[woodruffw]

> Putting my curmudgeon hat on for a second, I remember a time when we used to make products with high enough quality and durability that they would either last nearly a lifetime or get repaired when they didn't.

I don't intend this as a slight, but as an honest question: do you feel like you correctly compensate for survivorship bias when looking back at how products were made?

I ask because, in my experience doing repairs as a hobby, it's just the nicer things that have survived. People don't remember the cheap record players they got as kids, the cheap tools, &c.; they remember the things that are still with them, which are the higher-quality ones.

Edit: In particular, it's pretty hard to repair a lot of consumer goods from the 1930s-1970s: they tend to use plastics that crack very easily and that aren't mendable, or are outright hazardous to repair (like bakelite, which sometimes has asbestos mixed into it).

[blagie]

My experience is that goods from before mass manufacturing are objectively higher-quality and more repairable. That's before cheap consumer goods of 1970, though.

There are at least two issues at play:

1) If I build something, I can do it again. I won't use ultra-thin metal which is likely to be damaged being welded, injection molding, or similar sorts of processes which require a factory.

2) I'll do a bit of overengineering. Modern consumer goods use the absolute minimum in materials possible. If you take things apart, it's pretty magical.

I'll also take care of it (and know how). If something costs me a week's salary, I'll buy fewer things, and I won't want them to break. If a gizmo costs a few minutes' salary, I'm better off replacing it. Maintenance is a nice hobby for some of us, but far from economically rational.