So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer. The first few examples are kitchen appliances. In this case I don't really know, but I'm at least willing to listen. Ultimately the evidence is people responding to a thread on Twitter where he solicited complaints. Not so compelling.
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.
Thinking back to growing up, we had an electric stove, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. All were purchased from '79-82 or so.
1. Stove died in about 2007
2. Washer/dryer were replaced with something "better", although they were still running in 2009
3. Dishwasher died in 2011
4. Refrigerator was replaced but still running in 2013
This was not just survivorship bias. Basically all of these appliances lasted at least 30 years. They were from good brands (Washer/dryer and dishwasher were Maytag), but I don't think you can buy an appliance today that you can truly expect to last 30 years. At the least, there will be some sort of control board that will give out after 10-15 years and won't be available anymore.
This. I don't really care about cars but for household appliances there is a clear tendency towards obsolescence.
Another data point: Just replaced a washer from the early 90s (German low-price brand, "Privileg") with one from the 2010s by a higher-priced brand (Bosch). Both were used. Reason for replacement: small top-loader for larger standard washer.
Both were obviously bought used.
The newer one broke within six months. The old, 30-year old one still works. The defect was a mechanical one, not the PCB. But notably, the still-functioning washer has no digital controls.
I know, anecdata is no data.
But for this kind of appliance, I'd bet my arm that their lifetime has decreased substantially.
Bought a house in 1990 that had all of the original appliances in it from 1974. The stove died around 2000 (26 years). The Fridge died around 2010 (36 years). The dishwasher died in 2012 (38 years).
We started renting that house out in 2010 and bought a different house that had appliances that were about 7 years old (based on what the previous owner had told us). We had to replace the dishwasher in 2012 (so it was 9 years old then) and since then we had to replace it again in 2022 (at 10 years). Had to replace the fridge in 2014 (11 years).
I bought a new Maytag washer/dryer when I moved. We were so frustrated by it that we decided we would replace them and then give them away. Had friends who were interested but, they couldn't get them to work at all either. They were literally junk straight from the factory. We had them serviced under warranty as well, just a huge waste of time and money.
This has to be a race to the bottom and yeah, technically somehow it did sort of wash our clothes, but it was a huge hassle.
That's the smartest possible counterpoint to all this, nicely counterpointed.
This was a fun read and I agree in sentiment to the rage of all the crap from target that falls apart in 10 minutes but I feel like I've developed an ok sense if when I'm taking this risk and am less frustrated when something cheap fails. Essentially any time I buy anything but a book from Amazon or anything but cereal and vodka from Target. Ultimately I think the crapification of lowend consumer goods has just made me buy less crap, which feels good I think. I've also accepted a pretend scifi narrative in which the only kind of society that doesn't descend into anarchy is one where people are constantly buying and throwing away cheap crap.
And as an aside I have one of those crazy juicers but I stopped using it because it scares my wife and smells like burning / ozone.
I used a Kindle 2 e-reader daily for ~14 years and, aside from decreased battery life, it was still great. Sadly I eventually stepped on it one too many times and the screen cracked.
I might fix it for ~$20 with ebay parts if I ever get bored enough.
I enjoyed the rant nature of the essay but your comment hits the spot.
We admire the Victorian era bridge still in use but forget all the bridges that long ago collapsed, and ignore the overconstruction required of the survivors because mechanical theory was still developing at the time.
Also we used to have more single-application devices; while a juicer is often still a single-application device today, at the other extreme our phone has absorbed a deskfull of other single-application devices (and more). Usually with some improved reliability, some less, and also some loss of affordance.
>We admire the Victorian era bridge still in use but forget all the bridges that long ago collapsed,
Engineers tend to put care into building bridges that don't collapse, and have been doing so for millenia so collapses can happen, but are rare. "All the bridges that long ago collapsed" is in my opinion not all that many bridges, really [1], and lots of people remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. I still remember the bridge collapse from the Northridge quake too.
Bridges are a special case of civic architecture where long durability and long reliability are taken into account that are kind of a special class, so they're probably not a great thing to generalize from.
The bridges we still have are maintained. Bridges fail all the time, but we only repair the ones we want to keep. Your link to wikipedia as proof that bridges do not fail is a case of the observer fallacy. The wikipedia article tells us of some bridges that failed, not all bridges that failed.
Gumby's point that the Victorian era bridges we still have were over-engineered is I think a good point. However we might like to say that they were well-engineered, but I bet that even they have been in a state of on-and-off if not constant repair.
Well I was talking about the Victorian era (emergence of iron bridge building) and indeed quite a few make that list. "Engineering" in the sense it has today didn't exist back then. Brunel was truly revolutionary in this regard, though even how he thought of it would be far from what we today call engineering.
We see this in the evolution of many technologies, from boiler explosions (especially in trains) that are pretty much unknown today to jet air travel (likewise at a rather extraordinary state of safety) and many others besides (consider the implementation and impact of vaccination).
That old juicer from the 40s was likely expensive "industrial" equipment for restaurants. Even today, if you buy any professional appliance and only give it occasional home use it will last forever.
Yeah this article would be a lot more interesting if there were a conspiracy to buy up all of the indestructible appliances made more than x decades ago.
If they really were that much better then more of them would be around today.
I live in Sweden and can find quite a lot of old school kitchen appliances in flea markets/thrift stores. I bought my Technivorm Moccamaster coffeemaker in one, a Bamix immersion blender, a Bosch stand mixer, all of them from around the 80s and still working 100% fine.
My 3 year old Moccamaster’s auto-off feature gave up a couple months ago. It uses a special mechanical switch—an illuminated rocker switch that physically flips and turns the carafe warming plate off after 100 minutes—that I know I could easily replace if I had the part but Technivorm insists I send the unit to them which I probably never will do because the packing and shipping is a pain and costly and because I need my coffee.
I don't like this trend either. I was trying to buy an electric toothbrush the other month and there were so many models with different features. I'm like wtf it's a toothbrush, can it brush my teeth? Yes? Give me that one. I don't need you to tell me when to replace the brush or how long to brush for or sing me a song.
> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past.
Forget "durability" - safety is paramount. Those old cars were tanks, simpler, last longer and easier to repair but absolute death traps and dump smog.
[Edit]
Guess they didn't last longer, either way I'm happy to leave behind the cars of yester-year... even the 90's a bit sketch (though WAYYYY better).
On average they didn't (oh no, that repair costs more than the "car is worth" as if that's a metric that actually means anything) but it was far easier to keep one running indefinitely. You could take an engine to a small machine shop and get the head and block resurfaced, valves reamed and cylinders lapped. Without any electronics to fail it was just a block of metal that was slowly losing material and a quick hit with a file could even out any imperfections leaving it like new, just with very slightly more displacement.
Modern engines are way more reliable because they have coatings and materials that will last nearly indefinitely in most parts of the engine but they're built on proprietary sensors and electronics that need a steady stream of replacements and secret software to debug.
We could make cars last indefinitely from a supply chain perspective, but commoditizing software and electronics would make them very marginally more expensive. We absolutely can't have that because, drum roll for the 1000th time, 99% of the population doesn't give a flying fuck and wants cheap shit at all costs.
It’s the old fuel injection vs carburetor debate. Do you want something that usually runs for 200k miles without a single problem, but takes a fancy shop to fix? Or do you want something that needs a complete rebuild every three months and needs to be retuned for your ski trip, but can be repaired by a high school boy with a tongue depressor, a q-tip, and a hammer?
The rapid exodus of carburetors shocked and dismayed many right-to-repair folks, but I think we now see with laptops and cell phones that all else equal, consumer preference strongly favors trading repair headaches for the otherwise more compelling product (thinner, faster, lighter, more powerful, etc)
I think you can have it both ways honestly. A TBI setup with a wasted spark ignition is at least as easy to work on a carburetor, with little or no extra complexity and way less headaches, while removing a lot of the problems older stuff had (no points, condensers and caps going bad, no need to mess with the jets, etc.). You can have it both ways, the manufacturers and consumers just have to give a shit.
One thing I suspect has tipped the scales in favour of less repairable products is the massive decline in social capital.
30-40 years ago, if your lawnmower broke down you'd ask Dave from two doors down to come and have a look at it.
Now, you'd either take it to a professional repairman (and get it back 2 weeks and $100+ later), try to work it out yourself via online tutorials, or just throw it in the bin.
Either way, it's far more painful for a product to bee temporarily out of service these days than it once was.
There’s clearly some of the baumol effect at play. The small engine repairman hasn’t gotten much more productive, which is part of why it’s so expensive to hire out repair.
My backup commuter vehicle is a inexpensive (but modified) off-highway motorcycle for exactly this reason.
Sure, you have to have a small 'bug-out bag' (in this case a belt pack) with spare parts (bolts, belts, master links etc.) and some critical sockets if you want to take a ride without fear, but beyond that the thing is a tank. Even the most critical of problems can be fixed for minimal expenditure at Harbor Freight and/or a local motorcycle parts shop.
Aside from being fun, and confusing people every time they see it in the parking lot next to the Tesla/Rivian/Mercedes AMG crew, it is serious peace of mind that I've always got motorized transport that won't fail me.
IMO the reason we need better right-to-repair laws is because it's pretty hard to think about repairability at buy-time instead of at "when-it-fails"-time. Even more since companies that used to be good in the repairability front aren't necessarily still.
As someone who drives an “old” Honda 2006, I’m surprised that this machine is still running very good. I could just take it to my local shop and had it fixed in 1-2 days. Based on my logs, I took the car for repair on average of 3-4 times a year.
I am looking to purchase a new family vehicle in the future but with all the softwares, screens, and fancy stuffs I am not sure if I liked it. Anyone feels this way?
Repair 3-4 times a year or oil changes/consumables? How many miles does this honda have, age is not a good indicator over miles.
If you are really having this car repaired 4 times a year for 18 years (72 repairs) this doesn't sound like a reliable machine. A modern Toyota or Honda can go many years with 0 repairs, just consumables.
This isn't specifically about Honda quality, but I think it's a nice Honda anecdote.
My wife bought a used Accord before we got married. Eventually it died on the highway and we had it towed to the dealer. The engine needed to be replaced because of the failure of a part that had been recalled (when it was owned by the previous owner) had not been replaced. Since it was due to a recalled part, Honda replaced the engine for the price of the oil.
We bought Hondas for the next 20 years after that. We still own a 2012 Accord that my son is running into the ground. Our current car is a Volvo, lots of nice features, but I think our next will be a Honda.
The engine of my 2006 Honda hasn’t had any major issue besides from oil leaks, and busted air coolant pipes, etc., minor stuffs. I guess the most important stuff is that to have its yearly complete maintenance.
My Acura (up line Honda) was nice, but Honda has been really slow with the EV transition, so I left them for my next car even though I liked their quality. Hopefully they make the EV transition eventually.
My 2017 CRV started bricking itself, of course right at the 5 year warranty mark. something was wrong somewhere and the electronics & sensor system didn’t know where so it was designed to shut all the electronic systems off, like cruise control, emergency braking, road departure mitigation, etc. etc.. about 20 different sub-systems, each one got it’s own separate loud annoying beep in succession every time the car started.
We took it to the dealer many times, and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong either. That didn’t stop them from trying, by replacing whatever part was their best guess and charging us for the new one plus labor. During our final visit to the dealer, only a few blocks away, the car broke down. It limped, smoking, to the dealer where they found the AC compressed had seized causing the timing belt to melt, which then took out the alternator and several other components. After a $5,000 repair and assurances the problem must be fixed, we took it home and had a nice month’s worth of driving, and then it started bricking again. We couldn’t sell it fast enough, what a nightmare.
To their partial credit, Honda later reimbursed half the repair cost, and the dealer admitted the vehicle failure was design flaws that were out of our control. We also found out after the repair that the AC compressor had been recalled, but unfortunately the new one didn’t fix the problem.
Tl;dr I did before I bought it, but I personally no longer believe Honda to be more reliable than any other brand. One major problem across the industry now is that they know how to make good reliable engines and powertrains, but none of them are any good at computer software reliability, and computers have very suddenly taken over all critical systems in the car.
There's a few tricks to know for each model. I got a mid 2000s ford with a by all accounts unbreakable engine (600hp possible on stock internals) but the radiator and trans cooler is the same unit and often cracks pushing coolant into the trans. First thing i did to it was to buy an aftermarket external trans cooler for my specific model and install it.
I really wish there was a new car that I wanted to buy, because my 1998 Jeep isn't getting any younger. But holy crap is the modern car a dumpster fire of shit from a UI perspective. Although it looks like at least some manufacturers are starting to take note: https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-touchscreens-buttons-back
My car has physical buttons for climate control, volume, lights, etc but also a nice sized touch screen for CarPlay. I got the last year before VW took away the steering wheel buttons with capacitive replacements, though it sounds like they too are waking that back.
Yes that article sums up my feelings on the modern car. But my main concern are the repairs 5-10 years from now. It’s crazy to think that a car would be recalled by just some software glitch if that’s what I read is correct.
You can have that level of quality and care for the entire car, not just limited to the drivetrain and electronics, and it's probably even in a showroom right now waiting for buyers, just at your nearest Rolls Royce dealership.
That's only if they don't QC every single part, for every single car, coming from new suppliers.
Which RR would do to avoid the obvious problem, only after a supplier has been verified to be sending only the highest quality product, would they ease off.
The simplest thing is that the supplier charges double or triple the unit price such that they can accept half the parts failing inspection and getting sent back.
It's more than just QC. When you make 3M cars per year, you get a lot of data points about what fails, and you you feed that back into new designs. You also nail manufacturing tolerances. When you make 4,000 (and a lot of those won't see the same mileage as a Honda), there aren't as many opportunities to find these issues.
Or another way: you an QC a bolt to death, but that doesn't tell you if it's undersized for the design.
Yes it does when there are several stages of prototypes and engineering builds before the actual production vehicle is shipped to customers... and the hundreds of other mechanisms and systems that major automakers use nowadays. I mentioned QC because it's the first screening for arriving parts, not the only thing that occurs.
Do you not know how car manufacturing works?
Anyways you don't have to take the quality of RR parts on my word if you still think it's impossible, just go a showroom and inspect it yourself.
Design iteration is typically a long tail phenomenon - new issues keep coming up as the system (car) faces new scenarios.
Even a high-resource prototyping program can only go so far with scenarios like - wear and tear/part fatigue, adverse environmental conditions, local peculiarities (e.g. regulatory requirements for uncommon configurations), unintended but common maintenance mistakes etc.
For example, a Fiat car my family owned suffered a cascade drivetrain failure after about 9 years on the road. I don't think a prototyping program could have captured that ahead of time.
The fact that the showroom RR parts look fine only indicates that the parts are ok immediately after manufacturing; it does not promise they'll work fine after several years even if treated will.
> Design iteration is typically a long tail phenomenon - new issues keep coming up as the system (car) faces new scenarios.
Even a high-resource prototyping program can only go so far with scenarios like - wear and tear/part fatigue, adverse environmental conditions, local peculiarities (e.g. regulatory requirements for uncommon configurations), unintended but common maintenance mistakes etc.
Which is why automakers typically recommends a maintenance schedule that catches the vast majority of potential failures before they occur on the road.
How does this, or anecdotes of your family's Fiat, relate to engineering and verification practices of parts coming in from suppliers?
Depends what era of cars we're talking. There's a ton of stuff from the 90s and 2000s like GM trucks, that I strongly suspect will be on the road longer and in greater numbers than stuff 10 years newer. The mid to late 90s and early 2000's seems to be the sweet spot where fuel injection and simple electronic ignition, and stuff using older designs (engine's, etc.) that had to be built heavier, combined with better metallurgy, better oils, better gas, and so on, meant that the vehicles, when taken care reasonably, would go well past a quarter million miles. There's a ton of stuff now, that given much weird crap is on there and how much stuff is done to squeeze every last MPG out (like a lot of GDI setups, auto start/stop, transmissions that pull into neutral automatically at a stop, etc.) that I really doubt will make it as far. Even as far as repairability, a 90's 4L60E or 4L80 can be repaired way, way more easier by way more people, in an economic fashion than a lot of later transmissions (that you may as well just throw away). I'm sure this holds across other brands too; Volvos come to mind, as the older rear wheel drive red block cars were certainly far better built, more reliability, and had an unbelievably better lifespan than the absolute garbage Volvo has put out after Ford bought them.
Well, they do (present tense) last longer in the sense that they’re still around and working, which of course doesn’t mean newer cars are worse. It’s a bit like saying someone who’s 70 lives longer than someone who’s 7.
I think newer cars seem to be more reliable but older cars probably lasted longer than you think, it’s just that your view is skewed due to the market you’re used to (reading your link, while a million miles is a lot, though not unheard of for a taxi, the mention of 17 years as if that’s and old car is something I find surprising.
It’s common where I live to see cars from the 60s or 70s still being driven. And I don’t mean maintained classics (though those exist too), I mean just old rusty cars that still work.
All this to say that while you’re most likely right about newer cars being more reliable (and they’re certainly safer, which is more important), that doesn’t mean older cars stopped working after 20 or 30 years, it just seems your view is skewed because you live in a place where a 17yo car is considered old.
I didn’t mean to say all old cars lasted longer but I can see that it came out that way. I just wanted to point out that some are still around, and further, the US is probably not the best market for a study on car lifetime since it seems most people change their cars when they’re still far from being EOL.
>It’s a bit like saying someone who’s 70 lives longer than someone who’s 7.
It's more like saying that someone who's 7 && depends on factory-only parts, processors, and software, that wont be available in 20 years, with ever more complex designs being pushed in between, will not make it to 70.
An AMC Gremlin came out in the 1970s, and you don't see almost any at all because they were complete crap.
Especially the 70s US cars and somewhat later were complete shit and lead to the meteoric rise of Japanese cars in the US. Almost nothing US built those days got close to 100k miles without massive amounts of rebuilding.
The Gremlin is probably too extreme an example (and as someone not from the US, I’m only aware of it because it became the
Butt of jokes in US TV and movies), but I still agree with your larger point.
In my country the closest example for those years would be the Alfa Romeo, which led to a popular saying here in the 80s that an Alfa made you happy twice: when you bought it, and when you sold it!
Well, the explanation that people are getting exactly the dirt-cheap shoddy crap they demand is correct.
You can buy a nice burr grinder from a company that not only sells spare parts for at least 5 years after they stop selling the model, but who also shares youtube videos on how to disassemble and repair the grinder. Mine is 11.5 years old and I replaced the central gear when it stripped around year 7 or 8, after grinding 2-3 coffees a day, probably 150+ kg of coffee, for that time. However, it wasn't cheap, and people appear not to care. Baratza, btw.
I mean for myself buying a cheap burr grinder is probably all I'd ever need, that said I've never chased quality coffee and don't care about it much.
For myself I do the 'harbor freight' tool buying method. I buy a cheap whatever first, and if it's something I find useful and demand higher quality then I more research into what quality is with at least some experience.
This said, I've also had a lot of cheap tools that have effectively lasted far longer than expected so crap doesn't always fail fast.
Lidl/Parkside here in Europe seems to be the perfect example. Never been disapointed by one of their cheap products. They're always performing and seems built to last. My little Parkside vacuum cleaner is still doing strong 10 years after I bought it while my 5yo expensive as hell Dyson operates intermittently now and is just screaming for a new battery every time I launch it. More expensive products are also prone to software tricks and planned obsolescence... and unfortunately sometimes just plain crap that capitalize on their good reputation from the past.
Well… It depends. Lidl launched a range of good quality cordless tools under the Parkside Performance moniker last year. The 20V screwdriver and drill seem like solid pieces of work, and are holding up well in my tiny shop. Those are good, and I recommend these to anyone.
But many of the plain Parkside branded tools are utter crap. The oscillating sander with exchangeable triangular, rectangular, and circular attachments I got was made of way to little material to be useful. The plastic struts for the attachments (the process of swapping those being horribly inefficient) partly melted with use.
The Parkside drill press I have isn't too bad, but I had to fix a mechanical failure where the part which connects the manual up-down thingy to its gear just sheared off because it was a tiny rolled piece of metal sheet instead of a solid piece of 4mm diameter steel. I fixed that (replacing that bit with part of a bolt tapped into the axle) and it is doing fine now, but still.
I think your survivors bias thing is very true. I've used old things which would survive nuclear blast, and still have some. And, old things which were gimcrack rubbish and unusable.
Some old plastics de-polymerised badly in heat. A lot of old chrome and tin plating corrodes. Bone handled cutlery is not designed for dishwashers. Sure, the mix master is going strong but it was gold plated when my mother in law got it. Same with the cast aluminium mincer.
That said, I fixed a 24 year old magimix by replacing the motor starter, everything else is fine except its on its second polycarbonate bowl since dishwashers: now only washed by hand.
My Stihl shopvac finally crapped out. Not sure how old as it came with the house. I went to the Stihl shop to see if they had replacements and they asked me what museum I pulled it from. No replacement motor but still replacement filters so now it's a prefilter for my new Stihl shopvac.
Tried Stihl direct? In any case, a second life as a preclean isn't such a bad end. Or, you could use it to clean the filters on the new one and prolong its life.
> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past.
I continue to buy older cars because this has been false for me everywhere I've experienced new cars (borrowed, friends, my own).
Pointing out lack of data to support an argument that relies on anecdotal evidence is good practice. However:
- The anecdotal evidence is strong amongst older people
- Data not existing doesn't mean it _can't_ exist
I suspect that younger people are just used to things not working, so they don't complain. Then there's the fact that there is no incentive for anyone else to show things could be better (except the old codgers like myself, but we're not a profitable demographic).
I scour online auctions for old gear, because I know it'll work. Hi-Fi systems built in the 90s for example, were the panicle of hi-fi. Heck, I even have a CRT from _thirty years ago_ that still works like new (now think of your smart T.V. in thirty years).
Forget that, is there anything you've bought new in the last _ten_ years that you still have?
> Forget that, is there anything you've bought new in the last _ten_ years that you still have?
My flatscreen TV and the sound bar that came with it. My daily-driver computer. My Samsung Galaxy S3 which I still use daily for some tasks, works fine. My washing machine. My Kenwood stand mixer.
All around 10 years, all working fine still without repairs.
That's just the things I could think of on the spot. There's very few things I've had to replace that were broken. Most things I've replaced because I wanted newer features, and have sold or given away the old item.
I'll concede that my previous lawn mower falls in your category. It had a plastic bushing on the main shaft, which got torn up over time, and destroyed some other parts when it held a retirement party.
That, is an excellent point. However, the very reason I buy in them in the first place is that they proved themselves to me _at the time_. Believe it or not, what I'm saying is I never had a bad experience with cars from the 90s, in the 90s.
I live in a place with real winters and road salt and I can assure you that modern cars are plenty corroded by 5 year mark if they weren't treated additionally post manufacturing for it.
The prices for 80s-90s 4wds like the Toyota LandCruiser and Nissan Patrols are climbing like crazy... Nissan even still make the 1990 model Patrol (GQ/Y60 frame) for the UN and Saudi Arabia.
For the cars, I think it depends, possibly even on your luck. My car is old enough to vote, and aside from one simple repair I could do in 15 minutes in my parents' garage with a part that was sold by the dealership for 60 €, it only ever needed changes of consumables. Hell, even the scheduled maintenance at the stealership costs a song, cheaper than my motorcycle.
My dad's cars from the same era didn't fare so well and all required heavier repairs; none still work.
Also, since we're talking anecdotes, my parents have thrown out all their CRT TVs and monitors because they've all failed in some way (I've personally never had any). And I'm typing this on a Dell LCD monitor from 2015 or so that still kicks ass and has great picture, even by today's standards. My 2013 MBP still has a working, good-looking screen, and it's been on the road a lot.
> Forget that, is there anything you've bought new in the last _ten_ years that you still have?
Yup, almost everything [0] still works like new, even my 2013 MBP which I've carted around a lot. It's not powerful enough anymore, so I have a new daily driver, but it still works. Hell, my gaming PC was bought circa 2013, and only had a new GPU 3 years ago (was bought for server work initially, so only had the cheapest GPU I could find). Still rocking the original SSDs, PSU, everything. Ditto for my wireless headphones I bought around 2018. The battery life is still good, the sound hasn't changed.
I've mostly lived in rental apartments, so I don't have any anecdotes about household appliances.
So not really sure what can be concluded from our anecdotes.
---
[0] The only thing that broke was an MS Sculpt keyboard, which broke down after 4 years of daily use.
My $20 Mr. Coffee my dad got me before I went to uni is about 9 years old, went through daily use for about 5 of those, stored outside for 2 years, has no problems.
I think people buy cheap weird shit and are surprised when it breaks but if you buy simple cheap shit it tends to work until you physically break it - I expect my enameled lime hand-squeezer to last basically forever also since I don't dishwasher it.
I fitted a RasPi with mpd and a USB sound stick into a tube radio from 1958 that happily plays in our kitchen day by day, can stream live or NAS (important feature having children) and I just love the tube sound.
I think there is some truth and reasoning to your point and there is a missed point also: peoples’ desire/ability to repair broken modern appliances.
An example of this is my mother’s cooker. She has had it for 15 years now and it is still going strong/only cost £300 when bought new.
The main reason for this is the simple fact I’ve gone and repaired it when something on other failed. One repair was a power box — cost me £15 and 30 minutes.
Two other repairs were heating filaments (one for the main oven, one for a job). If I remember correctly the total cost of the filaments was roughly £75.
This is one example but I can think of many others where I have repaired appliances for friends and family when their initial reaction was “it’s broke, nothing lasts now, I need to buy a new X”.
While I generally agree with you, that data isn’t very conclusive.
JD powers also need to be read carefully to not put all problems in the same basket. Malfunctioning engine vs “Bluetooth pairing was laggy with my 8 year old android phone” can be counted in same basket if you don’t look carefully.
This brings us to the next thing which is that both expectation and complexity on todays cars are thousand times higher than 20 years ago, both from customers and emission agencies. Given that, it’s amazing how well they still work. Often better than older models.
This puts cars in its own exceptional category that is much more difficult to compare. Where’s a freakin juicer, a ballpoint pen or a pair of gloves has no additional expectations today compared to 1940. They just got worse.
Wow, a cited source about modern vehicles being much more reliable, let's check it out!
- I click the link; it's a press release from JD Power which I thought is pretty well known to be a corrupted institution that more or less just sells off awards to whichever manufacturers want to pay the most for them. Oh well, let's give it the benefit of the doubt and read the actual study which surely has data to back their assumptions.
- The study isn't actually linked anywhere for me to review
- There's a link to " learn more" about the study. I click it, and it's another press release about the study. It has a download button at the top, surely this must be for downloading the study. I click it, and it's a 1 page PDF of the press release with no actual details.
- At this point I can click a link to go back to the original press release but nothing to actually read the dang study.
All checks out I guess, modern cars are more reliable!
Even if I did actually find the full "study" I can absolutely guess that it's entirely based on trash data like random surveys of consumers and would be near worthless without having a single real data point around how often cars/parts break down.
>So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer
Anecdotally, I've lost count of modern kitchen appliances such as blenders, coffee makers, cooking "processors", that have died on me. And not cheap either, basically mid-tier stuff. Any such device with extra digital "smarts" and a monitor in particular is a huge red flag.
Whereas I still have some inherited such electric appliances from the 70s and 80s that still go strong (and whenever they did, they're totally fixable).
I do this for my home, many of the standard, non mechanical items are the same price as one at a big box store but the quality is immensely better. We had a sandwich prep fridge at the house for a number of years and I loved it. But it was much louder and added about $30/month to the electric bill.
Speaking of kitchen appliances, we need a new immersion blender and my wife wants a cordless one. The old corded one lasted nearly 20 years, but most cordless ones have non-replaceable batteries and so are going to become junk long before the mechanical parts wear out.
Totally irrelevant links — the assertion was about hybrid cars, those links speak to cars overall.
The Toyota Prius debuted in the US in 2000. I’d argue 23 years is simply not sufficient to make an argument about long term reliability—particularly given that sales took a while to ramp, and any issues in, say, the first 10 years are likely to be dismissed as teething problems.
The article was about consumer goods in general, so data about cars overall is more relevant than a single brand. Nonetheless, the Toyota Prius is, by reputation, a very reliable car. Here a used car website used it's data to estimate car model's lifespan, finding that a Toyota Prius has a potential lifespan of 250000 miles, much greater than anything from the 1980s.
In the UK, the Prius seems to be used very widely by taxi companies. In fact most of the Prius's I see are in taxi company livery. To get the best out of a Prius (or, I guess, any hybrid) you should drive it non-aggressively, avoiding steep accelleration and braking. That may have something to do with the longevity of the Prius.
I've owned two Toyotas, neither ever broke down, and one of them saved my life (in a crash). If I were in the market for a car, I'd get a Toyota.
Not to get too deep into this, in the 80s cars were crap. That is based only on my own personal experience. But I have no idea how reliable cars made 70 years ago were (like the kitchen appliance mentioned in the article). I've seen really old cars still on the road, but those are probably owned by collectors / people that take effort to preserve those types of cars.
Cars made in the 40s and 50s were very unreliable, required significantly more maintenance than modern cars. You had to service things like breaker points, batteries and carburetors every few thousand miles. Most modern cars can go 10,000 miles between checkups and major components can go 100k+ miles with no work needed.
> Toyota Prius > argument about long term reliability
But you can tell a bit about their long term reliability by looking at heavy users like Taxis and Ubers.
The Prius is used because it is cheap, cheap to run, and cheap to maintain -- even by outlier users like Uber drivers (also note drivers are usually buying consumer versions).
Arguing about 23 years is a strawman - which would mean you could never buy anything new because new models haven't yet had even a few years of usage prediction.
Top Gear had a few episodes with old vs new comparisons. Needless to say the not-so-old classics were destroyed by average modern cars quite often [1].
I was just talking to my wife the other day about smaller items that are not being built to last. You can clearly see in products these days the built in capitalism. We’ve reached a point where I wonder how much more they can milk it. Making things smaller, reducing quality of parts, reducing thickness or length of parts and so on… that day we had experienced:
A board game where the plastic has been made thinner and thinner over years until the game really doesn’t function now.
A game where you drop a marble in a cylinder on top of plastic rods that slot in sideways and the game is to remove the rods and whoever drops the marble loses… well these rods were so flimsy they didn’t hold the marble up.
Survivorship bias. People look at old things today and say stuff biult long ago lasted longer. But that is only because all the junk from then isnt around anymore. What we have now is only the most durable stuff. Want to see what stuff was like in the past? Try working with knives made without stainless steel, when not cleaning your kitchen knife immediately meant a rust blade the next day. All those classic cars still around today? We forget all the horrible junk cars that nobody ever bothered to preserve.
> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past
May I know the timeframe and your experience on which you base the conclusion?
Been driving for last 35 years. Every newer car is crappier in every possible way - comfort, speed, durability, quality, reliability.
It's not some subjective observations - some 40-50 years ago automakers were accomodating customers, now they accommodate numerous limitations imposed by governments to make it "safer". And I am not even touching engine limitations thanks to which we have weak motors which roar like boeing at 5k rpm but still doesn't help to move car forward.
Cars made in 70-80s easily work for 40 years, if managed properly and made by nissan, mercedes-benz, toyota and sorts. Good luck modern garbage to live slightly longer than warranty without majour issues.
> limitations imposed by governments to make it "safer".
You have scare quotes there for some reason, but by pretty much all accounts cars now are so much safer than before. Like to an insane amount, over a 50% reduction in chance of fatality since the 70s/80s.
> we have weak motors which roar like boeing at 5k rpm but still doesn't help to move car forward.
And again it's working. Efficiency has increased even more than safety, with new cars getting over double the fuel economy even accounting for the larger cars!
I find it very wrong to attribute safety to a car rather than a driver. Sure, makers did good marketing selling general populace this notion.
Safety cones from driver knowledge how to avoid dangerous situations and hedge risks. “Safety” comes from useless bells and whistles, which give impression of “intelligent” system.
Bot sure what you mean under efficiency - at my books efficiency is how fast i can get from point A to B with minimal expense. Low engine volume cars lose it at every point
Exactly. There is no fuel economy since you still have to pump it to 5-6k rpm and no safety as well since it may cost you life when you have not enough power during overtake.
Sport mode on some cars is so lousy implemented (some SEA market toyota for example) that it's not even a solution.
The F150 I grew up with only lasted to 130k miles. To make that feat, it needed an engine rebuild, transmission replacement, air conditioner repair, alignments, power steering repair, numerous other minor repairs. The dash had cracks from the sunlight. The paint faded without clear coat. The fuel gauge didn't work. The windshield leaked.
Our modem vehicles are virtually new by comparison with only oil changes and replacement of wear items. The leather seats have some wrinkles and the floor carpeting looks worn.
My first car was from 2004 and I've been envy of many features, especially "security" ones of modern cars like cornering lights or QoL stuff like reversing camera that I had to mount as customization.
I used my parents 30 year wedding present Maytag as a washing machine. It never really broke I just finally got a new one. I'm sure it was used from 1960 until about 1995.
Of course, cars and engines in particular are more durable today. This is due to technological progress. Cars weren't designed to be unreliable back then, they were unreliable because they couldn't do any better. Two or three years ago, I bought a pair of headphones for 200 euros that looked pretty high quality. They're now so broken that I have to hold them together with gaffer tape. Soon they'll be rotting (or not rotting) in some landfill. It's common knowledge that everyday objects are now deliberately produced in such a way that they don't last long. That's not a conspiracy theory.
I've got a pair of sennheiser headphones from 2011. Work just amazing, despite a decade+ of abuse. Only downside is the pleather on the ear caps wore off, but it's super minor.
I bought another pair back in I want to say 2019, and it's been just OK. The inline mute broke, but everything else about them seems just as quality (no pleather ear caps tho - just fabric which I think is an improvement).
In between those purchases, I've bought a handful of other headsets, all around 50-120$. They were universally crap. Either shit cables, shit comfort, or just wore out really fast.
Anyway, long story short - you can get some lasting quality products. It's super hard to tell when a brand has sold out to the capitalism devil though.
Which was contemporaneous with the Yugo, so the Yugo is also a reliable and durable car? Or is it possible that there have been better and worse cars since the dawn of auto manufacturing?
I’ve had to buy a lot of furniture and other things for my new house this year, and one of the things that really sticks out to me is that practically every category of product seems to be split into a bimodal distribution: cheap crap & luxury boutique.
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.
There are economics papers about ‘the vanishing middle’ that explain why products go bimodal. (I can’t find them right now; google-foo is failing me.)
The gist I remember is that people lock onto a single differentiator: normally cost or quality. This moves most of producers to those outside points. Companies ‘trying’ to stay in the middle end up being more expensive (on a cost/quality measure) because they can’t reach mass production as easily as either the cheap or fancy.
> absolute trash for less than $1,000 or high-end, high-quality for $5000+
I've been noticing the same thing. But I also suspect that many people pay a little more for stuff, expecting that to make it better. The number of brands and variety of prices one can find on-line is astounding, and it must be much larger than the number of factories in Asia actually making the stuff.
I'm curious. My previous soft was from Ikea. Of course Ikea makes cheap disposable furniture but this sofa, IMO, was not one of those. It was made of real wood, not particle board. It was super well designed. It assembled into 4 parts using slots and a few very large steal bolts and was also easy to disassemble for moving. It's entire cover was easy to remove so you could clean stains or easily replace it. Same for the cushions. And it was comfortable. It was under $1000 (note: I know Ikea redesigns things so the same soft today might not be as good as that same model from 2016)
Moving overseas I had to buy a new sofa in 2021. Middle of COVID, Ikea didn't have any I couldn't wait. The sofa I ended up with is the cheapest shit sofa I've ever owned. The materials are clearly inferior. No part of it is cleanable. The cushions are one sided so can not flip them in 4 directions, they only fit one way. I got tired of looking and settled on these though, expecting to replace them.
Anyway, my point was (a) I understand your POV but also (b) there are possibly some good under $1000 sofas. I've had similar luck with a few Ikea dining room tables that were solid wood, not particle board.
Ikea has some good stuff and some cheap stuff. Their thing is that even their cheap stuff _looks_ good and fits with the look of more expensive ones.
Our current dining room table is from Ikea. 100% birch. It'll outlast us all, it cost about 30% of a similar boutique one. The chairs are plastic/wood composite from Ikea, cheap AF but still fit perfectly with the table.
Let me also add, in many other categories, I've rarely found a correlation between price, brand, and quality.
Worst luggage I ever owned was Rimowa. It was the most expensive I've bought and broke several times. They'd fix it, but who wants to spend their vacation taking their luggage to the repair shop (and lugging it full from the airport to the hotel while it's broke)
Worst and most expensive jacket I ever bought, Paul Smith, got a hole in the main pocket within 30 days and the hanging hook in the collar broke in 2 weeks.
Worst jeans I ever bought, Diesel. Ripped in 1 month.
Both those brands are exactly that - brands - where a lot of the cost of the product is recycled right back into advertising to convince you that the brands are actually worth the prices they charge.
When buying clothing, it's worthwhile to spend a little bit of time learning what makes quality clothing and what doesn't. That's very helpful in avoiding over-branded garbage being sold for far more than it cost to make in a sweatshop.
Weird, Rimowa is one of the best suitcases I've ever owned. I've never had any other suitcase roll so smoothly. The exterior shell has some marks and whatnot (mostly due to careless handling), but the overall product is excellent...
This is a self-limiting belief. The middle category exists, if you go looking for it. It's still a second job to find it though. You need to learn about the materials, construction techniques, and even manufacturing and white label trends of the industry in question.
It's exhausting. But after spending a month or two studying, you will be able to find pieces constructed to last a lifetime.
For sofas try the Insider's Guide to Furniture. Plenty of brands in the middle range using hardwood construction, made in the USA, with high density foam.
Yea, I've been trying to find a proper TV stand/entertainment center.
The options are: Ikea Cardboard (my current choice), or design/looks first boutique stuff that's not meant to hold anything except a TV (no holes for wiring etc - things that the Ikea one has...)
Currently I'm looking at local carpenters, it's gonna be about the same for a fully custom built hardwood unit vs the boutique choice.
> 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 bicycles. Except that the "junk" are mostly functional (if not durable) and might be less attractive to thieves.
The problem in being in the middle ground - what do you optimize for in a way that is easily marketable? The easiest answers are: cheapest (quality be damned) or best quality (affordability be damned). It’s hard to communicate a compromise between value and quality and that’s why that zone is empty. I believe this is a by product of online shopping where brands only get seconds to communicate their value prop.
The luxury boutique ones are also junk. I got a very expensive sofa from a boutique brand and I regret it every bit. In less than a year, the cushions are basically useless. All cheap junk, made in some third world country in Asia.
Well they might be, and they might not be. The old saying "you get what you pay for" ought to be "you get at most what you pay for". If you buy the expensive product, it might be higher quality, or it might be the cheap junk with a shiny logo.
I bought a small dining table and 4 chairs from a nearby store that specializes in Scandinavian furniture. I ended up mixing and matching 2 pairs of chairs because I liked the contrast of 2 different styles at different sides of the table. Anyhow, fast forward about 15 years and 4 house moves and the table and 2 of the chairs are rock solid. The other 2 chairs are wobbly junk that I've repeatedly tried to fix but am about to give up on. The table and 2 good chairs were made in Denmark, the 2 shit chairs were made in Malaysia and are just "Scandinavian style" I guess. So yeah, decent stuff is still out there, but perhaps it's harder than ever to parse the marketplace and figure out which items are the high-quality ones. Even if you go to a store with lots of quality stuff, they might have some junk mixed in as they try to expand their market.
Yea we got something from... uh... (Insert place I'll go look up), which let us select the specific fabric, and took awhile (months?), but was pretty solid. For yea, around $2.5-$3k for a rather huge couch - something like two separate 2m couches that fit together in an L shape.
That's a mind-boggling anecdote. As an example, Crate and Barrel are known to make good, high-quality couches, and many of them are far less than $5000
I went to try to see conclusively if you were correct. A pretty basic sofa at C&B is $1,800 - $2,000. In 1990 you could buy a basic Bassett sofa at J.C. Penney for $599 [1] -- $1407 in 2023 dollars. Furniture from Sears and Penney's (regardless of whether it was fashionable) was of fine quality, in that it held up for decades. I know because we had furniture like this in our home at the time.
So this tells me that the price for a sofa (that is made domestically and not slapped together from particle board, a half inch of foam, and about 4 springs) has gone up by 25-30%. And I think you're saying that therefore, this isn't an utterly crazy price hike. I'd agree it's modest.
Thing is, I think what's changed is demographics. In 1990, a LOT of people bought furniture at a department store or furniture store. They could afford it, but also here's the interesting part: It was much more rare then to find a $250 sofa. If that was your budget, you just bought a used good sofa and you probably got a better product. When super cheap everything appeared in the late 90s, it drove out the good manufactured goods, and many of the stores that sold those good items. People felt like buying the quality of things they used to buy would be extravagant, since they could buy an IKEA or Walmart version for less than half, and also, many families started to be worse off financially than their parents' generation had been, adding to their feelings of frugality. Unfortunately, this crap is so shoddy in most cases that it's actually more expensive when you factor in its lifetime.
Bedbugs had been suppressed to the point that you were very unlikely to ever encounter them 30-50 years ago. That's no longer the case.
I wouldn't even consider a piece of used upholstered furniture today, regardless of price or product quality.
That used sofa today represents a large risk to my wallet, property and health that it mostly didn't in the peak pesticide era.
Poor people are aware of the same - and if possible they too will opt for the shit-tier couch they can afford vs running that risk with a nice used one that would have been valued the same 30 years ago.
I think you and the parent likely have different standards of quality. Crate and Barrel makes nicer couches but they're still made the same way with the same materials as what you get from Value City Furniture. They're still engineered wood, polyblend fabric and filling, and "genuine" leather.
It's really hard to find anything non-antique that uses better materials or craftsmanship. They do exist and I own a few pieces but the prices for such things will make you blush. There's no middle anymore where you forgo labor intensive details like hand-carved detailing, complex bends and shapes, hand stitching, embroidered patterns, or fancy internal mechanisms but keep the "can still last generations" build quality for somewhat reasonable prices.
* Frames are benchmade with hardwood that's kiln-dried to prevent warping
* Hardwood legs
* Polyfoam seat cushions wrapped in fiber-down blend and encased in downproof ticking (is this "bad"? I think they're plenty comfortably and haven't shown any significant wear in the past four years)
My friend bought a townhouse in Seattle just a few months ago, and bought a C&B (very nice) couch for it at around $3000. It was delivered within a week or two of ordering, so I believe they're available.
When I bought my couch in late 2019 it was also delivered within a couple of weeks.
Are you custom ordering something? I believe that common configurations ship immediately, but any kind of customization requires that multiple-month lead time.
Author neglects selection bias: antiques that stopped working after 1 or 5 or 10 years have been in landfills for a long time.
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)
I'm guessing a fair part of the population here on HN is too young to remember the Japanese takeover of the US market in the 70s and 80s. I remember my grandfather buying one and people still had the post WWII 'everything Japanese is junk' mentality going on. It was his first car to last 300k miles without an engine rebuild. Nothing US built was getting close to it at that time.
>> I'm guessing a fair part of the population here on HN is too young to remember the Japanese takeover of the US market in the 70s and 80s
I'm old enough to remember that, and from what I recall, the objections of people I knew to buying Japanese cars were not that they were junk, they were that in some of the places I lived growing up, working at an automobile assembly plant was the best occupational outcome that a large part of the population could realistically aspire to. If those jobs disappear, then what?
That was back when the Democrats were against free trade. That all changed, their argument being that trade would make us, in aggregate, better off, and if certain parts of the population were harmed by free trade, we could use the gains of the people that benefited from trade to compensate those who were harmed.
That all happened except for the compensate those who were harmed part.
> the post WWII 'everything Japanese is junk' mentality
Yup. Even into the 70s, "Made in Japan" was a putdown. That's just about when Japanese hi-fi equipment led the charge by quality products, soon followed by automobiles.
you were listening to people calling two mechanics with their car troubles... selection bias much? if you did a radio talk show with two Tesla mechanics today, out of the tiny population of people who listen to radio, you'd find a stream of Tesla owners who were having problems.
Also, btw, Tom and Ray did always always always point out that repairing was cheaper than replacing. Most repairs are pennies. (thousands and thousands of pennies)
The comparison I'd make is not to cars from the 20th century, but the early 21st, about the last your grandfather experienced. There's a vast difference in the quality of a car from 2005 or 2010 and the equivalent from 2023, and it's not favorable to the latter.
My experience with cars from
that generation of cars and modern cars is not at all similar to yours.
My 2003 Mustang V6 manual was a complete moneypit. The electrical system went in the first year, despite me taking it regularly for maintenance. There was no traction control and it used more gas for less power than my current minivan.
My parents' 94 Taurus rusted easily and their 02 oldsmobile alero was a pure shitbox that was uncomfortable to drive and was in the shop all the time.
My 2016 Sienna and 2019 Model 3 are, by all means, better cars. (I was using the train in the meantime, much less stress than driving was) I have had zero issues (outside changing to winter tires)
In short, a survivor bias. I didn’t thought about it and it is possibly true !
There is probably as much if not more things produced today that will last many decades, but the only one we see of the past are those which survived.
The concept of a regular “tune-up” has likewise fallen out. Older cars needed carbs adjusted seasonally, spark plugs replaced, caps and rotors, timing, etc. tires are genuinely incredible. A car over 100k miles used to be at the end of its life, now cheap cars routinely go double that.
Those are all things that are still in cars (or have been replaced with digital equivalents) but have become so reliable that we need to be reminded to check them. It’s not unreasonable to expect spark plugs to last 100k miles.
Back in Ye Olden Car Days, making it to 100,000 miles was a mark of competent ownership & maintenance, as applied to fundamentally sound engineering. Chevy small blocks could make it. Novas, Malibus.
But yes, along the way were regular hassles with engine timing and carburetor adjustments. You could DIY if you invested in a timing light and you knew what you were doing, but you could also just take it to a garage, back when indie garages could still regularly undercut ripoff dealerships.
We have friends that just laid out $3000 for a new washer drier set and washer is already leaking from the front door. Pursuing warranty repair has been a major hassle.
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.
There are brands built to super high standards, but no-one wants to pay for them or deal with their compromises.
We have been buying Miele appliances, and have nothing but excellent experiences. They aren't cheap, but the general opinion I've seen online is that they are one of the few brands that build quality modern appliances. My experiences would tend to back that up.
Specific to the Miele washer and dryer, we hang dry most things and live in a very dry area, so having a heat pump dryer that doesn't get things crisp and dry is perfectly fine with us. We hardly use the dryer at all actually; clothes last longer if you don't use the dryer and we do spend the money on quality clothes (also hard to find and expensive).
> There are brands built to super high standards, but no-one wants to pay for them or deal with their compromises
I'm willing to pay. The money is not the only problem though.
1) These brands are hard to find. I've never heard of Miele until I rented an apartment that had one. The owner built the place for himself but then had to put it for rent.
2) Most of the brands that pretend to be high-quality are the same crap but shiny and expensive. You don't know that until you buy them. Makes the point about "hard to find" even worse.
3) Some of the reliable brands sometimes experience the change in strategy (probably caused by change in ownership) and start to produce crap while maintaining the same outlook. The most disturbing betrayal.
As a result out of hundreds of appliances I use I was only able to find quality staff in a handful of categories. The rest is either cheap crap or expensive crap. Maybe I lack some generational knowledge on the topic.
It's exhausting trying to find these brands. You have to do a ton of research, most of which is sifting through ads and the worst google results you've ever seen. If your already in the space you might be so lucky to already know a good reviewer.
You also have to update your knowledge constantly, as lots of brands start to decline in quality once they get popular or change ownership.
Miele and Bosch are the only brands I'll rely on for "white goods". As far as I can tell, most other (european) brands are owned by Electrolux, and all built to fail the day after the warranty expires.
My toaster is a Dualit - pricey, but very reliable, and very repairable.
My coffee grinder is a manually-cranked burr grinder made of aluminium. There's nothing to fail (and I don't mind cranking for a minute in the morning).
My flat-screen is a Panasonic that used to belong to my father; it must be 15 years old. It's never failed.
I don't own a food processor; that would be me with a chef's knife, a grater, and a pestle-and-mortar.
The presence of an LCD display on a product is a big warning sign.
That's my metric. A VF display is OK but an LCD, especially on kitchen appliances or white goods, is just about a guarantee of a short life span - never mind a touchscreen.
Miele for most stuff is unfortunately no longer better than the competition. They only come with 2 year warranties and the you can find lots of complaints on the internet of their appliances failing within a few years.
In Europe heat-pump-dryers are the normal way dryers work and the clothes coming out of them are also crisp and dry. Are you sure there is nothing defective with your dryer?
No, there isn’t. Miele even has notes for its US models to make sure buyers understand they work differently. I just won’t run my dryer long enough to get them that crisp and dry; as I said we mostly hang dry. I can run the dryer half as long and they are 80-90% dry, then hang for the finish.
Yes because for the same "quality" today you're likely to have to pay double the historic equivalent due to corporate profiteering. It's a rigged game and people just lap it up and simp for brands like they aren't parasites. It's pretty disgusting.
I learned a lot from him and when he reports a recommendation, it'll be specific and well-sourced which is important. Still, none of this current garbage will ever compare to a pre-2000 appliance of any kind.
Washers and dryers are a field in which older models were definitely built better. I inherited a set from the late 1990s that is still going strong, and repairmen have told me that I should never get rid of them, as nothing today is made as well. The dryer blew a thermistor after more than twenty years, and that was easily fixed.
I can strongly recommend the speed queen TC5 if you are getting tired of taking delivery of defective washing machines. It fills up all the way to the top, and you can open the lid whenever the hell you please. It's loud as hell but it cleans very well and quickly.
Front loading is a fundamental engineering mistake if you are seeking trouble free, no maintenance operation for years on end.
+1 for Samsung laundry machines being unreliable. I was in an apartment for 3 years and went thru 2 washing machines due to a “unrepairable” circuit fault on the first one, and a drum leaking perpetually on the second one.
The model of the washing machine was on the lease, was one of the expensive ones, I felt bad that they were buying #3 my last year there. They’re maybe only slightly above landfill in terms of entropic stability.
Edit: to be fair I bet they were warrantied, but still
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].
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.
I focused in on pens as I was reading the piece because I'm something of a pen snob, something I realized when I was at a job fair one day in college and I had a brief feeling of aversion when a recruiter offered me a shitty free pen.
It's not hard to get good pens, and they're not particularly expensive. $1-2/pen will get you very solid ball-point pens that write smoothly and reliably. Some of them can be refilled to save more money and reduce waste. There are wide varieties of styles, color, and point fineness to choose from.
If you usually buy shitty pens for $0.10 each or whatever that may seem like a lot, but unless you go through multiple pens a day or something it's really not. The $10/year or so I spend on slightly nicer pens is well worth it to me.
I suspect there are probably also similar quality options available for things like staples and matches, but I'm not familiar with those.
Seconded, though I'd add that with the current concerns about climate change and resource utilization, we need to think a bit more about product lifecycle and this is a reasonable way of illustrating that.
If the embodied environmental impact of a product increases 10% to make it last 100% longer then we need to think about making that change rather than producing twice as many to replace the broken ones.
one thing about some of the shitty products out there today is we got MUCH better at making things out of less material. So they break easier and wear out faster, but we've been able to reduce material usage along with price.
If you're a person who loses pens or holds onto them so long the ink dries up, it'd be better to waste an object made as cheaply as possible than one made to last.
The easiest way to clean it up significantly is to better tax industry such that energy, resource usage, and transportation are all represented in the price such that the economy actually reflects the environmental impact of production rather than just the business costs of the moment.
Indeed, and I think we should be thinking about pricing the recycling or disposal costs too (even if that's difficult or inherently imprecise), as well as giving incentives for products with effective recycling supply chains (or simply low disposal rates! i.e. longlasting products). I think it's worth not being too heavy-handed about this, because low income people would be hit the hardest most likely, but I think something like this would help significantly.
I don't buy the survivorship bias thing for the most part. My mother has her original dryer, washer, deep freezer, and refrigerator all running at her house. These are all 40+ years old except for the washer which is probably 30ish years old. Also her furnace + water heater are 40 years old. If it was survivorship bias some of these appliances would've died.
Are you saying that none of their original appliances have died?
If not, do you realize that you claiming
" If it was survivorship bias some of these appliances would've died."
When "these" refers exclusively to those who haven't died is the very definition of survivorship bias?
I think he's saying Mom would have definitely remembered if she had had to replace every darn appliance in her house every 2-5 years, the way we do now, before eventually lucking out to find the one good washer, dryer, dishwasher, etc. made in their respective years.
I think a washer died around 35 years ago and her current washer is 35 years old. It seems improbable that so many 40+ year old appliances survived in one home if reliability rates or ease of repair were not significantly better in the past.
You're completely right. Things also usually had a warranty longer than the nearly-universal 365-day warranty they have now. It's utterly disgusting to me that you can purchase a refrigerator -- an item which weighs like 800 pounds, has a huge amount of metal in it, and which everyone would agree would be insane to be a yearly purchase, and yet if it needs even an average repair 13 months from purchase, it can easily cost more to fix than the replacement cost and thus be totaled.
In my opinion, any device whose manufacture requires an amount of resources approaching "large appliance" levels should be required to have a 10-year parts and labor warranty. I don't care if that makes them cost more. I hope it makes them cost more. It's insane the way it is.
n = 1 is not a great sample size for analyzing long-term trends with multiple factors (purchase price, maintenance/treatment of applicances, environment, etc)
They're name brand appliances, kenmore and whirlpool while the deep freezer is a revco. They don't look like top of the line models, probably just whatever was mid grade at the time. I thought about telling her to throw them away due to power usage but used a kill-a-watt to determine it wasn't worth it. I think the fridge and freezer each cost around $25/year to run.
It's not (or at least, mostly not) survivorship bias. We aren't only talking about "Walk around a thrift store or grandma's house and grab a handful of appliances" because yup, they'll all still be working. But we can also ask our parents (or if we're over 30 ask ourselves) how many washers or dryers or mixers or blenders or televisions or whatever were required to be replaced after 6-48 months due to them spontaneously dying irreparably. Many such things did end up in the landfill then -- but mainly because people were eager to trade up to new shiny ones with better performance or features because consumer goods were improving every year back then.
(Compared to now when the main "advancements" happening to most household goods, if any, is the replacement of buttons with touchscreens and unreplaceable circuit boards, adding a wi-fi module and companion "App," and addition of subscription services.)
There's another important element: the ability to judge quality.
Many people (especially baby boomers) learned a shortcut, by using brand name as a proxy for quality of goods. The problem with this is that all those brands eventually outsourced and sold themselves and cashed in on the old brand quality association. Cheapening and cheapening as the producers realized that people still bought their product no matter what the quality was. Also, people equate flair and style of product with the quality, because they aren't actually good judges of quality. You can find many cheap junk products today that retain a poor skeuomorphic shadow of their former glory. At some point consumers learned "well if it has the shiny chrome it's a good one" and producers learned they could add a chunk of shiny plastic and people would prefer their product.
Brand names are worthless now, for the most part, and if you're not good at judging quality yourself, it can be a difficult consumer landscape to navigate.
So let's take all the things that I had in the 90s that I had to replace because they broke:
- ...
You can say I'm only remembering the positives, honestly, I can not think of a single thing I _had_ to replace. I remember buying new things, but it was always because I wanted the new-shiny, not because I had to.
Survivorship bias isn't "only being able to remember the positives", it's _concentrating_ on the positives and neglecting to take into account the negatives.
Everyone is saying "survivorship bias" but I don't think its that easy. How is survivorship biased by reparability? Is the widget still considered more durable if it breaks but can be fixed? I would say so.
There is some correlation here. If something 'never' breaks its not very likely to be repairable since no one will make spare parts for it. At the other side if something always breaks but is cheap in total cost, parts are commonly unavailable too, as people replace the entire item.
My grand parents live in an old farm-house, 100 years old or more. When that house was built - there was no electricity. That had been added later - and you could still see where channels had been hewn into the wall to put in cables and later plastered over again.
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.
I do not know where you are from but the description of the plugs basically match the ones still installed in France (although many don't require screws because they have built it fixations that just "click"), and I have never seen one that requires glue or soldering. Appliance life expectancy has also gone way up statistically, just like cars, although people often complain about the complexity of both. Most washing machines are pretty easy to fix for the parts that do break for instance. Of course if you get a dead motherboard it is not easy to fix, but usually wear and tear happens more on the mechanical pieces that are well documented and also now full of tutorials on how to change them on the internet.
My parents and grandparents never dared doing anything on their appliances because nobody taught them to. I am not particularly handy but I have been fixing their appliances just following some basic instructions.
I think there are regulations requiring that new products with mains plugs must have them moulded on. I think it's a safety thing; users tend to fit plugs incorrectly, causing fires. I think it's regrettable; the correct remedy would have been to teach kids how to wire a plug correctly. Oh well.
We were taught that in school. I remember it well because we were given a short piece of cable and plug to do it ourselves. Sadly the idiot next to me plugged his in and switched it on whilst the other end of the cable was shorted out.
Turns out it's much easier to fix the plug than fix people.
And the cut off molded ones still end up in a landfill.
And that's my point - in my granddads time, all devices came with plugs that could be repaired and re-used (and my granddad never threw them away) - and today, all devices come with plugs that can only be cut off and thrown away.
I fully believe that the molded ones are actually both cheaper AND more durable (will last longer without needing repair). But they are neither repairable nor reusable, and thus still end up in a landfill sooner than the old ones, when those old ones do get repaired and reused.
And the same is true for most other components of any device.
At least in the UK, appliances have to ship with a moulded plug, manufacturers aren't allowed to supply anything else. Personally I've never had one fail but I have had traditional screw together plugs fall apart.
I feel arguments like this always ignore the fact that buying a toaster in 1950 was a major investment for a family, and if you want to spend $2000 on a high-end toaster in 2023, which is probably equivalent in inflation-adjusted price to the 1950s toaster, it will probably also be very nice.
A toaster in 1951 was $21, which is about $250 today.
I would argue that a $250 toaster today is still not a "buy it for life" item, but it would certainly have a lot of bells and whistles and almost no user-serviceable parts.
Toasters are an interesting case study. I went on a tear last year after being fed up with every toaster doing the same bad job. I thought maybe someone made a proper toaster. What I found is that when you pay more the coat of paint gets nicer and maybe there's an MCU+LCD, but the guts and logic are identical. There is no good commercially available toaster today. It's sending a very loud message about how markets operate, and it's not pleasant.
Big part of the problem is the disappearance of brick and mortar stores, along with the constant bait and switch from e-rerailers making product reviews impossible.
That rave review was for an identical toaster with different guts, or with amazon reviews, something else entirely.
My biggest issue is with the lever. I have to push it down between 5 and 10 times before it will trigger, without fail. I've had this across most all toasters I've owned.
My second biggest issue is related to the same mechanism: the "pop" is impotent and does nothing to eject what's being toasted. The most I can hope for is that I can manually push the lever up.
The next biggest issue is with heating element distance. If there's anything that is wider than a slice of wonder bread it's going to get sizzled by the heating element. In the worst cases it causes smoke to be emitted for several runs afterwards.
Modern retail toasters, don’t seem to be able to fit a proper standard English sized, slice of bread - the size of which, I’m not convinced has increased over time - but rather, the toasters have been designed primarily with US sized slices (which I’m under the possibly erroneous impression, are smaller?!), as the target market.
Yeah, I know - I actually mentioned it in another comment here.
Even with Dualit, I would still only purchase from a professional catering retailer. Just in case, there’s any differences, and the fact that purchasing from a professional catering retailer, implies a greater level of longevity, if it ever did breakdown - for potential small claims court, reasons, in the future.
Regardless, Dualit also pretty much make every part of their toasters replaceable, for this exact reason. Hence why I think it’s one of the only decent toasters, out there!
Dualit 2-slice toaster: £160. It's held together with ordinary screws, contains no transistors, the timer is mechanical, and all spare parts can be ordered. It costs nowhere near $2,000.
I mentioned my Zojirushi toaster oven in another comment .. I use it as a toaster, and for a dozen other things. But it looks like they don't make the bread slice kind of toaster.
They are probably all made with the same guts from one or two manufacturers. Same with microwaves, nearly every model from $100 to $5000 is made by Midea. (Source: Wirecutter)
I think Dualit still make pretty straightforward mechanical ones. Or if not, you can buy an old one that's already been someone else's toaster for life and can now be yours.
My Sunbeam has a temp sensor. This toaster is at least twice my age, and it will likely outlive me. It's such a rare feature that I'm sure your parents and I have the same model (though likely a different year or style, as it varied by decade)
> I would argue that a $250 toaster today is still not a "buy it for life" item, but it would certainly have a lot of bells and whistles and almost no user-serviceable parts.
Not if you buy one that is $250 because it has bells and whistles. You can buy a $250 dollar toaster that is just a toaster and it will be of good quality.
The problem isnt that long lasting, durable products no longer exist.
It's that they're no longer marketed for home use.
You can get stuff just as good as back in the '60s, for comparable after-inflation prices. But they don't sell them at Sears or HomeSense, they sell them at industrial or kitchen or office supply stores.
The thing is, if someone decided to stock that toaster on the shelf at Target, it wouldn't sell. Most people make so little toast that the words "duty cycle" or "slices per hour" are not even in their vocabulary. People are simply making purchasing decisions with a higher weight on other criteria.
Maybe, for the environment's sake, people should be buying and using appliances for 70 years. But do people actually want a kitchen full of appliances that are 35 years old on average? Probably not, thrift shops are still full of contemporarily made appliances that were discarded before their useful life ended.
I think that is some of what people miss. Way back when a cheap toaster at Sears was still expensive. Now you have hyper cheap toasters for like $15 bucks now, which would have been a dollar or so back then, you just couldn't get a toaster that price back then. So the cheapest item has drug the average quality down to it.
The reviews suggest this $250 toaster isn't any better:
"was hoping it lasted longer & would be better quality but was disappointed"
"All the coils do no not glow and It toasts unevenly"
"one side stops working after 6 months or so. I’ve gone through three of these"
"Bought two of these toasters both stopped working"
"Have to replace this toaster about once a year, one side will always stop working"
"Lasted me about a month or so and it no longer works".
"Died so quickly!"
I think this is a perfect example of the problem. There is a market for $250 toasters, but even for that price you can't buy a reliable toaster.
The site has other well reviewed toasters at similar prices, I picked that one because it was exactly the price being discussed.
Either way, the bathtub curve of product failure still applies no matter the price point.
Bear in mind that people on this site are using toasters at duty cycles hundreds to thousands of times higher than home users. 6 months of commercial use of one of these toasters could very easily be a lifetime of use for a single home.
my toaster is an enameled steel tray with a steel wire grille on top of it. you put it on a gas stove burner to heat up the enameled steel enough to radiantly toast the bread resting on the grille. it's tray-shaped to catch the crumbs so they don't end up on your stove; the grille flips up so you can clean the crumbs out before they burn. a handle, made out of the same steel wire as the grille, allows you to remove it from the burner without burning your hand, and folds in for compact storage when you're not using it
but i got mine out of the neighbor's garbage during our eight-month-long covid lockdown, gambling that it wasn't covered with cyanide or something
the electric kind you're probably talking about goes for about US$20–US$40 around here but i wanted to point out that there does exist a more reliable alternative
We don’t even call them toasters anymore in my household. Our Cosori air fryer has a toast setting that works beautifully.
It cost less than $250. It warms, bakes, roasts, dehydrates, as well as 10 other settings. It has 3 different racks, so I can toast 3-4x as much bread than I could in a regular toaster.
I’ve only had it for 6 years, but it has held up nicely, no issues whatsoever. I guess what I am trying to say, is that the product is the bells and whistles these days.
It's kinda just random luck I'd think. My toaster is about 15 years old now, just a generic Breville one. Still works fine.
I imagine anything that would break in a toaster is absolutely trivial to fix, but you are working with mains electricity so in most places you probably need a license to service it. Which just costs more than a brand new toaster.
The other day I was telling my wife that the next blender I'll get will be a "fuck you" blender.
That's the name I gave to an old blender I had 25 years ago when I lived on my own while studying. The blender was an Oster brand and only had an on/off switch. I sold it to a friend when I left that city.
Fast forward 25 years, my friend told me that his mom is still using the same blender. No programs, no memories, no modes. Just Off and "fuck you" mode haha.
Now I also want a toaster with similar properties. Just let me put my bread slices, click a button and give me my good sliced bread. That's all I need. And hopefully that simplicity makes the gizmo last 20+ years.
Blendtec or Vitamix are what you want. They have modes, but the motors are very very good and they stand by their products (8 and 10-year warranties, respectively)
You can buy commercial versions of most machines which will be much better quality and without the stupid touch-screen gimmicks. They might cost 10x as much but that's also how much more domestic ones used to cost back in the day.
Yeah the problem is legibility. It's easy to see a touchscreen, or to understand a WiFi connection. But it's harder to understand why you should rant an oversized motor that will only be run at half capacity.
Features that increase longevity or repairability are considerably less legible to most consumers and therefore get removed first when trying to cut costs.
I feel arguments that treat inflation as a magic singular variable around which the universe revolves ignore that decades of progress and technology and economies of scale are also factors, and they make possible in 2023 a hypothetical toaster that's both affordable and reliable.
A toaster in 1950 would probably be closer to $250. Also, I don't like this counterargument because it holds that we should expect to be no better at creating high quality appliances today than in 1950 despite 73 years of advances in engineering and technology.
A Kenmore toaster in 1951 was $21 new, or $253 now.
And if you go buy a commercial toaster it will (likely) last as long as one of those old toasters on average.
This said those old appliances could be fixed, but today the labor costs of having someone else do it would be astronomical for most people. A significant portion of the total cost.
What changed to bring down the cost so much? There's some clever bits to make them work, but the bill of materials is low, and none of the parts or manufacturing should be all that complex.
It probably won't. Chances are it'll be just a shiny "high end" model which is the same parts and materials as the cheap ones but with some additional functions nobody cares about. High prices are just a market segmentation strategy to CEOs.
I've grown so disillusioned with these "products" that I've started trying to make them myself instead of buying them. It's difficult though. Even something "simple" like a high quality knife requires a lot of skill to create. I want to create at least one before I die though.
For me, I think the prime comparison is the KitchenAid stand mixer. You can get a new one that's functionally identical to the classic models that have lasted forever... and it'll run you at least $350 even during a major sale.
Our few year old kitchen aid has been a nightmare of broken plastic internal parts. I will weep when my mother passes, but I will be taking her mixer and ditching mine.
Plastic gears have lower friction and don't require greasing. They aren't really bad on their own. The problem is you can't find replacement parts when they break.
You'll need digital calipers as well. You can cheap out for $20, or get Mitutoyo's for $200.
A scanner's also nice in scanning a geometry thats flat, but not required.
Just with a 3d printer and a meager ket, you can replace most current commercial crap in a few hours, and have the replacement as a file you can call on any time.
That's how I'm handling this "throw away culture" shit. I'm replicating what I need and throwing away the actual broken bits.
Reduce, Reuse, REPAIR, Recycle. (Hint: the manufacturers want you to forget the 4th, hidden R.)
Because they are all custom sizes. And they don't break often. It's like 10 years after purchase where there aren't too many other owners looking for parts and the original company doesn't support it anymore.
The irony of course is that they deliberately make some parts out of plastic so they break before the rest of the machine does when you're misstreating it.
I’ve had the same experience, with paper shredders - particularly the Fellowes brand, in the UK - which all have a nylon (possibly some other plastic) cog, somewhere to overheat, then break.
There's a single nylon gear. The rest are made of metal. They've been using a sacrificial worm gear since the 1960s.
KitchenAid switched to all-metal gears on their high-end models fairly recently. In the past, all models had a nylon gear, but the new high-end mixers use electronics to protect the motor.
TL;DR: The Pro Line is what you want. These have higher-wattage motors and are made with all-stainless steel. This is important if you mix heavy things like doughs or meats frequently, as these materials tend to stress and shear plastic more easily.
My mom has a Kitchen Aid kettle. That shitty thing breaks all the time forcing my dad to replace some parts of the circuit. (And it's not the users' fault, it's a damn kettle, there's not much you can do wrong except maybe starting it empty which they don't do)
KitchenAid sells 4 or 5 different versions of their stand mixers with retail prices ranging from $350 - $1000+. There is a reason for the price difference.
I just prefer buying things that will be durable and last a long time. All I can tell you about toasters these days is that none of those exist so I'm not interested in any of the ones that do.
Hand made in the UK, fully mechanical and you can get spare parts for it.
There's very little that can fail, it doesn't have a spring that brings the toast up, you need to push the lever yourself. Even the timer is fully mechanical.
I was thinking this. When we moved into our first house it took years before we had completely furnished it. My son did his first flat for less than one month's salary.
Honestly if you could plonk down a ton of money for a reliable appliance that’d be great but that’s usually not what money buys you now. Spending more usually results in fancier styling, nicer materials if you’re lucky, and a bunch of unnecessary technological frippery that ends up making the thing less reliable, not more.
That’s the real problem is that the luxury tier of so many markets has thoroughly enshittified. I generally trust that Apple computers are Toyotas and a few other brands tend to last (or at least have robust enough support structures in place like with the former) enough that I feel more comfortable owning them but few others earn that trust from me.
I’ve heard good things about Miele vacuums, but apparently only the heavy duty canister vacs. Their more consumer friendly uprights are apparently mediocre. Other appliances I have no idea.
If you want appliances that last, buy the commercial ones. Hobart makes an under counter dishwasher that you can bet will never wear out and can be repaired.
Shell out for an industrial washing machine like they have at the laundromats. Those things are made to run all day for years. If they break down, they're repairable.
The industrial washing machine will last a long time and it is repairable if it breaks down. But the one guy on this coast who services and can get parts for it is pretty busy and if you can't offer him a long-term contract to maintain thirty of them you may find yourself fairly low on his priority list.
My Miele dishwasher has totally failed less than 5 years old. Not worth the expensive price. Probably fixable but requires a multi-hundred-$ relay. I haven't fixed it because of my time cost (such a hassle).
Previously bought a much cheaper dishwasher for my previous house that is still going strong. I found a geeky person on the sales floor that dealt with dishwasher returns and asked his advice for buying a reliable one: his advice seems to have been solid. I recommend trying this approach.
Unfortunately we can no longer trust brand names. Most previously trustworthy brands have turned to shit. I now mostly aim for mediocrity because that seems to be the sweet spot (cheap is usually trash, expensive usually is poor value for money).
It is very difficult to make good decisions for most purchases - requiring too much effort and brainspace. I never want to learn the details of appliances but I am given little choice.
The other problem is that the UX/UI of many modern devices has gone to complete shit. Searching for a usable appliance is a nightmare.
Having remodeled several kitchens, this has also been my experience.
If there were a brand that released exactly one of each appliance, over-built that one model, and invested the budget in robust components instead of wifi smart home touch screen bullshit, I would love to stop becoming an expert in all these product categories.
> Shell out for an industrial washing machine like they have at the laundromats. Those things are made to run all day for years. If they break down, they're repairable.
Industrial - or old school, Hoovermatic twin tub, where you can choose the exact length(s), of your wash/rinse - albeit, by babysitting it.
I’m curious which ways you mean. Many things that we assume existed in the past were pretty unevenly distributed. Even something basic we take for granted like plumbing was only available in only a ~third of households in some states https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-plumb...
Today you can buy a Miele household appliance. A liebherr fridge. A Dyson vacuum
cleaner(I bought mine like 20 years ago and works like the first day).
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.
But unfortunately, you can never be sure that if a thing is expensive, it is reliable. It's a little difficult to find reliable things in today's market, but it's posible.
At least as far as coffee grinders go, find a reputable company that will repair them. My Baratza Encore stopped working after about a year or two of operation, and I sent it in for repairs. It was probably just a small short somewhere, but I'm not an electrician. They sent it back to me after a week or so, cleaned inside and out and working better than new. I keep saying I'm going to replace it with the one from Fellow (the Ode), but for the past 4-5 years I've been finding other things to spend money on and the Encore just keeps going.
Baratza publishes service and diagnostic manuals too - if you’re handy enough you can disassemble your grinder, locate the faulty component, and order a replacement from them. I replaced our grinder’s faulty motor (died after 8 years or so) and the grinder is still going strong 5 years later.
Baratza also sell replacement parts for their grinders on their web site, and provide clear instructions on how to install them. I am delighted to support a manufacturer that builds repairable products.
My friend has a Fellow grinder and I honestly can't stand it. It takes about 5 or 6 iterations to get all the grounds out. It looks sleeker, and would match all the other Fellow stuff I have, but is too frustrating to use, even if it were free.
As to your Encore, if you feel like a cheap upgrade you could replace your cone burr with the M2 from the slightly more expensive Virtuoso model. It's a drop-in replacement, however, you will have to take your grinder apart.
Right, in this specific case the problem is that "burr coffee grinder" became widely known as an indicator of quality, which meant that cheap products proliferated to take advantage of the prestige. The high-quality products that earned that reputation still exist, you just have to find (and pay for) them.
I was also surprised that he brought up Burr grinders, I don’t think I’ve ever had even a cheap one die on me? I doubt they’ll last 80+ years but the quality seems fine.
Hand grinders are getting better and better too, so if longevity is a concern you’re in luck.
I bought four seemingly identical, cheap Cuisinart burr grinders over a period of 5 years or so. One of them happily endured heavy daily usage for several years at a workplace until it 'disappeared' during a move; I found out years later that the person who took it still had it (no hard feelings! someone told them it was company-owned and being discarded) and it was still working great. Another (a gift) was still working a decade later, last I checked. The next two I bought failed within months. Apparently they made some minor tweaks to the build that completely ruined the durability. I'm sure they sold thousands of those junk heaps on the reputation they previously built.
I somehow ran across this trivia twice today. It stings; Pyrex was a brand I still trusted.
The other thread mentioned that they license rights to use "pyrex" (vs "Pyrex") to pretty much anyone, but the capital-P brand should still be the OG company. Maybe that was relevant in your case.
At this point I don't trust it if it doesn't at least explictly claim to be made with borosilicates. There are such suspicious items for sale on Amazon and I trust them more than "pyrex."
I don't understand why anyone would do this even with real borosilicate glass. It is unreasonable to expect glass to survive with something massive and hot on one side and something massive and cold on the other side. Even flawless pyrex will break with temperature differentials above 300F.
This feels like something that could be ameliorated by trustworthy curation, but The Wirecutter hasn't given good signal for years now, if it ever did, and I haven't seen anything else yet.
I fear Consumer Reports is having their lunch eaten by Wirecutter, and while they seem attached to a very dated organizational model & visual design aesthetic, CR is SO much more rigorous and honest an organization. I pay for a sub on principal.
Totally agreed. I actually have both and Wirecutter recommendations have been utterly useless for me. Their entire focus has become "buy buy buy", just look at their homepage with deals and articles.
Truly. I think since Wirecutter recommendations are free (at least for NYT subscribers), they make money with affiliate advertising and make more money by having readers who spend money.
So, their interest in getting me to spend more money is at odds with my interest in buying a quality product (or skipping it if they all suck!). At least Consumer Reports is a paid product who only gets paid by me.
My main problem with CR is that when I'm looking for an appliance, it typically recommends a slew of models that simply are not available anywhere. They are all discontinued or out of stock, and they have not tested the models that are widely available.
Perhaps they are more worth it for cars, though that is not a frequent purchase.
CR is inexpensive enough to be worth it for a homeowner - there is always something breaking that needs replacing - but not as worthwhile as I would hope. I often wind up buying based on poor signals such as brand name and online ratings.
Wirecutter is definitely hit and miss but I will say that their upgrade pick for towels (Riley Home) are phenomenal and have held up to everyday use for 3 years and counting:
It’s a little sad, though, that it’s now impressive for a towel to last 3 years. The ones my parents bought in 1986 are still in my rotation for everyday use and holding up better than the set I bought (not cheaply) in 2010, which are starting to look like they need replacement.
Too funny, was just talking about this with my parents. My mom has bathroom towels she bought in 1988 that are still used every day. They're a little faded, but they look great and feel great. I think they're from Ralph Lauren. Same with their bed sheets that show no signs of failure after decades of use. They've had the same comforter since I was 5 years old.
Meanwhile we've gone through Parachute, Brooklinen, some sheets and towels from Macy's, and nothing seems to last.
I don't know enough about the brands they sell, but thinking we might buy from here next: https://linensociety.com/
One issue here is that there are well built quality products on the market; the problem is distinguishing them from the crap.
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.
It cost me $40 and the red ring is part of a larger plastic component that connects the barrel to the front inch that you grip and it flexes and comes loose when I write. Rubbish design.
I wonder if this is the symptom of ever eroding purchasing power the average western person is experiencing. Everyone is looking to stretch their income further and are willing to buy ever cheaper, but flimsy goods.
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.
I have a GE refrigerator that is now 70 years old, and has never stopped working or needed repairs (at least in the 30 years I have owned it).
Doesn't have a touch screen, and there is no app to tell me what food to order, but it just keeps on running and doing what it is supposed to do. Not sure any amount of money could buy a new model that would last this long.
and before anyone says newer models are more energy efficient so I should replace it, you have to factor in the wastefulness of having thrown away 8-12 refrigerators over that 70 year time period and the impact that would have had on the environment.
I know nothing about the EU, but I do know about Australia; Under consumer protection laws in Australia, AKA “statutory warranty”, goods must be fit for purpose or replaceable under warranty for the reasonable expected lifetime of the goods.
I have friends who have received a replacement fridge, under warranty, five years after the purchase date of the failed fridge — any reasonable person would expect a fridge to function for more than 5 years.
Apple have also been forced to replace MacBooks under warranty as far as 4 years out, from my anecdotal experience, and even have pages addressing expectations: https://www.apple.com/au/legal/statutory-warranty/au/
The money quote from the above link:
> For the avoidance of doubt, Apple acknowledges that the Australian Consumer Law may provide for remedies beyond 24 months for a number of its products.
It’s worth noting that the Australian consumer law states that goods must be of “acceptable quality”, or “merchantable quality”, specifically related to advertised quality and price: essentially if you are sold something more expensive for more money, it has more warranty.
This is one angle to view the problem, yes. Shrinkflation is the quintessential symptom of the problem, from the perspective of the consumer. But it's not just "how do we raise the price per pound without raising the price per unit."
Another angle to view this from is that saving money is jot worthwhile. People who get paid in dollars need to spend them quickly, so on offer around them is a plethora of goods and services that they can spend it on. Nobody saves for stuff so that stuff better be cheap, I'm sure the ideal price for an item is some function of the median weekly paycheck and apartment rent.
Viewed from yet another angle (and IMO a more informative one if you want to get at what exactly is going on here objectively) you see that inflation has a general corrosive effect on value and quality. The velocity of money increases, and the value of holding money decreases the longer it is held. So businesses trying to maximize profit have to go from getting people to spend their money to getting their money first. They have to have fast turnaround time for that capital. They have to pump out as many units as they can as fast as they can, those units have to degrade quicker than the money loses value or they can't make a profit. This creates a culture of unscrupulousness, the phenomenon compounds and speeds up over a few generations. Inflation hollows out and cheapens everything, including the culture of your society.
It just boils down to energy/capita. While there have been some efficiency gains on the consumer usage side, the big cuts in quality come from the production side. Our lifestyles need to worsen to stop climate warming...
Many of these junky mass-market products are currently stuck in a Nash Equilibrium[a]:
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.
Thanks for this. I didn’t know there was a name for it. We’ve probably accelerated the effects that lead to the equilibrium in many product categories. It takes a big mover like an Apple to take the risk to move the needle now, but so many consumer products lack an Apple in that space.
Depends on the market and the product. The best way, in my view, is through product innovation by ambitious entrepreneurs who come up with a better solution. Instead of trying to making the equivalent of a faster horse carriage at cheaper cost, they figure out how to make the equivalent of an automobile, rendering horse carriages obsolete.
I try very, very hard to live by Morris's credo. It is not easy. Finding things which do their jobs well and hold up takes so much time and energy. And on top of that, I despise waste, so I'm usually not willing (even if I can afford it) to buy a dozen different models and throw away the losers. That's the best way to do it, if you can manage it.
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.
It does take a long time to find quality items. I'm glad to mostly have all the items I want, at least those that already exist.
I don't care too much about some of the things the author talks about. A suitcase not able to stand up when full is annoying, but also well within my ability to fix. I guess I'm just conditioned to junk.
The one thing that pisses me off the most is how the swiffer (mop) handle isn't strong enough for mopping. We've broken over a dozen of them in the exact same spot. We have taken to repairing them ourselves with a plastic welder.
They already have a freaking subscription model built in with their stupid pads and incredibly overpriced fluids, at least the mop could be really well-built and a pleasure to use.
Almost everything I buy works great. But I also do a lot (sometimes months) of research before I buy anything. I like to ask my friends what they have and how long they've had it/how they feel about it. If I can, I borrow things and try using them a bit before buying one for myself. I keep an eye out for clever design and quality materials. I often come across low-quality products and I elect not to buy them. I try not to get myself into situations where I "need a carrot peeler on short notice," but if I do I definitely start by calling around and seeing if any of my friends or neighbors has one I can borrow.
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.
I would add that not only the quality in general is degrading, but also the treatment of the brands and manufacturers to the customer. I believe that the feeling of abandonment (sometimes even scam) in which the brands subject their customers further deepen the feeling of lack of quality in general.
A few years ago I bought a Samsung refrigerator. It came with a big "10 year warranty" sticker. After a couple of years or so, one day it stopped cooling. I thought what a piece of crap, but at least it had a warranty. I found out, over the phone, that the 10 year warranty was only for the compressor. Still, I was lucky because it was the compressor that had gone bad. But there was more fine print in the 10-year warranty: it only covered the compressor and only the price of the part. In other words, I had to pay for the technician to come to my house and replace the part. Almost 200 dollars for a refrigerator that had cost 800 and was supposedly under warranty.
I have sort of found this - some time ago (10 years maybe?) the "average" and unresearched purchase was "average quality". You knew roughly what you were getting by buying something that was a no-name brand or on a whim etc. "Cheap and cheerful" etc - it might not last as long as the more expensive brands but it would at least work and not break after 3 uses etc.
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.
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.
All of this rings painfully true for home appliances. Besides a lucky break with an air fryer (knock on wood), all our non-shitty kitchen items are at least 15 years old. My 1-year old HP printer is obtuse and stupid. Even my $1900 work-issued ThinkPad is rife with stupid driver bugs.
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.
I see a lot of comments here defending the current junk culture. Whatever. There's no good reason a pair of scissors that has two steel blades should have a plastic handle, joint, and rivet. Anything with plastic moving parts (e.g. a gear) was intentionally designed to break. It's always done to increase profit, either now, by decreasing cost, or in the long term, by increasing demand by needing a replacement.
To quanitfy planned obsolescence, I once built a database of broken things to identify how long they last, where they fail, and how much they cost per month of usage: https://looria.com/reviews
If you have any junk products, please submit it there :)
If you shop by researching brand rather than price, you will find there are still good companies out there. Lots of cheap stuff is junk, some expensive stuff is junk. Even within brands there are differences. My fancy four wide slot cuisinart toaster has survived 20 years, lots of use many moves and getting slightly squished in an overstuffed trunk and is still going strong. Cuisinart coffee makers, however, lose their marbles at any power flickering, never mind outages. We can bemoan the onslaught of junk that we keep buying and therefore helping it grow, or just maybe we could put our money into companies that still make good stuff through some consumer research instead of believing the advertised 'best deal'.
Great idea, but how can you tell in advance if something will last 20 years, especially when its not uncommon that products change while keeping their name and looks?
> I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year. They’re good ones, supposedly, with burrs not blades, but they stop performing before long
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.
A lot of people dislike the time it takes to use a hand grinder, but I really like the 1zpresso steel burr grinders I own and my Cafelat Robot espresso maker.
A huge number of the things most people buy weekly are made on machines not even made last century. Your grains, rice, cereals beans were probably made on a machine from the 1800's. Yep all the big brands.
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.)
> Your grains, rice, cereals beans were probably made on a machine from the 1800's. Yep all the big brands.
I don't see how that could work: the population is far larger than it was then, so our consumption of those must be up a lot. How could a stock of machines that was suitable then could be producing even half the volume consumed now?
I'm not an expert in this area so IDK. I could ask my brother if he knows if you really want?
I imagine one of the differences is that they run 24x7x365 without any downtime unless it breaks (they never do maintenance only break/fix). These machines were super overbuilt so maybe they were never used at peak capacity back then either? Maybe there were improvements over the years? I assume the getting raw materials to the factory is much more efficient now days allowing more production then they used to be able to have?
Look how many things ran out during the pandemic. Maybe we are over capacity at many of these places already? How often do any of us head out to the middle of nowhere to check the stock levels of product regularly?
My guess is that there is a bit of telephone and/or exaggeration involved, and the kernel of truth if thare a small number of extremely old machines in operation. (But they do not handle the bulk of the production.)
If you were able to check and report back, I would be very interested!
I think the undertone of the article is missed by a lot of people reading.
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.
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.
How long do you keep your cars? These are machines that can last a few decades on lower end models as long as you go for durability over fanciness, and provide the nominal amount of maintenance
My advice on electric coffee grinders: just buy a manual one with a hex shaft, and drive it with a brushless drill. I've been making drill coffee for years now.
I wouldn't drive it with a drill because too fast and you'll damage the augur pretty badly. I just hand crank mine, it takes a little time and slows my pace, gives me a minute to think and it's a small work out.
> As for the much of the cheap stuff – those Target mittens, say – they aren’t merely inexpensive, they’re valueless. In fact, they’re of negative value when one considers the waste or materials involved, and the wasted energy of driving to buy them, then driving to return them later – a second trip that in this case, and many others, wasn’t worth making. Instead, we took the loss. And the world took the loss. A small one, but they add up.
"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.
Before becoming a software developer, I spent 9 years as an HVAC technician, 5 of which were as an installer. One responsibility would be retrofitting new equipment into peoples homes, removing their sometimes 60-80 year old furnace/boiler. When I would take out such old systems, I would always get the same questions from the homeowner, “So this is going to last me another 60 years right?” In my head I would always laugh but kindly reply, “You’ll be lucky if you get 15 out of this one.”, which would be met with a look of disappointment and awe. Even the most expensive (and somewhat dangerous) appliances in your home are made as cheap as possible. The days you were taking out a 1920s boiler were some of the worst days. They were installed to stay forever.
> I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year
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.
I have a German-made coffee grinder that was between $200 - $300 retail (though I got it for significantly less on clearance. It grinds well, but within a short time of getting it the electronics burned out. I opened it up to find a bafflingly complex circuit board with relays, opto-isolators, transformer, microchips, fuses, timers, etc. etc. Mind you this board has only one function: to turn an AC motor on and off.
I noticed the motor is a brushed "universal" motor like you'd find in a vacuum cleaner; that is, old technology that can run on DC or AC and needs only two wires to run. This complex circuit board... wasn't even justified for being a motor controller, because there was nothing to control! I replaced the entire burnt out circuit board with a hefty 20A 120-240 VAC momentary switch from my parts bin.
Since then the grinder's been working perfectly for about 14 years. But if I hadn't been willing and able to do that repair I might have gone through 10 of them in the same time. Part of making a quality product is restraint: to NOT put something on it (like that circuit board) that is unnecessary.
Why? Reaganomics. It's the late 1980s--they shut down the plant and shipped your job overseas. Real wages flatten and stay flat. But not to worry! The products you love are now cheaper (albeit slightly crappier). You buy the cheaper thing more out of necessity than real "choice," since Baumol's cost disease is making everything but consumer goods outrageously expensive. There are more expensive versions of some products, but they're often just overpriced faux-luxury trim on the same junk. Luxury goods stay good, since the wealthy have several orders of magnitude more than you ever will in 1000 lifetimes. There used to be...what did they used to call it? A "middle class"...
it's partially driven by scale. Take a good product and have it get accolades on the review sites and on reddit. The flood of sales triggers the manufacturer to find ways to cut costs. Saving ten cents doesn't matter when you sell ten thousand of something. But when you sell ten million, well you can hire people whose whole job it is to find ten cent cuts. Each cut itself isn't really noticeable, but eventually they add up. I learned about this from running a food company. Our competitors make their protein bars for, I'm told by a long time industry insider, 17 cents in ingredients.
>And the hybrid sedan with fifty thousand miles on it that also turned into a brick while going eighty down the freeway, losing its power steering, its power brakes, its power everything.
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.
I live in the Chicago suburbs, car bodies have vastly improved in durability and resistance to road salt in the past few decades. It used to be that most cars were rusted through in less than a decade. Now you almost never see a rusted out car.
On the other hand, it's a $300 repair job to replace my niece's Headlight on her Ford Focus. That's nuts!
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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.
Car headlight and taillight assemblies are kind of a special case. In the late 80s and early 90s it became common to use a lot of computer assisted design to make multiply layered constructions with lenses and diffusers and so on built in. Given the amount of engineering going into these a complete replacement is going to be expensive and even getting at them to replace primary bulbs ends up being a chore.
How much of it is confirmation bias? Pens, I use various Uni, few $10 fountain pens and my son as 40c fountain pen. All of them work decently well, some break when we drop them or loose the cap but nothing egregious. My wife is using 6 year old Oneplus which give no sign of needing replacement. I have 20 years old toaster. I used my LG washing machine for ~12-13 years before replacing it, same for my AC (>15 years)/fridge (~15 years) etc. Now I have had few bad apples, laptop that was junk in 2 years. AC that kept giving trouble.
Assuming old stuff is more durable than new stuff: I wonder why older stuff was made to a higher standard? If people had less disposable income back then, why wasnt there an incentive to make low quality cheaper things?
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.
>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.
That's mostly the right answer. Value engineering is a complex and constantly evolving discipline, with the most important advance being the proliferation of injection-molded plastics in the 1970s - a single injection-molded part can replace dozens of more expensive pressed, cast or machined parts, albeit often with a reduction in durability.
The other crucial factor is simply attrition bias - the past was full of terrible stuff, we just don't see most of it because it broke and went to landfill.
Older stuff that is still around was made to a higher standard. There has always been plenty of junk and low quality goods around, they just haven't lasted.
I never understand why we bother so much about environment and sustainability but in same time accept low quality products and prefer buying new one instead of repair it if even possible.
Make products last long and make them repairable should be priority for all manufacturers. But... It's not make profit I guess.
> I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year. They’re good ones, supposedly, with burrs not blades, but they stop performing before long, ending their long journeys from overseas factories in unmarked graves in my local Montana landfill.
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 fact that he highlighted multiple products purchased from Target is interesting. Is he unaware that Target is a discount chain? You're accepting a higher risk of a defective product by shopping there. If the product is garbage you return it. If you want a better guarantee than that you shop at a better store and pay for it.
It feels like the author might be exaggerating ever so slightly, but it conveys a general feeling that things are built cheaply and without durability in mind.
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.
IIRC... it used to be that the durable & repairable products also dominated markets as the top sellers. But "advances" in materials (moar plastic!), outsourcing & logistics (containers!), electronics (shiny! shiny!), etc. created broad new ranges of "junk" that were attractive for their better affordability, replacing the top-shelf stuff as best-sellers. Wider access to basic functionalities (if not durability & repairability) created more buy-in for the economic system and the underlying political system. Vote Consumerism!
The top shelf stuff is in many cases still on the market, and might even be at roughly same-price after adjustment for inflation, but for Joe Sixpack, affordability trumps durability & repairability.
This might be a dreadfully oversimplified explanation, but it's my strong impression after seeing decades of market (d)evolution.
The article is not so compelling for me. I've used my coffee grinder going on 5 years now (almost every single day/multiple times a day). What is true, I find, is that you really get what you pay for (99% of the time).
Their might also be one other statistical artifact:
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.
Very true. I moved to my current place with a single car of belongings - now, I'd need a truck. I have two flatbeds of trash just ready to go to the tip, and I'm looking to reduce even more.
I'd love to just give it all away, but that would take a while.
I am prepared to a) go without, and b) buy something again if i really think i need it.
The amount of 'stuff' [another nod to George Carlin] I/we have really is ridiculous.
Obsolence-shmobsolence. If you need a kitchen appliance, just buy Siemens. Of course the problem exists, but in many cases it's possible to buy stuff which lasts if you are willing to pay a premium.
Meh, I've found that the correlation between price and quality is less and less obvious. A lot of the time to get quality you need to get into more specialized/semi-pro brands. Most expensive stuffs are sold at premium for more features, but generally consumer stuff is not targeting quality quality
Water heaters are a prime example of generally durable design, replaced today with cheap crap metal that lasts half as long and is virtually only replaceable, not fixable.
Great writing, and a nice start to an original idea. But just like the shiny gadgets at the store, this article only lasts long enough for us to drive it home, then falls apart. So it’s all worthless trash, all junk, all a bit depressing, and so, so what? What should we do about it? How should we live our lives in response? In what should we find value when the objects that fill our lives are devalued?
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.
A lof of the discussion here focusing on cars alone.
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.
I think the problem with cars is that it's a multidimensional change space (as they're a much more complex devices than something like a toaster or a blender or a piece of clothing), and in some dimensions they fare better (environmental impact of fumes, safety). If we stuck to aspects like local repairability, sturdiness, material quality, etc they wouldn't fare as well. But sturdiness for example also means they'd be more lethal on a collision, so there's a tradeoff with cars that doesn't exist in, say, toasters.
There's a generation of electronics that were plagued by failing capacitors that contained a flawed chemical that was produced based on a stolen formula that contained errors. There's also the wave of electronics that had issues with lead free solder.
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.
I wonder: is this person incredibly bad at making purchases? I mean… just incredibly bad? Or do they not do maintenance?
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.
Hmm… thinking more about this, and seeing others comments, maybe… I’m unusually good at buying things?
That’s an unexpected thought, but it did make me realize that I research every major purchase on some combination of Consumer Reports / Wirecutter / focused review sites, and maybe that’s unusual?
Nope they don't. Since I subscribed to which (the UK equivalent of CR) my appliances have been much better quality for not much more cost. That being said, ask me again in a decade.
"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."
You're missing the point. I actually had this realization on my own and had heard that the concept was outlined in the book which is what prompted me to read it.
Cheap money cheapens everything, because the velocity of money is high and so capital turnover is the name of the game. To make a profit, what you sell has to be cheaper than the money you get. It cheapens people because they have to constantly be scratching for a buck just to keep up.
I can at least suggest the brand Wilfa as something that will last in the kitchen. Have the same kettle and bur coffee grinder that I bought back in 2012.
My Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner is turning six soon and is going strong.
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.
Because Adam Smith's invisible hand has torn the veil away from our faces and revealed that humans are so piss-poor at long-term thinking that we'll happily pay ten cents less for a washing machine that breaks down twice as quickly.
Even ideal markets don't optimize for quality, they optimize for utility. And the revealed preference of the human utility function is "penny wise, pound foolish".
Speaking from my own experience (anec-data being a home-owner for about 20 years and a member of a family who owned a home my entire life).
(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?"
The author decries this phenomenon as a bad thing, and indeed it is from a sustainability perspective, but, as someone who owns a very old fridge, I have a slightly different perspective. Does my fridge work? Yes. Would I replace it if I could? Yes, definitely. Old fridges suck. They don't cool evenly. Modern fridges have much better layouts and compartments. Being able to dispense water is nice. Old fridges place the fridge below the freezer, meaning you need to bend down to access the fridge, which you access much more often than the freezer. The list goes on...
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.
I need a new washer-dryer, and now I'm scared to buy one. (The one from 2007 seems to eat clothes now... not sure if these things can even be repaired)
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
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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.
> They claimed things are worse because we want them cheaper, but if price is adjusted for inflation, they’re of the same quality as always.
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.
There's a lot to say on this topic: "All engineering is value engineering, it just depends whose value you're talking about"; "The affordable 'tools' you can buy in a regular store are just toys for the home gamer. Real tools that make money, cost money".
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.
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.
There is a middle ground. List your broken stuff for free on facebook marketplace or wherever. There are people who have learned all the common problems with a particular appliance and will go around collecting broken ones to either fix, or use for parts.
That way there is no waste. The appliance will get fixed and resold. It also allows people to specialize their skills to repair things more optimally.
This guy says he lives in Montana. That is probably part of the problem.
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.
Just need to know how to fix it and have the tools. Have to perform good maintenance. Can keep them going a while. I’ve got blankets from decade ago and that time only because I flew to different country to start life. Have stitched up bags and shirts. Fixed bikes, peloton even. Motorcycle. Ducati from 2007. Dead in crash now but good till then.
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.
Most of the stuff inside Target would compare unfavorably to cake simulacra made for Netflix to put on television.
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.
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...