[dsfyu404ed]

You're not wrong to an extent about the good stuff sticking around but I think you're missing the point. It's not like the aesthetics the author is complaining about were chosen for purpose like a farmer painting his barn red because red is cheap. The slice of the economic ladder from which the author cites his examples is mostly rich enough that small variations in cost or performance are not really a driver of styling trends. Widget designers and real estate developers are specifically choosing conformist blandness aesthetics on purpose, not simply tolerating them as a means to some other end.

[pixl97]

> It's not like the aesthetics the author is complaining about were chosen for purpose like a farmer painting his barn red because red is cheap

I would completely disagree. "Rich enough" is mostly meaningless, there are a 1000 different subsystems running under this that make a slight deviation in a product increase in price massively. From laws and regulations on consumer products and housing rules, to what gets shipped overseas in massive container ships.

Go by a 'decent' wooden end table, it may cost you around $1000. Now go have a custom end table made to your specifications. Do not be surprised if it costs you an order of magnitude more and takes a year for an artisan to produce.

Modern costs are low because of mass production. When you can create 5 grey SKUs that cover 98% of the market and mass produce thousands to millions of them all of a sudden looking at producing a 'weird red' SKU is going to eat into your profits considerably unless you can recoup that by charging a much higher cost for that product.

[yunwal]

I do woodworking and $1000 could get you a really nice artisan-made custom end table. Obviously depends on your specs but it’s hard for me to think of any specs that would make it more unless you were specifically trying to make it extravagant (some rare wood, gold inlays, etc)

[pixl97]

The scale still holds true. For an order of magnitude less, around $100 I can get a perfectly workable end table that doesn't look horrible but is rather generic.

Honestly I meant to say dresser as they commonly start at $1kish for a decent one, but end table still works.