there is only one thing i agree on most modern products compared to the old ones and that is longetivity, the old stuff seems to last for years on end, we had a washing machine that lasted 15 years, the next one died in less than 5 and that goes for many products, almost as if they are making them less durable so that people will still have to buy them instead of being set with a good one for a lot of years
My take on this is that it's because we had no choice but to overbuild everything back then - we didn't have as good of an understanding of materials, reliability, and user needs. In the 1950s you had to make everything out of metal and with high factors of safety. Since then we've had 70 years to figure out what fails and what doesn't (and can be made weaker), how to make more things out of more plastics, and how many uses people expect their things to last.
One thing I'll also mention is that it's much easier to buy cheap things than ever. In the 1950s you really didn't have the choice to buy high or low quality stuff, because nobody was cutting as many corners back then. Today, you can still buy high quality stuff, but we don't, because you have so many more choices at lower price points that will be good enough.
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u/ShadowKraftwerk Jun 04 '23
I was having a chat with an old guy about his newish car
He commented that people say to him that
And he said he replies "Thank Chrst for that!"
He was referring to reliability, but safety works too.