|
Hot take: a lot of people complaining about how manufacturing has gone down the shitter and nothing lasts anymore have simply changed their buying habits in line with newly available products. The stuff nanna used to buy that lasted 50 years is still available. You can still buy a hand spun jumper, a hand woven blanket, a handmade pair of shoes and a hand forged knife. They cost a week's wage. Exactly like back in nanna's day. 37 comments
@coolandnormal 1000x times this. See also: IKEA furniture, air travel, appliances*, banking Contrast with: electronics, cars (dramatically cheaper for much better*)  I have a bunch of IKEA furniture and most of it is still intact after 15 years. 🤷♂️ There is one piece that's starting to fall apart, though. I have lost some IKEA dishes and glassware, but that's because I dropped 'em. 😂 @argv_minus_one @screw_dog this is another excellent point, a lot of modern "crappy" products* are actually incredible in their quality/longevity to cost ratio. *weet-bix furniture, polar fleece, the 1993 holden astra  @coolandnormal @argv_minus_one @screw_dog OTOH, I just ordered a new Opinel folding carbon steel knife, because no one has made a better knife in the 134 years since Joseph Opinel crafted the first one. "Newer is only better if it's better." -my dad  @argv_minus_one @screw_dog @coolandnormal  @argv_minus_one @screw_dog @coolandnormal Furniture used to be built to last generations. My lounge chairs are mid century, my kitchen dresser 1940's, the kitchen table 1950's, big dining table 1960's. @lindawoodrow @argv_minus_one @screw_dog it still is (if you go to the right person). @coolandnormal @lindawoodrow @argv_minus_one @screw_dog also hot take, the crap old stuff has all disintegrated, so the old stuff you buy today is reliable and well made, because it has lasted a generation already. People have without question been selling trash and snake oil since the dawn of civilization, but you don't see it because it's in landfill. I'm sure some stuff made in 2024 will survive the next 80 years. Some cheap stuff, but mostly very expensive stuff. @blinken @lindawoodrow @argv_minus_one @screw_dog wow this. Giant neon sign with this on it. This is the truest shit said so far. Survivorship bias in manufacturing. Everything we have in 2024 from our nannas was "made to last generations"... of course the fuck it was. The test is built into the premise. We are now generations later and the few of nannas 7000 items that we still own are the few that were made to last generations. @blinken @lindawoodrow @argv_minus_one @screw_dog it's like we took all our grandparents' stuff and stepped over a magic bridge that only purple things can go over. At the other side we looked at the few things we had left and said "wow, they really made everything purple back in nanna's day, gee they just don't make everything purple like that anymore" as all our grandparents' other stuff goes floating away down the river. @coolandnormal @blinken @argv_minus_one @screw_dog I don't know about this take. I remember both my grandparents homes. They were all poor, working class. My grandad was a night watchman. My Nanna was born in 1908. Her home, from when I remember it in the early 1960's was much smaller than homes now, and much more sparsely furnished. I have the kitchen table, my sister has the dresser, and six chairs that have not survived were all the kitchen furniture. 1/3 @coolandnormal @blinken @argv_minus_one @screw_dog The gas stove survived but was eventually sold. The lounge had two big club chairs that my mum still has, and a sideboard that my Nanna inherited from her mum, and my mum still has, along with some big vases that stood on it, and a hallstand. 2/3 Very expensive cars certainly don't fit that description. I have relatives who seem to be buying a new BMW every other year because they fall apart and the repairs are more expensive than the payment on a new car. They baby the engine with top-tier fuel and look at all the good that does. My SO's Chevy, meanwhile, is still running after almost 10 years and over 200k miles. It just does not give a crap and keeps going anyway. @argv_minus_one @blinken @lindawoodrow now we're butting up against the difference between premium manufacturing and luxury manufacturing... Which is... Well... I'm from one of those industries and the industries are *not friends*. @argv_minus_one @blinken @coolandnormal @lindawoodrow BMWs have been svelte trash for decades buy any other German car - yes even the Opel…  @coolandnormal This is true, in many ways, people just had few clothes of good quality, because it was very expensive. At the same time, money just goes different places now. @RickiTarr @coolandnormal I think about those Victorian novels where characters are identified by their one set of clothes... @colo_lee @RickiTarr this is honestly not a bad way to operate. I made a skirt out of a whole fleece this past winter. I don't see any logical reason to wear anything else for the next 20 winters. @coolandnormal I hate to be disagreeable but ten years ago I had a reconditioned dryer that I paid $150 for. It lasted me ten years. It still worked but it took about 2 hours to get the clothes dry. The $500 dryer I replaced it with is a rattle trap piece of garbage but it works... 😉🤷♀️ @Lesliesez I'm still using the 1950s Hills Hoist that came with the house. It works okay.  @coolandnormal Replacing it with one of those aluminium fold up ones you stick on the side of the house. The ones that no body bothers to fold down and have the sagging string. That the lines are too close together so sun only really gets directly on the outside. :( @coolandnormal extending manufacturing to include software production, there has been a conscious decision to move towards lower quality. The push to code first, plan later; the appearance of progress before you even know what the final product is supposed to do. Just like cheap chipboard furniture, it goes together. But probably won't survive a move across town, and bad things will happen if you lean on it "the wrong way". I was going to call it Ikeafication, but Ikea is made with precision. I'm reminded of Blackadder Back & Forth, in which the heros travel from the present day back to Elizabeth the first's court. They show the court a series of things modern people consider important technology, the Elizabethans think the inventions are ridiculous and irrelevant and immediately sentence the heros to death. They redeem themselves with a roll of lifesavers*, which Elizabethan people consider a miracle. *a cheap chalky mint candy, popular in the 90s, 95% pure sugar.  @coolandnormal The things also require more maintenance. You might have to polish the shoes, or sharpen the knife. Eventually it might need new a handle or soles  @coolandnormal yes, but also: there did used to be a greater variety of quality, but the market has pushed apart in two directions: • really cheap, fair quality but not great There used to be something in between those two price points, but that has largely disappeared in many product areas. And then, of course, there's fashion, which makes its own rules and is for the most part driven by marketing more than need. @coolandnormal @sabik a “week’s wage” won’t even buy the cheap option for me. I think cheaper products have expanded the class of “comfortably poor” @coolandnormal what I find difficult though is finding which stuff is expensive-because-well-made and which stuff is just expensive and still trash.  @coolandnormal The higher-price, higher quality options are disappearing. I went to the only distributor of residential-scale commercial washers and dryers in the city — and found out they don’t have any. My next best option is to go to a major retailer and buy a well-known brands’s “commercial” line of washers & dryers - because they come with the best warranty. @coolandnormal people ask me why I buy T shirts from an Australian maker at up to ten times the price they pay. I have a drawer of great T shirts thus accumulated some of which are twenty years old and all still look like new… Also helps me to stay trim as I steam through middle age because I want to continue wearing them! |
Gregory's Server
"the kmart shoes don't last, not like back in my day"
There has been no day ever when a pair of shoes that costs less the a loaf of bread has lasted more than 20 minutes.