@PhoenixLandPirate
Your thread triggers me to think, how many cases do I know to back up my previous claim. What I originally thought was TV, washing machine and vehicles.
My colleague tells me that his 5-year old TV is dead, people says “built like an old Mercedes” to mean “built like a tank”. However, I also realise that so many stuffs around me are lasting quite long.
But still I guess that the cheaper & less durable offers are becoming more and more mainstream. @Name2 I do believe that this trend has been / is being driven mainly by ordinary people like us, since we all eagerly look for a lower price. Transparency would be another crucial factor.
I watch HandToolRescue on YouTube where he picks up tools and devices from 1850 to 1950 to restore. Basically they look like crap but you wash em off, brush off the rust and repaint them and they work as good as the day they were made. Amazing durability.
Companies made stuff to last back then. Quality has dropped massively on most devices and things we buy today. Our job as the 99% is to just shut up and keep buying them till we got no more money.
I know it’s the copout of all the manufacturers, but i do believe that more complexity and smaller components can lead to shorter lifespan. Every last piece of our electronics is pushed to the absolut limit of it’s capabilities while simultaneously having to be as tiny and compact as possible.
That old chainsaw you might see on HandToolRescue is a big, heavy, inefficient engine and some chunks of metal. What’s there to break, that isn’t easily replaced or fixed? Modern equivalents have tiny nozzles and membranes in their carburetors, of course they’re not as robust. But it weighs half as much while outputting the same power and using less fuel…
That being said, I am absolutely sure a lot of products are definitely engineered to fail, or at least no care was given to longevity.
But i feel like more and more people take notice and demand better quality and reparability. I mean just look how successful Framework is. Still, the majority of people either don’t care or unfortunately can’t afford to buy the “premium” option and the matter of the fact is, that disposable crap quality is just cheaper to produce and sell in most cases.
4 Likes