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This is like a textbook example of Louis CK’s adage “everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.” Microwaves are great. Amazon will have a Farberware or RCA for

This is like a textbook example of Louis CK’s adage “everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.” Microwaves are great. Amazon will have a Farberware or RCA for $70 to my home in two days - including shipping! What exactly is the problem? No one has ever used them to do anything other than heat things up. I was a child of the 80s. No one ever used these supposed features the post complains are disappearing. Instant Pot. Introduced millions to pressure cooking. Pork shoulder or brisket in 30m instead of 3 hours. Same for beans. Mine stopped working after several months and I called the company. They sent me a new one, actually a nicer model than the old, for free, that week. And told me to throw the old one out. Years later it’s working great. Who cares if the company went bankrupt? Yes private equity seems to suck but guess what, you can still buy a cheap great Instant Pot. Then he has the nerve to complain about capitalism, the reason we have this stuff. Does the author think in the Soviet Union it was easy to get a microwave? Does the author think communist citizens lucky enough to own microwaves had all the features they could want, and could be one tenth as picky as he is? Please tell me in what system other than capitalism you get to publish your nitpicky complaints about your abundant selection of consumer electronics to the world at the click of a button, on your computer or phone or tablet, that you own and hook up to your broadband internet which is readily available to your heated and cooled home, in one of the most prosperous countries on earth, so you can sneer at capitalism, which literally is the reason you have all this. What a bizarre post. In summary, not every microwave sucks, and instant pot isn’t dead.

huytersd 3y ago
Thank you. Everyone seems to be talking about number pad bad.
smaudet 3y ago
I don't think you read the article and are probably new at life, or just out of touch. Microwaves should last for decades, this is the same type of thing that you may have heard your parents complain about "I had a can opener that I got from my mother and it just broke, the five new ones I bought same price all broke within a year". There is really nothing complex about one. It's a timer connected to some voltage equipment and a couple transformers. But, the way you make it, fused steel, well oiled joints, cheap copper wire barely within tolerance or thick wire able to withstand 2x the amperage, varies wildly. As demand goes up, you build fancy microwave factories with expensive well tested molds that can churn out hundreds of thousands of them...until demand goes down and paying for maintenance and power at the factory no longer make sense, let alone having anyone staff the place or prevent looting and squatting. So you cut corners and your microwave is made of plastic, every time you use it it fries its own cheap water based glue, and the thing falls apart every 6 months. That's what he's complaining about. Yeah, capitalism works great assuming constant or increasing demand, but it's really bad at financial planning or literally anything else, and then it creates garbage and human suffering. I think probably the microwaves in the Soviet Union still probably last decades, because unlike the American ones, there were still people willing to buy and or repair their own. Sure they might be "trash" in build quality, at some point in history, but what matters is not all money.
- aembleton 3y ago
  > every time you use it it fries its own cheap water based glue, and the thing falls apart every 6 months. Which brand has this happened to for you? I've never seen this, but I've only ever had a supermarket own brand which will just be Midea and a Panasonic. > but what matters is not all money Then buy a commercial one which last longer and cost more.
  - smaudet 3y ago
    1. This was an illustration of how to make an exceptionally cheap microwave that will work a bit before it fries. I don't often buy microwaves (I'm lucky and have an old one), I'm sure you could find something in China like this, though. 2. Not reasonable for most people. Yeah, sure buy everything at $$$$, just sacrifice a life/kids/house. Good luck not going into life-long debt/slavery at 40k$ a year.
- eduction 3y ago
  > the thing falls apart every 6 months. Where do you get this? Microwaves do not fall apart every six months. I had one that we had to replace after 4 or 5 years because we didn't clean the spills enough. We liked the quality enough we replaced with the exact same model. You mention you think I'm young even though I said I was a kid in the 80s. I think it's actually young people who tend to romanticize old stuff. Those old microwaves were not miraculously better quality. The ones still alive today are, this is survivor bias. The old ones were generally fine, the new ones are generally fine. They break eventually, implements exposed to the mess of cooking (liquids, steam, caked on grime) tend to, unless you maintain them, which guess what, no one does. We don't really have the time. The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony, people stopped improving them. If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money. There's a reason no one is doing that. People love to complain, today as ever.
  - smaudet 3y ago
    >You mention you think I'm young. Young or out of touch. Either just bought a microwave and it hasn't failed yet or old and have one that's lasted 5-8 years and don't have a new crappy one yet. >The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony He said/she said. This is all assertion by opinion without facts. That said, it appears a year ago the trend was downward, for multiple appliance types, in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/220020/average-life-expectancy-of-major-household-appliances/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/220020/average-life-expe... Anecdotally, modern appliances tend to break after only a couple years (based on reports I hear from friends co-workers, etc.). More cheap shit from China/etc. (my fridge drawers are plastic and snapped about 8 months into usage, something that should have a 13-14 year lifespan, and of course, is out of warranty already). Trying to produce a chart of microwaves bought and produced in 2020 and how long they've lasted is much harder, and honestly you're bullshitting at least as much if not more than me here - plugging your ears and pretending everything is fine is less honest and not at all observant. Combining the facts I do have (actually decreasing lifetimes over a decade) and people complaining more, and an effective monopoly due to capitalism, I would say the reasonable conclusion is that actually no, microwaves today are not generally fine. > There's a reason no one is doing that. The reason is not what you think it is. Nobody owns microwave makers or microwave factories, so people just generally accept gradually shittier shit. People buying things is not people being happy with what they bought. There's a big big difference. Inflation remains at an all time high and people are pretty pissed about how much everything costs already - the system has already started to fail. > If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money. Sure, if there are some millionaires with money to spare maybe they'll make some cheap reliable microwaves. But they won't make a ton of money. And since, nobody's interested in making reliable microwaves, and they have other things they are interested in doing (due to capitalism), microwaves continue to get shittier and shittier. This is the whole point of the article, which maybe you'd have grasped if you weren't all "and they dare to question capitalism those damn dirty hippie socialists".

huytersd 3y ago

Thank you. Everyone seems to be talking about number pad bad.

smaudet 3y ago

I don't think you read the article and are probably new at life, or just out of touch. Microwaves should last for decades, this is the same type of thing that you may have heard your parents complain about "I had a can opener that I got from my mother and it just broke, the five new ones I bought same price all broke within a year". There is really nothing complex about one. It's a timer connected to some voltage equipment and a couple transformers. But, the way you make it, fused steel, well oiled joints, cheap copper wire barely within tolerance or thick wire able to withstand 2x the amperage, varies wildly. As demand goes up, you build fancy microwave factories with expensive well tested molds that can churn out hundreds of thousands of them...until demand goes down and paying for maintenance and power at the factory no longer make sense, let alone having anyone staff the place or prevent looting and squatting. So you cut corners and your microwave is made of plastic, every time you use it it fries its own cheap water based glue, and the thing falls apart every 6 months. That's what he's complaining about. Yeah, capitalism works great assuming constant or increasing demand, but it's really bad at financial planning or literally anything else, and then it creates garbage and human suffering. I think probably the microwaves in the Soviet Union still probably last decades, because unlike the American ones, there were still people willing to buy and or repair their own. Sure they might be "trash" in build quality, at some point in history, but what matters is not all money.

aembleton 3y ago
> every time you use it it fries its own cheap water based glue, and the thing falls apart every 6 months. Which brand has this happened to for you? I've never seen this, but I've only ever had a supermarket own brand which will just be Midea and a Panasonic. > but what matters is not all money Then buy a commercial one which last longer and cost more.
- smaudet 3y ago
  1. This was an illustration of how to make an exceptionally cheap microwave that will work a bit before it fries. I don't often buy microwaves (I'm lucky and have an old one), I'm sure you could find something in China like this, though. 2. Not reasonable for most people. Yeah, sure buy everything at $$$$, just sacrifice a life/kids/house. Good luck not going into life-long debt/slavery at 40k$ a year.
eduction 3y ago
> the thing falls apart every 6 months. Where do you get this? Microwaves do not fall apart every six months. I had one that we had to replace after 4 or 5 years because we didn't clean the spills enough. We liked the quality enough we replaced with the exact same model. You mention you think I'm young even though I said I was a kid in the 80s. I think it's actually young people who tend to romanticize old stuff. Those old microwaves were not miraculously better quality. The ones still alive today are, this is survivor bias. The old ones were generally fine, the new ones are generally fine. They break eventually, implements exposed to the mess of cooking (liquids, steam, caked on grime) tend to, unless you maintain them, which guess what, no one does. We don't really have the time. The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony, people stopped improving them. If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money. There's a reason no one is doing that. People love to complain, today as ever.
- smaudet 3y ago
  >You mention you think I'm young. Young or out of touch. Either just bought a microwave and it hasn't failed yet or old and have one that's lasted 5-8 years and don't have a new crappy one yet. >The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony He said/she said. This is all assertion by opinion without facts. That said, it appears a year ago the trend was downward, for multiple appliance types, in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/220020/average-life-expectancy-of-major-household-appliances/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/220020/average-life-expe... Anecdotally, modern appliances tend to break after only a couple years (based on reports I hear from friends co-workers, etc.). More cheap shit from China/etc. (my fridge drawers are plastic and snapped about 8 months into usage, something that should have a 13-14 year lifespan, and of course, is out of warranty already). Trying to produce a chart of microwaves bought and produced in 2020 and how long they've lasted is much harder, and honestly you're bullshitting at least as much if not more than me here - plugging your ears and pretending everything is fine is less honest and not at all observant. Combining the facts I do have (actually decreasing lifetimes over a decade) and people complaining more, and an effective monopoly due to capitalism, I would say the reasonable conclusion is that actually no, microwaves today are not generally fine. > There's a reason no one is doing that. The reason is not what you think it is. Nobody owns microwave makers or microwave factories, so people just generally accept gradually shittier shit. People buying things is not people being happy with what they bought. There's a big big difference. Inflation remains at an all time high and people are pretty pissed about how much everything costs already - the system has already started to fail. > If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money. Sure, if there are some millionaires with money to spare maybe they'll make some cheap reliable microwaves. But they won't make a ton of money. And since, nobody's interested in making reliable microwaves, and they have other things they are interested in doing (due to capitalism), microwaves continue to get shittier and shittier. This is the whole point of the article, which maybe you'd have grasped if you weren't all "and they dare to question capitalism those damn dirty hippie socialists".