That's definitely true, in it's historical context things are a lot different, what I'd consider good mass production design might not have even been possible b

That's definitely true, in it's historical context things are a lot different, what I'd consider good mass production design might not have even been possible back then. The "Truth to materials" idea makes a lot more sense considering that cheap faux veneers and the like used to just straight up fall apart, and the "No extra ornamentation" idea makes sense when you don't have a CNC machine. Still, it is odd that the modern minimalist movement is so similar even though the economics and engineering has changed. It seems much more philosophical than pragmatic in it's current iteration . The best of modern design makes "Cheap trash" into a feature rather than a bug. A cheap membrane button might wear out, and a Bauhaus engineer will think "What's wrong with a good old volume knob? I'll pay $3 for a pot that isn't scratchy". In a more reasonable modern design you'd have something like a rotary encoder or a capacitive touchscreen, and DSP volume control , in the same chip that was also handling your real-time speaker correction and modeling, WiFi control, etc. Obviously, there's going to be an all analog tube amp that sounds as good or better than your $2 speaker and mini supercomputer driving it to pretend it's not crappy. But you probably won't hear the difference unless you're an elite player in a great room, so it's only relevant to the top enthusiasts. Bauhaus encourages people to fix problems by simplifying, modern design says "I bet I can make a capacitive encoder only a little more expensive than a good pot if I make ten million of them and use some more DSP to fix the shitty signal, and in the process I'll get these 8 new features for free"