctly.

The workman we hired to re-model our rear entry mud-room was looking at our old washer/drier set and unprompted said if we ever want to get rid of them - please let him know. I wondered why and he explained that he and his wife purchased new a couple years ago and have had nothing but complaints. They miss their old setup that cleaned superbly with minimal fuss.

That's lawyers, as well as the insane flagpole of stickers on each wire.

The simple fact of the matter, is that people are willing to buy junk. They want a certain level of functionality, at low prices.

Manufacturers (or software developers) have figured out how to provide a simulacrum of the functionality, for very low prices. These manufacturers put others, that make higher-Quality products, out of business, so you have a race to the bottom.

I spent almost my entire career, at companies that make extremely high-Quality products, and am quite familiar with the requirements to enable this.

It costs a lot; both time, and money. The difference between even a reasonably-high-Quality item, and a very-high-Quality item, in cost to manufacture, is kind of extreme (so their sticker price reflects that). It may seem that companies that make top-Quality stuff are rich, but they are not. The people that make a lot of money, are the ones that can push cheap dross, in large quantities.

That said, people don't actually want low-quality. It's just that they don't want to pay the premium for the higher-Quality stuff. Manufacturers that figure out how to produce higher-Quality, for lower money, and in larger quantity, do well (think many Japanese -and now, Korean, manufacturers).

There's a popular piece of a story, written by Sir Terry, called The Sam Vimes Boots Theory[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

First of all: survivorship bias. All of the old appliances that still work are only the ones which still work. This goes for the author's juicer.

Second: things which have investment attention now are excellent quality and things which are waning towards the end of their lifecycle are having the last few corners cut before the Private Equity firm that now owns them throws in the towel, throughly wrung dry. Author's examples: staples - the age of paper documents is over. matches - the Bic lighter is a modern marvel. plastic grocery bags - banned in more places every year. pens - same as staples.

But now, turn your eye to products being actively invested in now? Some may be at their peak this very moment.

And if you want something quality, go spend for it. I've got an industrial stapler like you wouldn't believe, 50 sheets of paper easy.

But everything electrical in that house was repairable to a degree that seems unimaginable today.

For example, every single power plug had screws. If you removed those, it would come apart in two halves, to reveal another set of screws that held the cable in. If you undid those screws, you could easily shorten or replace the cable - in case it was broken. There was no glue, no solder, and most of the plugs had even metal inserts for the screws to go into.

The appliances on the other end of the cables were just as easy to take apart and put back together. And their insides were (mostly) free of proprietary parts - almost everything was "standard" stuff, that you could get replacements for, from a supplier of your own choice.

Many of those appliances still worked perfectly fine, after my grandparents had died, and the house had been torn down. That doesn't mean they never broke - but if they did, my grandpa was able to easily fix them himself. And if he could not fix something, he still was able to salvage it for parts that then could be used to fix other things.

People can buy a stainless steel drum washing machine, or you can buy it in injection molded plastic. Most people buy the plastic one, because the other is much more expensive.

Fair enough, the only problem is that you see the person who bought one with the plastic drum complaining about how it broke after warrantee period is over.

People want things to last forever and be cheap, and that is not possible. Making an stainless steel part is way way more difficult and expensive that doing a plastic mold, and is not mass produced as much because most people do not want to pay it.

Noteworthy example. Current Pyrex-branded kitchenware is no longer borosilicate glass.

I shattered a Pyrex casserole dish with what I guess was probably thermal shock, by moving it out of the oven, into a stainless steel sink.

Maybe I should try paying for Consumer Reports

Also, they cost more. Total cost of ownership is typically a lot lower, though.

Want a mechanical pencil that will last you through grad school and at least a decade of your career? Buy a RotRing. It’ll be $30, and worth every penny. Tools? Snap-On or Wright. Shoes? Goodyear welt top-grain leather, such as Grant Stone or top end Allen Edmonds. Luggage? Travelpro or Tom Bihn or Goruck.

All of those items will be 3 or 4x what a Target ratchet or bag or pair of dress shoes will cost, but they’ll last at least 10x longer and in the Snap-On example possibly 100x longer.

Electronics are a somewhat different issue, of course, but even there, my iPhone XR is still going strong, 85% battery health and receiving OS updates.

Really the only thing that will fix it is stronger warranty law, this will make things more expensive, but it will massively cut down on landfill fodder.

A refrigerator that can’t last 20 years is terrible for the environment to throw away when it lasts 3-6 like many Samsung and LG fridges do…

I will keep repairing my ancient Sears washer and dryer for as long as possible.

Each manufacturer is unable improve the product's quality without increasing its retail price, but increasing the price would make the product more expensive than competing products made by other manufacturers, who are in the same situation. No manufacturer can improve quality without raising prices and losing market share.

Their position is analogous to that of prisoners in the Prisoners' Dilemma[b]: Their best choice is the least-worst option for everyone.

---

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

[b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

But there are a few good things out there if you know where to look.

Tools, especially, have good options. But then I use a lot of those professionally and get to experiment using someone else's time and money.

Sometimes I end up paying much more than the cheapest, or even average priced analogues on the market, but probably not as often as you might think.

The market produces to fill demand, so I vote with my wallet for the types of products I want to see in the world.

I drive an old car that pollutes more than a newer car because it already exists and I'll never save enough carbon in emissions to make up the cost of producing a brand new hybrid vehicle. I try to maintain my car so it lasts as long as possible. I also try to drive safely so-as to avoid wrecking it. If I live long enough I may drive a hybrid car sometime in the future (there are still a lot of old cars sitting around, though).

Sometimes I buy antique juicers and they are usually very robust and durable. Not because they're old, but because they're survivors.

On the very rare occasions that I do find myself in the market for some junk I usually have no problem finding it for free or very low cost on craigslist.

These days it feels like you need to do extensive research to make sure you are not buying something that is total crap. Amazon is literally flooded with totally random brand named (all weirdly uppercase? EEVYUI, XAATYE, WURIHT etc) trash which 9 times out of 10 (at least) will be awful shite. I have found myself going back to "traditional retailers" for a lot of things now as I cannot trust a lot of things I order online not to be the absolute cheapest possible shite ever produced. And it's not like they are priced cheaply either - example recently was a specific light bulb I needed - Osram and Philips had models on Amazon for approx £9 which I would vaguely trust, but they were hidden in a sea of made-up brands asking £7 to £8 which you know will fail within a month or two.

That said, I don't fully agree with the sentiment. With a little research and accepting that quality costs and so not buying the cheapest/second-cheapeat models we have appliances/things that have lasted many years - washing machines, dishwashers, coffee grinders, fridges, cars etc. Some of these we have replaced for other reasons like changing needs or wanting new features (e.g. we needed a dishwasher that dried plastic things since kids stuff is all plastic - the old machine was perfectly fine when we got rid of it and yea, no one wanted it).

It is somewhat galling to think "wow why am I paying £600 for a dishwasher when I can get one for £250!?" but then £600 only seems expensive because of the crappy £250 one that will only last a month or two past the 12 month warranty.

https://www.readingeagle.com/2020/02/12/all-your-favorite-br...

Kitchen and household appliance quality in particular suffered because many of the companies that make them are now brands owned by a small set of very large companies who outsource manufacturing that used to be done here.

Examples:

- GE sold off GE Appliances to Haier, a Chinese conglomerate. Their appliances used to be made in Louisville, KY; they now mostly do final assembly, with significantly fewer appliances being made there

- most refrigerators are made by Whirlpool, Haier, or Electrolux. Everything except high-end refrigerators are made overseas.

- many appliances are incorporating more complex electronics to "provide more value" in the form of mostly-gimmicky features at the expense of repairability and lower bills-of-materials (I.e. basically everything that Samsung and LG make). Think: oven ranges with touch screen controls that render the entire thing inoperative should the screen or digitizer go out, washing machines with smart features and touch screens that cease to work when they throw codes, etc.

However, most of these decisions are being made to make things cheaper to satisfy what customers want. Most customers will buy a $400 4K 75" panel that will maybe last three years and track the ever-loving shit out of them and their viewing habits instead of spending $4k 75" panel that will last ten years or more because quality doesn't matter; they just want cheap TVs.

My workshop tools, however, don't seem to be affected. My soldering iron? Absolute tank. Milwaukee drill bits? I abuse them, and they don't care. Even the mid-grade Craftsman multimeter is totally competent.

> Weak-link computer chips in items that don’t require them also came in for abuse.

Indeed.

I cannot recommend his podcast with Matt Taibbi [1] or the print-only newspaper he edits-at-large [2] highly enough. The man is an American treasure.

[1] https://www.racket.news/s/america-this-week

[2] https://www.countyhighway.com/

If you have any junk products, please submit it there :)

“it’s also important – to me, emotionally -- to bury the reader in details of the unceasing material disappointments I’ve faced”

Anecdotal, but if anyone is looking for a good coffee grinder that doesn't break the bank, can't say enough good things about my Baratza Encore. 10+ years of near daily use. All original still except I did install upgraded burrs a few years back. Baratza encourages repairs, builds them so they are repairable, and provides replacement parts for sale.

My brother works at a co that makes custom repair parts for these machines he sees them all the time. They often have to fly people out to the factory to do measurements and calibrations because no documentation exists.

(Its sadly not a small mom and pop shop its one of the biggest mfg part corps in the worls. If you hoped it was some mom and pop shop that keeps these running.)

A) The premise is that physical items which were produced because "machines" was the "power of the future" still; didn't become replaced by "code aided machines" sometime in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

B) This premise fell upon society's roles in life at the time! As mentioned in the article, likely most of the devices were made and used because often they'd be purchased "once" and "for life". Because - if you were cooking in a kitchen in 1940, 1890, 1840, etc... You weren't going to switch careers/positions in 3-5 years. This applied to many industries. Then pad on all the cultural norms; women in the home, men working on farms, factories, etc. To much greater degree than today.

C) Comparably purchased products had much, MUCH more limited competition in yesteryear. Mass competition did not show up utnil the turn of the 20th century, thanks to the industrial revolution of the 19th.

So, in summing it up I think the undertone of the article if reading 'between' the lines explicity implies that today's society has reached a point where the needs of what we purchase are identically matched to what is readily available for purchase, the norm ecomonimcally, and the completely and vastly different society we live in - has proven exactly what Victorian moods had suggested: useful or beautiful; all else has no value.

And yet we find the most absurd value in things we likely need not to.

- 2017 MacBook Pro and iPhone SE

- honestly, the Dre beats that came with above MacBook

- every Lexus sedan ever, hybrid or not

- Tumi backpack and carryon

- Sonos soundbar

- M Audio 88 key midi controller keyboard (survived 7 moves)

It sounds like the author’s problems largely center around things with motors and pumps, which tbh doesn’t surprise me. The high-end brand I’ve been most disappointed with in that regard has been Dyson. Been through about 4 of their full size and hand vacs.. so many random issues. Really not worth it.

"Value subtraction" was a key criticism of the Soviet system: outputs were worth less than inputs. Zoom out to our Big Picture (let's call it "life cycle analysis") and yeah, value is being drained away at every step. Some as dividends, some as environmental damage, some as political bribery, some as pure friction.

So if this kind of price signal no longer works in the American economy, then maybe the American economy is fundamentally broken and needs replacing. Not to mention the political system propping it up.

Rant concludes.

Grind size and consistency are everything when making coffee. As such, good coffee grinders are expensive as hell because of the blades and motors. Mostly the blades.

You can easily spend thousands on an espresso grinder (a grinder that can only grind ultra-fine espresso grounds, nothing else) because of this.

My Fellow Ode, which can only grind for drip coffee, was $300. It is a significant improvement from the Breville Smart Grinder I had previously, which was a significant step up from the Mueller single-speed, single-size grinder I started with.

I'm going to guess this was also the case 30 years ago, especially since they were bigger.

And that is why "drive by wire" is a mistake in cars. It may be unnerving for someone who never drove a car with no power steering and no power breaks to suddenly loose it while going 80mph, but it's not going to kill you unless you're quite unlucky (it goes off the moment you try overtaking, you have to brake hard etc.) But if the power goes off with a drive by wire car? You're dead.

"But airplanes", yes huge airplanes had drive/fly by wire for a long time. I still remember when people would prefer to fly Boeing rather than Airbus airliners, because Boeing planes still had physical connection between control surfaces and the yoke/pedals ,while the corresponding airbus model didn't.

However, these are hugely expensive machines worth tens if not hundreds of millions of $ with teams of highly skilled maintenance personnel checking them out at a very tight schedule. Aren't there smaller planes with fly by wire? Yes, for example F16, and other military jets. How much do they cost, and how are they maintained? Probably the same as commercial airliners, if not better.

So what about your typical "cessna"? I've looked online for a while to find any small plane using fly by wire and I didn't find one. When searching for cessna fly by wire I found Cessna is just "warming up" to the idea in their business jets putting one control surface "the flaps" on fly by wire while everything else is directly hydraulicly actuated by the yoke/pedals on their Columbus business jets.

And Elon thinks it's a good idea for a car that costs $100k (supposedly $40 later)? What happens when that car is 20 years old? Unless they know for a fact it will be scrapped after 10 years than it's fine.

Don't tell me about its dual/redundant motor and triple sensors, unless each motor also has its own battery with cables routed differently and a controller that can still do stearing when the other battery connection gets chewed through by rodents and contacts for this one are so corroded it barely works.

On the other hand, it's a $300 repair job to replace my niece's Headlight on her Ford Focus. That's nuts!

---

In the world of industrial machine tools, like lathes, etc. it is generally accepted that 1940-1960 American Cast Iron machines are the best machines available, after rebuilding. The quality of the materials has not been matched since then.

The post has more to offer besides pedantry, if only you let it.

One possible reason is that it's technically difficult to build something that is just strong enough. In the past they were unable predict the failure moment to an accurate degree, so they over engineered everything.

Make products last long and make them repairable should be priority for all manufacturers. But... It's not make profit I guess.

I purchased a Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder from Amazon.com on Aug 21, 2020 for $157.94 and have used it, at a minimum, once per day every day I have woken up at home for three years (at least 1,000 times) and it shows no signs of slowing down.

If my definition of "a lot" correct and is "greater than three" then the author might want to have his or her wiring checked.

Also, as far as staples go, premium staples that can fasten (practically) paper to sheet metal are $0.20 more per 1,000-count than garbage staples. Buy the premium staples that come in a plastic box with a hinged lid instead of the cardboard bricks of staples and you'll never have a jam again.

> The two or three new pens I use each week that, because no ink comes out of them

Ok this is just ridiculous.

TWO TO THREE. PENS. PER WEEK. This has moved into the realm of satire.

Buy Pilot G2 pens. Problem solved. They'll still write after going through the wash.

Where is this person getting their pens?

What are they doing to their pens?

What is going on?

Am I high?

That being said I have nearly no problems with the quality of any purchases I've made because I pay, at a minimum, the inflation adjusted equivalent of what I would have paid 20 years ago for the same product. I also research everything obsessively. Like, read the manual and watch YouTube teardowns of microwaves before buying a new microwave obsessively. I have many fewer things than most Americans but all of my shit is the nicest it can possibly be within my budget.

The race to the bottom is a race I do not participate in.

The bottom is where the junk is.

To me, whether it's worse or better than before is somewhat of a moot point. To follow their example: after a hundred years of building juicers, we should have global juicer expertise. The generations of juicers created, the feedback on the models, the breakage rate should have generated a general knowledge of the best techniques for juice extraction, of the materials that are most adequate for the task, and how assembly should be designed for maximum durability. But we don't. What we have instead is cheap juicers, which underlines the point that cheap is what matters in how the design. Be it for maximum profitability or low price point.

Following on their other example about coffee grinders: last year I renewed my coffee making stack. I like coffee such az many here, and wanted good hardware; quality first, and cost a secondary concern. I took care of asking friends, watching videos, going on forums, reading tests. I ended up investing quite a bit in a Baratza machine, which is quite celebrated and very repairable, they sell replacement parts at reasonable cost, they even give you tips on how to extend longevity. All marks of a manufacturer who wants their craft to last. I suspect that you might be able to find the one juicer on some small website which ships direct from the manufacturer in Vermont. Juicing enthusiasts share their experience and knowhow on juicing websites and all swear by their mothers that this one brand revolutionized juicing for them. For equipment with any mild complexity, you need to acquire a relative expertise, and shop in the outskirts of the market. And obviously, you have time for that only for the stuff you care about.

As per not picking the cheapest option, price isn't a good indicator of quality. Certainly if you keep surrounding yourself with the cheapest copies, things will always break around you. But you'll get more reliability from a Corolla made by a manufacturer which obsesses about quality, then from a Mercedes which targets premium and luxury. Additional manufacturing cost is generally used to add more features and better looking materials, rather than producing sturdier things.

Anecdotally, I am still using the peeler I bought when I was a student over 20y ago. I can guarantee you that no research went into this option, and it was likely the cheapest option that Tiengong had to offer back then.

I enjoyed reading this, it's well written and entertaining.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34092749 (Dec 22, 2023; 319 comments)

Todays households simply own much more stuff. We possess so many items that we experience the failure of an item much more often than in the past where we owned less stuff.

Maybe it’s even a good thing? I’m not sure we need more seductive iGarbage in our lives, distracting from the only things that matter. Maybe the next visit to Amazon will tell you what that is.

The other examples mentioned in TFA are far more convincing: things like blenders, suitcases, clothes, kitchen gloves.

Take your favorite casual clothes, like t-shirts. In many there has been a clear enshitiffication going on, with lesser quality fabrics, that last less than a few decades ago, even when the brand and the model remains the same.

How about Lenovo vs IBM laptops? Forget the red herring about the cpu being faster and such (which is about the electronics). Is it built to the same standards as those older ones were?

Even the razor thin plastic grocery bags that are much much easier to pierce is a real struggle in a number of supermarkets I go to.

And let's not get started on food stuff, where the product is supposedly the same, but the ingredients get shittier and/or the weight goes down, while the price raises even above inflation.

Recent appliances and devices seem to last longer again, aside from smartphones with pesky unreplaceable batteries that turn into spicy pillows after a year or two.

The LG washer and Dryer I bought 20 yrs ago still works a champ.

Come to think of it, the only appliance I’ve had issue with in the last 20 years is my coffee grinder, which after about 10 years of heavy use I sent to Baratazza and paid for it repaired.

So I’m just not seeing this, even a little bit.

"The reduction in the purchasing power of money is similar to a form of taxation... As people start spending more and saving less, they become more present oriented in all their decision making... this helps explain why civilizations prosper under a sound monetary system, but disintegrate when their monetary systems are debased."

My Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner is turning six soon and is going strong.

The laptops I sadly have to agree on though.

Good products are still out there but there are very few trustworthy sources of reviews that actually test the durability. Project farm comes to mind as a rare example. Consumer reports does a decent job but puts it behind a paywall.

(1) How "high-end" something is does not equate to how long it will last or how reliable it will be. Sometimes it's entirely the opposite (early generation Plasma did not outlive CRT equivalents but cost substantially more).

(2) Targeting a specific brand "known historically (to you) as reliable" is pointless most of the time. All brands have levels, and the low end is same old crap.

(3) Consumer reports turned out to be a sometimes useless great resource. Often the model being recommended is no longer available. Buying the next model burned me -- badly -- because the following model year dishwasher was required to use less water (EPA), it was the first generation of this new design and it meant not really having a dishwasher.

(4) Dishwashers these days positively suck. I went through four of them in two years, returned two, resold one, suffering with the last (a Bosch that is -- at least -- quiet). The manual instructs not to pre-rinse the dishes, just "shake them off in the sink". Do they actually test these things with real food? Heaven forbid a kernel of Cocoa Krispies ends up on a bowl ... when mixed with milk and sent through a hot cleaning cycle, it turns into chocolate stone epoxied onto whatever in the hell it attached itself to. Oh, and that one kernel will turn into 40 little versions and attach themselves to everything.

My buddy has dishwasher-something-he-got-from-Sears from the 90s with a garbage disposal built in. You can put a Crock Pot with the leftover roast in the thing, put in your hearing protection, turn it on, and everything is shiny in about 60-90 minutes.

(5) There's a real market opportunity for a microwave without a weird UI. That's it: "without a weird UI". Mine has 25 buttons and a dial. Figuring out how to microwave something on anything other than "high" is sort of like figuring out an Escape Room. The microwave's "30 second" button sets the time for 30 seconds and starts it immediately. Hitting it again adds another 30 seconds. So that button's almost got a hole in the center where the text once was and the entire family either rounds up or stares at it until it's almost done, popping the door open with 15 seconds or so left. Of course, as a result of this behavior, the door safety switch is malfunctioning so you have to very slowly/carefully close the door while applying pressure in a very specific way or the microwave will refuse to start.

(6) Sometimes you'll buy a cheap-o gas mower with every intention of upgrading it "when it kicks the bucket". And sometimes that mower will run, faithfully, every week, 3 months a year for 25 years. Some will continue to start on the first or second pull despite still having the original spark plug, wires, air filter, having never been tuned up, maintained, or cleaned and despite it having only had oil added (never changed) ... twice? ... in 25 years, when it was blowing black smoke out the exhaust. Sometimes the thing you want to fail will outlive you.

Really ... do you need more than one button for "make it soggy and unevenly warm?"

New things don't last forever, but they also don't normally need to last forever. You can't universally say the modern incarnation of something is the end-all-be-all. Generally, products are enhanced over time (modulo the enshitifcation factor), and this means people want to upgrade after certain periods of time. Making things cost more so they last longer than most peoples' desired lifespan for an object is a waste of money.

All that being said, it's never been easier to put junk out there on the market. The rise of online shopping has greatly reduced the role of "buyers" in the market. Without an experienced taste maker vouching for the quality of an item, it's very easy to end up buying shit.

Many years ago I came across https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/ -- anyone have good stories from recommendations there?

---

I generally agree with the premise of this article. Here are my experiences with some things that work and don't fall apart:

- Zojirushi rice cooker and toaster oven. They are more expensive than the typical stuff, but better. I bought a horrible cheap rice cooker at first, and also a toaster oven from Amazon that died after 3-4 months. The Zojirushi ones have a better design and are more sturdy.

- Brompton Folding Bike. It's obvious that they have tested this design under a wide range of conditions -- and importantly have kept it pretty stable for decades, not messing it up for marketing purposes / trends.

I had a Montague Folding Bike prior to this, which had all this "military grade" advertising, and it was a piece of shit. I got stranded in the middle of a ride with an unusable bike because some dinky steel part bent in half. The Brompton parts are solid and well-designed.

Again the Brompton costs more, but it's better. The Brompton bag is very good too.

- Triangle Borea Speakers. I don't know about durability, but they're part of what I see as a small segment of the audio market moving against the trend of audio getting worse since the 70's. This segment seems to have almost zero advertising.

Speakers driven by amps seem to be incredibly niche now, since that everyone has music on their devices. I think these were ~ $600 range and worth every penny. You can easily pay $1000 or even $5000 for something like this, since the audio market is weird.

- Kinesis Freestyle keyboard. I hesitate to include this, because weirdly I had TWO keyboards die right around their warranty time?? But I actually called the company and they repaired the keyboards! (I rarely send anything back) I think that was almost 10 years ago, and I've been using the repaired keyboard since then !!! So in total I've been using these keyboards for over a decade, and I've gotten much more than my money's worth.

- Ikea stuff under $100 can be very well designed and functional. It seems like they know if they're going to sell a zillion copies of something, and they take the time to optimize the design. Flat packing adds a design constraint that encourages creativity.

OTOH, the furniture in the $500-$1000 range is very hit and miss.

- Sharp kitchen knife from Amazon with a sheath. I use the same knife every day now for almost everything... and bought a second one for when I'm away from home. I think it's actually better than knives 20 or 30 years ago, and it was under $20.

- I got a 42" Plasma TV from Amazon in 2007 or so, and used it for 14 years (I still have it, but it's in storage). People who saw it liked the quality more than the LCD TVs they had. I think they stopped making Plasmas for some reason

---

Some things that don't work:

- Flash thumb drives from Amazon. I guess I should go pay more at a "local computer shop" ?

- Random toaster ovens from Amazon, rice cookers from target (mentioned above). Actually now I remember that I used the same toaster oven for almost 20 years, and when it came time to replace it, got TWO complete duds from Amazon/Target.

- Air beds from Amazon that develop holes in a matter of months, and one which broke down after a single use. A big waste.

This is almost the correct answer, but the real reason is a bit more nuanced. There's a few parts to the answer, so I'll break them out:

So, as many people know and be-groans, businesses have been optimized by MBA-types who aim to extract as much value out of their companies as possible. In creating a product, that means giving exactly what the customer will purchase. In a competitive and elastic market, if you miss expectations, your customers will not be happy, and soon you might not have customers. If you meet or noticeably exceed expectations, you will have happy customers. If you unnoticeably exceed expectations, you are doing nothing but wasting money. You should spend your money on things that customers notice and care about, and stop spending money on things that customers don't know or don't care about, because they just inflate your costs, and ultimately, the final price of the product.

Designing a physical product is always a balancing act of cost, quality, and requirements. Designing a product with more robust components costs more. And the more robust it is, the more expensive it is.

Today, there are very good tools for determining how products will behave in the real world. Engineers are good at knowing how long a part will last in a particular application. Material science is more mature, and so is CAD and other analysis tools. There are also many more available materials and methods of manufacturing. The result is that engineers today have many more tools to enable them to design a product that is closer to their balance of engineering targets. If someone sets price, quality, and functionality requirements, those goals can be hit more closely than in years past, when there were fewer materials and fewer manufacturing methods.

Because of all of the above reasons, appliance manufacturers have been able to produce appliances that sell better. And in fact, the change in the typical lifestyle proves this -- household appliances that were once luxury purchases (which almost all of them were 70 years ago) are now expected in many households. There are many things that have changed in the past 70 years to make this happen. Prices have gone way down, manufacturing and material science has improved, new types of appliances have been invented, and new features have been added.

However, I think it's also important to remember that mass market appliances are designed for the lowest-common-denominator set of requirements. Most home consumers, demonstrably, are not making purchasing decisions based on a product's ability to last 70 years. Should they? Maybe, depending on how long they actually want to use it before it goes out of style and they throw it away. Would it be better for the world and the environment? Potentially, under the condition that it would actually continue to be used.

The bottom line is that most people don't buy heavy duty appliances because most people don't buy heavy duty appliances. However, heavy duty appliances DO exist! They're made for commercial market buyers who actually do put their appliances through heavy use and do have higher requirements for longevity and duty cycle. If you look at these appliances, many are built a lot like mid 20th century appliances.

But I won't mention those. Instead an observation about "They don't make them like they used to" as it pertains to automobiles. I work for an automobile manufacturer (anything stated here is solely my own opinion and experience). For a good long time, cars HAD to be worked on every so often. Carbs get fouled up, valves wear down and need adjusting, ignition system timing drifts - so people learned how to work on their cars. The things they had to fix were relatively simple and observable. Then the 70's and 80's happened, and about 4 big things changed in short order: Insurance went up for high horsepower cars, The Gas Crisis made the big old boats unaffordable, Smog regulations went into effect, more safety systems got added.

Unfortunately this meant: People missed the power and torque of the huge old engines. Smog compliance added a lot of gizmos and computers. And the safety stuff made cars safer, but sometimes people died anyway, and sometimes the safety systems were part of the cause (this is more complicated than I'm willing to write about in this brief comment).

And you can't adjust a fuel injected car like you can a carb, even if it's not running right. You can't adjust the points or the dynamo or the distributor with electronic ignition. Lot of stuff got much harder to access, because midsize and compact cars just don't have the real estate that the old boats had.

So lots of folks started saying "They don't make them like they used to" - because you had a lot of new problems, and lost a lot of things you were used to. You still had to fix the problems, but your old diagnostics and understanding didn't go very far - you had to talk to a computer and it didn't talk very well. You still had to work on it, because some of the old stuff broke, and some new stuff broke; but you couldn't work on it. So it felt like it was just crap.

Companies started using cheaper processes to get the painting done faster. They used plastic instead of metal, and thinner metal to save weight and improve gas mileage, and it all sucked.

But slowly they improved the grade of plastic they used, made the computers smarter, really dialed in the engineering standards for components, and ever so slowly people stopped saying "They don't make them like they used to", because nowadays you can get the same horsepower in a tiny 10 year old compact hatchback that you used to get in a souped-up Mustang or Camaro, and with better gas mileage and safety.

It's just that now we can also complain about the Bluetooth and touchscreens not working.

They sure don't make them like they used to, eh?

https://xkcd.com/1994

In reality I need to consider the cost of my time. It’s much cheaper to buy new, already keyed CAT-6 cables than to split and order a raw cable end myself into an RJ45 jacket.

If reducing waste is more important to you than time, then yes by all means try to repair things. But remember everyone has different priorities.

I live in a major metro area. It seems like for anything I could possibly want, there is a shop that sells it at whatever quality level I desire. And repairs... People are always saying that you can't fix anything. But that's not true. Just last year my oven stopped working; the local repairman sent the circuit board to a place nearby that "rebuilt" it (checked every component, desoldered and replaced anything that wasn't perfect).

Yep, houses are expensive in the big city. Taxes are crazy in the big city. But the economy supports having durable stuff. If your only option is Target and Amazon, I can understand feeling like nothing you buy works.

Oh, and don't get me started about pens. Come on. A Pilot Metropolitan and a bottle of ink that will last 5-10 years will set you back a whole $40. And then you only need to buy more ink.

Everything I haven’t lost mostly lasts. Don’t know what to tell you. Even like 55” TV I bought in 2014 for like $500. Life’s pretty good.

This isn’t a bad thing! Sometimes a ratchet set made out of fondant and priced below a pair of lattes is enough to get the job done. A coffee mill with the structural integrity of sprinkles will nonetheless last long enough for one to figure out if they give a shit about fresh ground coffee.

For stuff that needs to last, going just a little out of the way makes all the difference! Need a pen? Find someone selling Pilot Vcorn [1], buy 10 for $30, and you’ve got pens for years. Get a Bodum burr grinder for $50 and wash your hands of your coffee appliance graveyard. Buy kitchen things from your local restaurant/commercial kitchen supplier and beat the shit out of them as they were designed to be beat.

[1]: https://www.pilot.co.jp/products/pen/ballpen/water_based/vco...