You're completely missing the point. The hardware shop of old - most now long gone in the destruction of so many brick and mortar shops - generally sold things

You're completely missing the point. The hardware shop of old - most now long gone in the destruction of so many brick and mortar shops - generally sold things that would last years or a lifetime. No thinking was required. You could pretty much shop with brain off, and eyes closed and get decent stuff. For each of those items, there's probably now 300 replacements on Amazon, and maybe one meets the old quality and life. Many of those aren't even cheaper. Sometimes the one that worked, the original from which all those cheap copies stole, is gone, killed by avalanches of shite. Now there's none at all that work as well as the one that spawned the shite. Thank you Amazon and eBay. To buy a knife that retains an edge for longer than 20 seconds, or even stainless steel that remains properly stainless in typical kitchen use, or container that handles washing, freezing and maybe a few cycles through the dishwasher requires effort. Effort picking apart hundreds of eBay and Amazon listings selling almost nothing but awful shite. Effort to spend even £2, or you'll inevitably get shite. Effort to find and pay extra for some artisan variant that'll cost a bomb, and might - only might be adequate. Shite has become the normal expected state of things. I would far rather not buy 20 shite things that I don't feel bad about replacing, in the search for just fucking one that works. Yet very often that's the only option left. Shite in a sea of shite.