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Generation Junk

• jastuk 3y ago
  It feels at least some of it has to be survivorship bias. Although I do believe there’s tons of cheap, low quality products now more than ever.
• TehShrike 3y ago
  This feels like something that could be ameliorated by trustworthy curation, but The Wirecutter hasn't given good signal for years now, if it ever did, and I haven't seen anything else yet. Maybe I should try paying for Consumer Reports
  • pinko 3y ago
    I fear Consumer Reports is having their lunch eaten by Wirecutter, and while they seem attached to a very dated organizational model & visual design aesthetic, CR is SO much more rigorous and honest an organization. I pay for a sub on principal.
    • _dark_matter_ 3y ago
      Totally agreed. I actually have both and Wirecutter recommendations have been utterly useless for me. Their entire focus has become "buy buy buy", just look at their homepage with deals and articles.
      • sneeze-slayer 3y ago
        Truly. I think since Wirecutter recommendations are free (at least for NYT subscribers), they make money with affiliate advertising and make more money by having readers who spend money. So, their interest in getting me to spend more money is at odds with my interest in buying a quality product (or skipping it if they all suck!). At least Consumer Reports is a paid product who only gets paid by me.
  • AtlasBarfed 3y ago
    A consumer report subscription will save you money.
  • habinero 3y ago
    I read the comments on wirecutter articles. That's where the good suggestions are, if there are any.
  • jacobkg 3y ago
    Wirecutter is definitely hit and miss but I will say that their upgrade pick for towels (Riley Home) are phenomenal and have held up to everyday use for 3 years and counting: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-bath-towel/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-bath-towel/
    • apothegm 3y ago
      It’s a little sad, though, that it’s now impressive for a towel to last 3 years. The ones my parents bought in 1986 are still in my rotation for everyday use and holding up better than the set I bought (not cheaply) in 2010, which are starting to look like they need replacement.
      • blueridge 3y ago
        Too funny, was just talking about this with my parents. My mom has bathroom towels she bought in 1988 that are still used every day. They're a little faded, but they look great and feel great. I think they're from Ralph Lauren. Same with their bed sheets that show no signs of failure after decades of use. They've had the same comforter since I was 5 years old. Meanwhile we've gone through Parachute, Brooklinen, some sheets and towels from Macy's, and nothing seems to last. I don't know enough about the brands they sell, but thinking we might buy from here next: https://linensociety.com/ https://linensociety.com/
  • ropeladder 3y ago
    You can probably access CR for free through your local library!
  • massysett 3y ago
    My main problem with CR is that when I'm looking for an appliance, it typically recommends a slew of models that simply are not available anywhere. They are all discontinued or out of stock, and they have not tested the models that are widely available. Perhaps they are more worth it for cars, though that is not a frequent purchase. CR is inexpensive enough to be worth it for a homeowner - there is always something breaking that needs replacing - but not as worthwhile as I would hope. I often wind up buying based on poor signals such as brand name and online ratings.
• adamhorne 3y ago
  I find this pretty useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/
  • charles_f 3y ago
    Thanks
• drcode 3y ago
  I feel arguments like this always ignore the fact that buying a toaster in 1950 was a major investment for a family, and if you want to spend $2000 on a high-end toaster in 2023, which is probably equivalent in inflation-adjusted price to the 1950s toaster, it will probably also be very nice.
  • crooked-v 3y ago
    For me, I think the prime comparison is the KitchenAid stand mixer. You can get a new one that's functionally identical to the classic models that have lasted forever... and it'll run you at least $350 even during a major sale.
    • upon_drumhead 3y ago
      Our few year old kitchen aid has been a nightmare of broken plastic internal parts. I will weep when my mother passes, but I will be taking her mixer and ditching mine.
      • fullstop 3y ago
        Some plastic parts are intentional / sacrificial. Even so, the old mixers were definitely built to last.
        • Gigachad 3y ago
          Plastic gears have lower friction and don't require greasing. They aren't really bad on their own. The problem is you can't find replacement parts when they break.
          • pierat 3y ago
            Get a FDM printer (filament), and get FreeCAD. You'll need digital calipers as well. You can cheap out for $20, or get Mitutoyo's for $200. A scanner's also nice in scanning a geometry thats flat, but not required. Just with a 3d printer and a meager ket, you can replace most current commercial crap in a few hours, and have the replacement as a file you can call on any time. That's how I'm handling this "throw away culture" shit. I'm replicating what I need and throwing away the actual broken bits. Reduce, Reuse, REPAIR, Recycle. (Hint: the manufacturers want you to forget the 4th, hidden R.)
• exmadscientist 3y ago
  I try very, very hard to live by Morris's credo. It is not easy. Finding things which do their jobs well and hold up takes so much time and energy. And on top of that, I despise waste, so I'm usually not willing (even if I can afford it) to buy a dozen different models and throw away the losers. That's the best way to do it, if you can manage it. But there are a few good things out there if you know where to look. Tools, especially, have good options. But then I use a lot of those professionally and get to experiment using someone else's time and money.
  • qup 3y ago
    It does take a long time to find quality items. I'm glad to mostly have all the items I want, at least those that already exist. I don't care too much about some of the things the author talks about. A suitcase not able to stand up when full is annoying, but also well within my ability to fix. I guess I'm just conditioned to junk. The one thing that pisses me off the most is how the swiffer (mop) handle isn't strong enough for mopping. We've broken over a dozen of them in the exact same spot. We have taken to repairing them ourselves with a plastic welder. They already have a freaking subscription model built in with their stupid pads and incredibly overpriced fluids, at least the mop could be really well-built and a pleasure to use.
• neilv 3y ago
  > For the remains of the Pyrex casserole that shattered when I removed it from the oven, Noteworthy example. Current Pyrex-branded kitchenware is no longer borosilicate glass. I shattered a Pyrex casserole dish with what I guess was probably thermal shock, by moving it out of the oven, into a stainless steel sink.
  • qup 3y ago
    I somehow ran across this trivia twice today. It stings; Pyrex was a brand I still trusted. The other thread mentioned that they license rights to use "pyrex" (vs "Pyrex") to pretty much anyone, but the capital-P brand should still be the OG company. Maybe that was relevant in your case.
    • orangepurple 3y ago
      At this point I don't trust it if it doesn't at least explictly claim to be made with borosilicates. There are such suspicious items for sale on Amazon and I trust them more than "pyrex."
  • ljnelson 3y ago
    You want to make sure you're using PYREX, not pyrex. They're different![1] [1]: https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-between-two-pyrex-types https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-be...
    • mitthrowaway2 3y ago
      The biggest difference is that the latter is the only one you'll find in stores, at least in north america.
    • jchook 3y ago
      Unreal that this very misleading branding was allowed to continue.
  • idontwantthis 3y ago
    Do you know if there is another borosilicate glass cookware company now?
• woopwoop 3y ago
  So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer. The first few examples are kitchen appliances. In this case I don't really know, but I'm at least willing to listen. Ultimately the evidence is people responding to a thread on Twitter where he solicited complaints. Not so compelling. But then he mentions a "hybrid sedan". Here I'm aware of the data. It's not close. Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-kept-longer-200000-is-new-100000.html?_r=2&ref=business&pagewanted=all& https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-k... [1] https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2021-us-vehicle-dependability-study-vds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2021-us-vehi...
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • irjustin 3y ago
    > Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past. Forget "durability" - safety is paramount. Those old cars were tanks, simpler, last longer and easier to repair but absolute death traps and dump smog. [Edit] Guess they didn't last longer, either way I'm happy to leave behind the cars of yester-year... even the 90's a bit sketch (though WAYYYY better).
    • woopwoop 3y ago
      They were simpler and easier to repair, but they absolutely did not last longer.
      • edrxty 3y ago
        On average they didn't (oh no, that repair costs more than the "car is worth" as if that's a metric that actually means anything) but it was far easier to keep one running indefinitely. You could take an engine to a small machine shop and get the head and block resurfaced, valves reamed and cylinders lapped. Without any electronics to fail it was just a block of metal that was slowly losing material and a quick hit with a file could even out any imperfections leaving it like new, just with very slightly more displacement. Modern engines are way more reliable because they have coatings and materials that will last nearly indefinitely in most parts of the engine but they're built on proprietary sensors and electronics that need a steady stream of replacements and secret software to debug. We could make cars last indefinitely from a supply chain perspective, but commoditizing software and electronics would make them very marginally more expensive. We absolutely can't have that because, drum roll for the 1000th time, 99% of the population doesn't give a flying fuck and wants cheap shit at all costs.
• ranger_danger 3y ago
  Also don't buy anything that has a gibberish manufacturer name in all caps. https://www.readingeagle.com/2020/02/12/all-your-favorite-brands-from-bstoem-to-zggcd/ https://www.readingeagle.com/2020/02/12/all-your-favorite-br...
  • josephcsible 3y ago
    Or anything that uses "【" or "】" anywhere in its title or description.
    • ranger_danger 3y ago
      Full-width characters are not only used by Chinese, but legit Japanese things as well. Example: https://www.amazon.com/%E6%A3%AE%E3%81%AF%E7%94%9F%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%82%8B%E3%80%90%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E5%90%B9%E3%81%8D%E6%9B%BF%E3%81%88%E3%81%AE%E3%81%BF%E3%80%91-DVD/dp/B00005G0ZQ https://www.amazon.com/%E6%A3%AE%E3%81%AF%E7%94%9F%E3%81%8D%...
• twodave 3y ago
  At least as far as coffee grinders go, find a reputable company that will repair them. My Baratza Encore stopped working after about a year or two of operation, and I sent it in for repairs. It was probably just a small short somewhere, but I'm not an electrician. They sent it back to me after a week or so, cleaned inside and out and working better than new. I keep saying I'm going to replace it with the one from Fellow (the Ode), but for the past 4-5 years I've been finding other things to spend money on and the Encore just keeps going.
  • djur 3y ago
    Right, in this specific case the problem is that "burr coffee grinder" became widely known as an indicator of quality, which meant that cheap products proliferated to take advantage of the prestige. The high-quality products that earned that reputation still exist, you just have to find (and pay for) them.
  • shusaku 3y ago
    I was also surprised that he brought up Burr grinders, I don’t think I’ve ever had even a cheap one die on me? I doubt they’ll last 80+ years but the quality seems fine. Hand grinders are getting better and better too, so if longevity is a concern you’re in luck.
    • djur 3y ago
      I bought four seemingly identical, cheap Cuisinart burr grinders over a period of 5 years or so. One of them happily endured heavy daily usage for several years at a workplace until it 'disappeared' during a move; I found out years later that the person who took it still had it (no hard feelings! someone told them it was company-owned and being discarded) and it was still working great. Another (a gift) was still working a decade later, last I checked. The next two I bought failed within months. Apparently they made some minor tweaks to the build that completely ruined the durability. I'm sure they sold thousands of those junk heaps on the reputation they previously built.
  • blueridge 3y ago
    +1 for Baratza. I have an old Virtuoso grinder that's about 10 years old and still going strong, never had an issue.
• fritzo 3y ago
  Author neglects selection bias: antiques that stopped working after 1 or 5 or 10 years have been in landfills for a long time. My grandfather (1922-2006) opined: "Some folks say things aren't made like they used to be. But I remember those junky old cars that would break down every 50 or 100 miles. I remember that unreliable crap. I'd far rather have a modern car, even if I can't fix it." (He was more of a carpenter than an auto mechanic, built much of his own house)
  • readthenotes1 3y ago
    My granddad was just telling me of cars in the '40s that needed an oul change and "lube job" every 1000 miles.
    • dghlsakjg 3y ago
      The concept of a regular “tune-up” has likewise fallen out. Older cars needed carbs adjusted seasonally, spark plugs replaced, caps and rotors, timing, etc. tires are genuinely incredible. A car over 100k miles used to be at the end of its life, now cheap cars routinely go double that. Those are all things that are still in cars (or have been replaced with digital equivalents) but have become so reliable that we need to be reminded to check them. It’s not unreasonable to expect spark plugs to last 100k miles.
      • euroderf 3y ago
        Back in Ye Olden Car Days, making it to 100,000 miles was a mark of competent ownership & maintenance, as applied to fundamentally sound engineering. Chevy small blocks could make it. Novas, Malibus. But yes, along the way were regular hassles with engine timing and carburetor adjustments. You could DIY if you invested in a timing light and you knew what you were doing, but you could also just take it to a garage, back when indie garages could still regularly undercut ripoff dealerships.
  • jonahss 3y ago
    I listened to a bunch of Car Talk episodes from the 80s and early 90s and holy cow, those cars were all breaking down constantly!
• mattlondon 3y ago
  I have sort of found this - some time ago (10 years maybe?) the "average" and unresearched purchase was "average quality". You knew roughly what you were getting by buying something that was a no-name brand or on a whim etc. "Cheap and cheerful" etc - it might not last as long as the more expensive brands but it would at least work and not break after 3 uses etc. These days it feels like you need to do extensive research to make sure you are not buying something that is total crap. Amazon is literally flooded with totally random brand named (all weirdly uppercase? EEVYUI, XAATYE, WURIHT etc) trash which 9 times out of 10 (at least) will be awful shite. I have found myself going back to "traditional retailers" for a lot of things now as I cannot trust a lot of things I order online not to be the absolute cheapest possible shite ever produced. And it's not like they are priced cheaply either - example recently was a specific light bulb I needed - Osram and Philips had models on Amazon for approx £9 which I would vaguely trust, but they were hidden in a sea of made-up brands asking £7 to £8 which you know will fail within a month or two. That said, I don't fully agree with the sentiment. With a little research and accepting that quality costs and so not buying the cheapest/second-cheapeat models we have appliances/things that have lasted many years - washing machines, dishwashers, coffee grinders, fridges, cars etc. Some of these we have replaced for other reasons like changing needs or wanting new features (e.g. we needed a dishwasher that dried plastic things since kids stuff is all plastic - the old machine was perfectly fine when we got rid of it and yea, no one wanted it). It is somewhat galling to think "wow why am I paying £600 for a dishwasher when I can get one for £250!?" but then £600 only seems expensive because of the crappy £250 one that will only last a month or two past the 12 month warranty.
• renewiltord 3y ago
  Just need to know how to fix it and have the tools. Have to perform good maintenance. Can keep them going a while. I’ve got blankets from decade ago and that time only because I flew to different country to start life. Have stitched up bags and shirts. Fixed bikes, peloton even. Motorcycle. Ducati from 2007. Dead in crash now but good till then. Everything I haven’t lost mostly lasts. Don’t know what to tell you. Even like 55” TV I bought in 2014 for like $500. Life’s pretty good.
• klipklop 3y ago
  I wonder if this is the symptom of ever eroding purchasing power the average western person is experiencing. Everyone is looking to stretch their income further and are willing to buy ever cheaper, but flimsy goods. Really the only thing that will fix it is stronger warranty law, this will make things more expensive, but it will massively cut down on landfill fodder. A refrigerator that can’t last 20 years is terrible for the environment to throw away when it lasts 3-6 like many Samsung and LG fridges do… I will keep repairing my ancient Sears washer and dryer for as long as possible.
  • klausa 3y ago
    >A refrigerator that can’t last 20 years is terrible for the environment to throw away when it lasts 3-6 like many Samsung and LG fridges do… Modern fridges are much more energy efficient, which makes this calculus somewhat complicated.
    • anizan 3y ago
      We stick with Panasonic for most of our home appliances. Quality has been consistently higher than South Korean brands.
  • willbush 3y ago
    I recently made a blog post / rant about this exact thing https://willbush.dev/blog/complex-appliances/ https://willbush.dev/blog/complex-appliances/. I only shared it https://slrpnk.net/c/buyitforlife https://slrpnk.net/c/buyitforlife. Someone mentioned a warranty law in the EU that affects quality https://slrpnk.net/comment/4749319 https://slrpnk.net/comment/4749319. I didn't look too far into it. Anyone know anything about that?
    • hug 3y ago
      I know nothing about the EU, but I do know about Australia; Under consumer protection laws in Australia, AKA “statutory warranty”, goods must be fit for purpose or replaceable under warranty for the reasonable expected lifetime of the goods. I have friends who have received a replacement fridge, under warranty, five years after the purchase date of the failed fridge — any reasonable person would expect a fridge to function for more than 5 years. Apple have also been forced to replace MacBooks under warranty as far as 4 years out, from my anecdotal experience, and even have pages addressing expectations: https://www.apple.com/au/legal/statutory-warranty/au/ https://www.apple.com/au/legal/statutory-warranty/au/ The money quote from the above link: > For the avoidance of doubt, Apple acknowledges that the Australian Consumer Law may provide for remedies beyond 24 months for a number of its products. It’s worth noting that the Australian consumer law states that goods must be of “acceptable quality”, or “merchantable quality”, specifically related to advertised quality and price: essentially if you are sold something more expensive for more money, it has more warranty.
• 4death4 3y ago
  The author decries this phenomenon as a bad thing, and indeed it is from a sustainability perspective, but, as someone who owns a very old fridge, I have a slightly different perspective. Does my fridge work? Yes. Would I replace it if I could? Yes, definitely. Old fridges suck. They don't cool evenly. Modern fridges have much better layouts and compartments. Being able to dispense water is nice. Old fridges place the fridge below the freezer, meaning you need to bend down to access the fridge, which you access much more often than the freezer. The list goes on... New things don't last forever, but they also don't normally need to last forever. You can't universally say the modern incarnation of something is the end-all-be-all. Generally, products are enhanced over time (modulo the enshitifcation factor), and this means people want to upgrade after certain periods of time. Making things cost more so they last longer than most peoples' desired lifespan for an object is a waste of money. All that being said, it's never been easier to put junk out there on the market. The rise of online shopping has greatly reduced the role of "buyers" in the market. Without an experienced taste maker vouching for the quality of an item, it's very easy to end up buying shit.
• jonahss 3y ago
  Ok no. First of all: survivorship bias. All of the old appliances that still work are only the ones which still work. This goes for the author's juicer. Second: things which have investment attention now are excellent quality and things which are waning towards the end of their lifecycle are having the last few corners cut before the Private Equity firm that now owns them throws in the towel, throughly wrung dry. Author's examples: staples - the age of paper documents is over. matches - the Bic lighter is a modern marvel. plastic grocery bags - banned in more places every year. pens - same as staples. But now, turn your eye to products being actively invested in now? Some may be at their peak this very moment. And if you want something quality, go spend for it. I've got an industrial stapler like you wouldn't believe, 50 sheets of paper easy.
  • edrxty 3y ago
    Seconded, though I'd add that with the current concerns about climate change and resource utilization, we need to think a bit more about product lifecycle and this is a reasonable way of illustrating that. If the embodied environmental impact of a product increases 10% to make it last 100% longer then we need to think about making that change rather than producing twice as many to replace the broken ones.
    • jonahss 3y ago
      one thing about some of the shitty products out there today is we got MUCH better at making things out of less material. So they break easier and wear out faster, but we've been able to reduce material usage along with price. If you're a person who loses pens or holds onto them so long the ink dries up, it'd be better to waste an object made as cheaply as possible than one made to last. This is a balance to play as well.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • edrxty 3y ago
        Absolutely, it's a complex game. The easiest way to clean it up significantly is to better tax industry such that energy, resource usage, and transportation are all represented in the price such that the economy actually reflects the environmental impact of production rather than just the business costs of the moment.
• SamuelAdams 3y ago
  Personally this is what ends up happening to me when I try to fix small electronic devices like coffee grinders: https://xkcd.com/1994 https://xkcd.com/1994 In reality I need to consider the cost of my time. It’s much cheaper to buy new, already keyed CAT-6 cables than to split and order a raw cable end myself into an RJ45 jacket. If reducing waste is more important to you than time, then yes by all means try to repair things. But remember everyone has different priorities.
  • Gigachad 3y ago
    There is a middle ground. List your broken stuff for free on facebook marketplace or wherever. There are people who have learned all the common problems with a particular appliance and will go around collecting broken ones to either fix, or use for parts. That way there is no waste. The appliance will get fixed and resold. It also allows people to specialize their skills to repair things more optimally.
• citizenpaul 3y ago
  A huge number of the things most people buy weekly are made on machines not even made last century. Your grains, rice, cereals beans were probably made on a machine from the 1800's. Yep all the big brands. My brother works at a co that makes custom repair parts for these machines he sees them all the time. They often have to fly people out to the factory to do measurements and calibrations because no documentation exists. (Its sadly not a small mom and pop shop its one of the biggest mfg part corps in the worls. If you hoped it was some mom and pop shop that keeps these running.)
  • jefftk 3y ago
    > Your grains, rice, cereals beans were probably made on a machine from the 1800's. Yep all the big brands. I don't see how that could work: the population is far larger than it was then, so our consumption of those must be up a lot. How could a stock of machines that was suitable then could be producing even half the volume consumed now?
    • citizenpaul 3y ago
      I'm not an expert in this area so IDK. I could ask my brother if he knows if you really want? I imagine one of the differences is that they run 24x7x365 without any downtime unless it breaks (they never do maintenance only break/fix). These machines were super overbuilt so maybe they were never used at peak capacity back then either? Maybe there were improvements over the years? I assume the getting raw materials to the factory is much more efficient now days allowing more production then they used to be able to have? Look how many things ran out during the pandemic. Maybe we are over capacity at many of these places already? How often do any of us head out to the middle of nowhere to check the stock levels of product regularly?
      • jefftk 3y ago
        My guess is that there is a bit of telephone and/or exaggeration involved, and the kernel of truth if thare a small number of extremely old machines in operation. (But they do not handle the bulk of the production.) If you were able to check and report back, I would be very interested!
• plaidfuji 3y ago
  I’ll offer a list of things I’ve owned that have lasted a lot longer than I’d expect: - 2017 MacBook Pro and iPhone SE - honestly, the Dre beats that came with above MacBook - every Lexus sedan ever, hybrid or not - Tumi backpack and carryon - Sonos soundbar - M Audio 88 key midi controller keyboard (survived 7 moves) It sounds like the author’s problems largely center around things with motors and pumps, which tbh doesn’t surprise me. The high-end brand I’ve been most disappointed with in that regard has been Dyson. Been through about 4 of their full size and hand vacs.. so many random issues. Really not worth it.
  • charles_f 3y ago
    > every Lexus sedan ever How long do you keep your cars? These are machines that can last a few decades on lower end models as long as you go for durability over fanciness, and provide the nominal amount of maintenance
• Kon-Peki 3y ago
  This guy says he lives in Montana. That is probably part of the problem. I live in a major metro area. It seems like for anything I could possibly want, there is a shop that sells it at whatever quality level I desire. And repairs... People are always saying that you can't fix anything. But that's not true. Just last year my oven stopped working; the local repairman sent the circuit board to a place nearby that "rebuilt" it (checked every component, desoldered and replaced anything that wasn't perfect). Yep, houses are expensive in the big city. Taxes are crazy in the big city. But the economy supports having durable stuff. If your only option is Target and Amazon, I can understand feeling like nothing you buy works. Oh, and don't get me started about pens. Come on. A Pilot Metropolitan and a bottle of ink that will last 5-10 years will set you back a whole $40. And then you only need to buy more ink.
• ryukoposting 3y ago
  All of this rings painfully true for home appliances. Besides a lucky break with an air fryer (knock on wood), all our non-shitty kitchen items are at least 15 years old. My 1-year old HP printer is obtuse and stupid. Even my $1900 work-issued ThinkPad is rife with stupid driver bugs. My workshop tools, however, don't seem to be affected. My soldering iron? Absolute tank. Milwaukee drill bits? I abuse them, and they don't care. Even the mid-grade Craftsman multimeter is totally competent.
• im_down_w_otp 3y ago
  I’ve had to buy a lot of furniture and other things for my new house this year, and one of the things that really sticks out to me is that practically every category of product seems to be split into a bimodal distribution: cheap crap & luxury boutique. There are practically no entries occupying the middle of the market that are on the basic end regarding features & frills but also high-quality. It’s incredibly annoying. I can either get an absolute trash sofa for less than $1,000 or I can get a high-end, high-quality one for $5000+. Now there are definitely sofas that occupy the price range between those, but they’re almost all just wildly overpriced garbage that’s no better than the sub-$1000 junk. The same goes for dining tables, cabinetry, window treatments, cooking appliances, etc. I end up just scouring for “vintage” stuff that’s in decent shape whenever possible. It’s like I have this whole other full-time job trying to find quality used goods because the only things I can just get new immediately are garbage.
  • gaze 3y ago
    Your furniture buying experience exactly mirrors mine. There’s some kind of hard cut at around 5000-7000 dollars to goods that exceed ikea quality.
  • shepherdjerred 3y ago
    That's a mind-boggling anecdote. As an example, Crate and Barrel are known to make good, high-quality couches, and many of them are far less than $5000
    • pixl97 3y ago
      Can you get them these days? I was looking at some C&B stuff during the pandemic 2 years ago and they were looking at 7 to 8 month delivery times.
      • pram 3y ago
        I don't think thats necessarily new, I got my couches from C&B in 2012 and it took like 4 months.
      • 3y ago
• snakeyjake 3y ago
  > I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year. They’re good ones, supposedly, with burrs not blades, but they stop performing before long, ending their long journeys from overseas factories in unmarked graves in my local Montana landfill. I purchased a Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder from Amazon.com on Aug 21, 2020 for $157.94 and have used it, at a minimum, once per day every day I have woken up at home for three years (at least 1,000 times) and it shows no signs of slowing down. If my definition of "a lot" correct and is "greater than three" then the author might want to have his or her wiring checked. Also, as far as staples go, premium staples that can fasten (practically) paper to sheet metal are $0.20 more per 1,000-count than garbage staples. Buy the premium staples that come in a plastic box with a hinged lid instead of the cardboard bricks of staples and you'll never have a jam again. > The two or three new pens I use each week that, because no ink comes out of them Ok this is just ridiculous. TWO TO THREE. PENS. PER WEEK. This has moved into the realm of satire. Buy Pilot G2 pens. Problem solved. They'll still write after going through the wash. Where is this person getting their pens? What are they doing to their pens? What is going on? Am I high? That being said I have nearly no problems with the quality of any purchases I've made because I pay, at a minimum, the inflation adjusted equivalent of what I would have paid 20 years ago for the same product. I also research everything obsessively. Like, read the manual and watch YouTube teardowns of microwaves before buying a new microwave obsessively. I have many fewer things than most Americans but all of my shit is the nicest it can possibly be within my budget. The race to the bottom is a race I do not participate in. The bottom is where the junk is.
  • djur 3y ago
    The fact that he highlighted multiple products purchased from Target is interesting. Is he unaware that Target is a discount chain? You're accepting a higher risk of a defective product by shopping there. If the product is garbage you return it. If you want a better guarantee than that you shop at a better store and pay for it.
• p1mrx 3y ago
  My advice on electric coffee grinders: just buy a manual one with a hex shaft, and drive it with a brushless drill. I've been making drill coffee for years now.
  • friend_and_foe 3y ago
    I wouldn't drive it with a drill because too fast and you'll damage the augur pretty badly. I just hand crank mine, it takes a little time and slows my pace, gives me a minute to think and it's a small work out.
    • p1mrx 3y ago
      The brushless motor gives me plenty of torque at low speed.
• nilespotter 3y ago
  I _love_ Walter Kirn. > Weak-link computer chips in items that don’t require them also came in for abuse. Indeed. I cannot recommend his podcast with Matt Taibbi [1] or the print-only newspaper he edits-at-large [2] highly enough. The man is an American treasure. [1] https://www.racket.news/s/america-this-week https://www.racket.news/s/america-this-week [2] https://www.countyhighway.com/ https://www.countyhighway.com/
• jmarbach 3y ago
  From The Bitcoin Standard: "The reduction in the purchasing power of money is similar to a form of taxation... As people start spending more and saving less, they become more present oriented in all their decision making... this helps explain why civilizations prosper under a sound monetary system, but disintegrate when their monetary systems are debased."
  • thfuran 3y ago
    Yes, we should return to the gold standard so that we can all buy snake oil like in the old days.
    • friend_and_foe 3y ago
      You're missing the point. I actually had this realization on my own and had heard that the concept was outlined in the book which is what prompted me to read it. Cheap money cheapens everything, because the velocity of money is high and so capital turnover is the name of the game. To make a profit, what you sell has to be cheaper than the money you get. It cheapens people because they have to constantly be scratching for a buck just to keep up.
• c22 3y ago
  Almost everything I buy works great. But I also do a lot (sometimes months) of research before I buy anything. I like to ask my friends what they have and how long they've had it/how they feel about it. If I can, I borrow things and try using them a bit before buying one for myself. I keep an eye out for clever design and quality materials. I often come across low-quality products and I elect not to buy them. I try not to get myself into situations where I "need a carrot peeler on short notice," but if I do I definitely start by calling around and seeing if any of my friends or neighbors has one I can borrow. Sometimes I end up paying much more than the cheapest, or even average priced analogues on the market, but probably not as often as you might think. The market produces to fill demand, so I vote with my wallet for the types of products I want to see in the world. I drive an old car that pollutes more than a newer car because it already exists and I'll never save enough carbon in emissions to make up the cost of producing a brand new hybrid vehicle. I try to maintain my car so it lasts as long as possible. I also try to drive safely so-as to avoid wrecking it. If I live long enough I may drive a hybrid car sometime in the future (there are still a lot of old cars sitting around, though). Sometimes I buy antique juicers and they are usually very robust and durable. Not because they're old, but because they're survivors. On the very rare occasions that I do find myself in the market for some junk I usually have no problem finding it for free or very low cost on craigslist.
• GlenTheMachine 3y ago
  One issue here is that there are well built quality products on the market; the problem is distinguishing them from the crap. Also, they cost more. Total cost of ownership is typically a lot lower, though. Want a mechanical pencil that will last you through grad school and at least a decade of your career? Buy a RotRing. It’ll be $30, and worth every penny. Tools? Snap-On or Wright. Shoes? Goodyear welt top-grain leather, such as Grant Stone or top end Allen Edmonds. Luggage? Travelpro or Tom Bihn or Goruck. All of those items will be 3 or 4x what a Target ratchet or bag or pair of dress shoes will cost, but they’ll last at least 10x longer and in the Snap-On example possibly 100x longer. Electronics are a somewhat different issue, of course, but even there, my iPhone XR is still going strong, 85% battery health and receiving OS updates.
  • avarun 3y ago
    > my iPhone XR is still going strong, 85% battery health and receiving OS updates. Wow. My 13 hit 79% battery health after only 2 years of use, so clearly Apple products aren’t immune from this phenomena either.
  • heads 3y ago
    Alas even Rotring make crap these days, specifically their Rapid Pro lead holder: https://www.jetpens.com/Rotring-Rapid-Pro-Lead-Holder-2-mm-Black-Body/pd/8161 https://www.jetpens.com/Rotring-Rapid-Pro-Lead-Holder-2-mm-B... It cost me $40 and the red ring is part of a larger plastic component that connects the barrel to the front inch that you grip and it flexes and comes loose when I write. Rubbish design.
• LiquidPolymer 3y ago
  We have friends that just laid out $3000 for a new washer drier set and washer is already leaking from the front door. Pursuing warranty repair has been a major hassle. My wife and I use a washer and drier set from the late 90's that are nothing to look at but work really well. They appear to be designed with service in mind and changing components is usually extremely easy - something I have done infrequently. These machines are used almost every day. Honestly, for a while I was kind of embarrassed by our beat up old machines. We discussed getting something new but dropped it after sticker shock set in. We also found it nearly impossible to get an honest review of any of the newer appliances. I also just hate "smart home" stuff that requires a wi-fi connection to work correctly. The workman we hired to re-model our rear entry mud-room was looking at our old washer/drier set and unprompted said if we ever want to get rid of them - please let him know. I wondered why and he explained that he and his wife purchased new a couple years ago and have had nothing but complaints. They miss their old setup that cleaned superbly with minimal fuss.
  • LeafItAlone 3y ago
    > We have friends that just laid out $3000 for a new washer drier set and washer is already leaking from the front door. What brand?
    • pixl97 3y ago
      Not Op, but if I had to guess Samsung. I won't buy their appliances.
      • graypegg 3y ago
        +1 for Samsung laundry machines being unreliable. I was in an apartment for 3 years and went thru 2 washing machines due to a “unrepairable” circuit fault on the first one, and a drum leaking perpetually on the second one. The model of the washing machine was on the lease, was one of the expensive ones, I felt bad that they were buying #3 my last year there. They’re maybe only slightly above landfill in terms of entropic stability. Edit: to be fair I bet they were warrantied, but still
      • 3y ago
• rippeltippel 3y ago
  Things used to stop working even in the past, but back then it was worth repairing them.
• csours 3y ago
  There's a lot to say on this topic: "All engineering is value engineering, it just depends whose value you're talking about"; "The affordable 'tools' you can buy in a regular store are just toys for the home gamer. Real tools that make money, cost money". But I won't mention those. Instead an observation about "They don't make them like they used to" as it pertains to automobiles. I work for an automobile manufacturer (anything stated here is solely my own opinion and experience). For a good long time, cars HAD to be worked on every so often. Carbs get fouled up, valves wear down and need adjusting, ignition system timing drifts - so people learned how to work on their cars. The things they had to fix were relatively simple and observable. Then the 70's and 80's happened, and about 4 big things changed in short order: Insurance went up for high horsepower cars, The Gas Crisis made the big old boats unaffordable, Smog regulations went into effect, more safety systems got added. Unfortunately this meant: People missed the power and torque of the huge old engines. Smog compliance added a lot of gizmos and computers. And the safety stuff made cars safer, but sometimes people died anyway, and sometimes the safety systems were part of the cause (this is more complicated than I'm willing to write about in this brief comment). And you can't adjust a fuel injected car like you can a carb, even if it's not running right. You can't adjust the points or the dynamo or the distributor with electronic ignition. Lot of stuff got much harder to access, because midsize and compact cars just don't have the real estate that the old boats had. So lots of folks started saying "They don't make them like they used to" - because you had a lot of new problems, and lost a lot of things you were used to. You still had to fix the problems, but your old diagnostics and understanding didn't go very far - you had to talk to a computer and it didn't talk very well. You still had to work on it, because some of the old stuff broke, and some new stuff broke; but you couldn't work on it. So it felt like it was just crap. Companies started using cheaper processes to get the painting done faster. They used plastic instead of metal, and thinner metal to save weight and improve gas mileage, and it all sucked. But slowly they improved the grade of plastic they used, made the computers smarter, really dialed in the engineering standards for components, and ever so slowly people stopped saying "They don't make them like they used to", because nowadays you can get the same horsepower in a tiny 10 year old compact hatchback that you used to get in a souped-up Mustang or Camaro, and with better gas mileage and safety. It's just that now we can also complain about the Bluetooth and touchscreens not working. They sure don't make them like they used to, eh?
• chubot 3y ago
  I need a new washer-dryer, and now I'm scared to buy one. (The one from 2007 seems to eat clothes now... not sure if these things can even be repaired) Many years ago I came across https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/ https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/ -- anyone have good stories from recommendations there? --- I generally agree with the premise of this article. Here are my experiences with some things that work and don't fall apart: - Zojirushi rice cooker and toaster oven. They are more expensive than the typical stuff, but better. I bought a horrible cheap rice cooker at first, and also a toaster oven from Amazon that died after 3-4 months. The Zojirushi ones have a better design and are more sturdy. - Brompton Folding Bike. It's obvious that they have tested this design under a wide range of conditions -- and importantly have kept it pretty stable for decades, not messing it up for marketing purposes / trends. I had a Montague Folding Bike prior to this, which had all this "military grade" advertising, and it was a piece of shit. I got stranded in the middle of a ride with an unusable bike because some dinky steel part bent in half. The Brompton parts are solid and well-designed. Again the Brompton costs more, but it's better. The Brompton bag is very good too. - Triangle Borea Speakers. I don't know about durability, but they're part of what I see as a small segment of the audio market moving against the trend of audio getting worse since the 70's. This segment seems to have almost zero advertising. Speakers driven by amps seem to be incredibly niche now, since that everyone has music on their devices. I think these were ~ $600 range and worth every penny. You can easily pay $1000 or even $5000 for something like this, since the audio market is weird. - Kinesis Freestyle keyboard. I hesitate to include this, because weirdly I had TWO keyboards die right around their warranty time?? But I actually called the company and they repaired the keyboards! (I rarely send anything back) I think that was almost 10 years ago, and I've been using the repaired keyboard since then !!! So in total I've been using these keyboards for over a decade, and I've gotten much more than my money's worth. - Ikea stuff under $100 can be very well designed and functional. It seems like they know if they're going to sell a zillion copies of something, and they take the time to optimize the design. Flat packing adds a design constraint that encourages creativity. OTOH, the furniture in the $500-$1000 range is very hit and miss. - Sharp kitchen knife from Amazon with a sheath. I use the same knife every day now for almost everything... and bought a second one for when I'm away from home. I think it's actually better than knives 20 or 30 years ago, and it was under $20. - I got a 42" Plasma TV from Amazon in 2007 or so, and used it for 14 years (I still have it, but it's in storage). People who saw it liked the quality more than the LCD TVs they had. I think they stopped making Plasmas for some reason --- Some things that don't work: - Flash thumb drives from Amazon. I guess I should go pay more at a "local computer shop" ? - Random toaster ovens from Amazon, rice cookers from target (mentioned above). Actually now I remember that I used the same toaster oven for almost 20 years, and when it came time to replace it, got TWO complete duds from Amazon/Target. - Air beds from Amazon that develop holes in a matter of months, and one which broke down after a single use. A big waste.
• mikewarot 3y ago
  I live in the Chicago suburbs, car bodies have vastly improved in durability and resistance to road salt in the past few decades. It used to be that most cars were rusted through in less than a decade. Now you almost never see a rusted out car. On the other hand, it's a $300 repair job to replace my niece's Headlight on her Ford Focus. That's nuts! --- In the world of industrial machine tools, like lathes, etc. it is generally accepted that 1940-1960 American Cast Iron machines are the best machines available, after rebuilding. The quality of the materials has not been matched since then.
  • m0llusk 3y ago
    Car headlight and taillight assemblies are kind of a special case. In the late 80s and early 90s it became common to use a lot of computer assisted design to make multiply layered constructions with lenses and diffusers and so on built in. Given the amount of engineering going into these a complete replacement is going to be expensive and even getting at them to replace primary bulbs ends up being a chore.
• kristjansson 3y ago
  Most of the stuff inside Target would compare unfavorably to cake simulacra made for Netflix to put on television. This isn’t a bad thing! Sometimes a ratchet set made out of fondant and priced below a pair of lattes is enough to get the job done. A coffee mill with the structural integrity of sprinkles will nonetheless last long enough for one to figure out if they give a shit about fresh ground coffee. For stuff that needs to last, going just a little out of the way makes all the difference! Need a pen? Find someone selling Pilot Vcorn [1], buy 10 for $30, and you’ve got pens for years. Get a Bodum burr grinder for $50 and wash your hands of your coffee appliance graveyard. Buy kitchen things from your local restaurant/commercial kitchen supplier and beat the shit out of them as they were designed to be beat. [1]: https://www.pilot.co.jp/products/pen/ballpen/water_based/vcorn/index.html https://www.pilot.co.jp/products/pen/ballpen/water_based/vco...
• dcchambers 3y ago
  > I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year. They’re good ones, supposedly, with burrs not blades, but they stop performing before long Anecdotal, but if anyone is looking for a good coffee grinder that doesn't break the bank, can't say enough good things about my Baratza Encore. 10+ years of near daily use. All original still except I did install upgraded burrs a few years back. Baratza encourages repairs, builds them so they are repairable, and provides replacement parts for sale.
  • germinalphrase 3y ago
    What upgraded burrs?
    • dcchambers 3y ago
      The M2 Burrs from Baratza.
  • fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    A lot of people dislike the time it takes to use a hand grinder, but I really like the 1zpresso steel burr grinders I own and my Cafelat Robot espresso maker.
• dougmwne 3y ago
  Great writing, and a nice start to an original idea. But just like the shiny gadgets at the store, this article only lasts long enough for us to drive it home, then falls apart. So it’s all worthless trash, all junk, all a bit depressing, and so, so what? What should we do about it? How should we live our lives in response? In what should we find value when the objects that fill our lives are devalued? Maybe it’s even a good thing? I’m not sure we need more seductive iGarbage in our lives, distracting from the only things that matter. Maybe the next visit to Amazon will tell you what that is.
• kube-system 3y ago
  > They claimed things are worse because we want them cheaper, but if price is adjusted for inflation, they’re of the same quality as always. This is almost the correct answer, but the real reason is a bit more nuanced. There's a few parts to the answer, so I'll break them out: So, as many people know and be-groans, businesses have been optimized by MBA-types who aim to extract as much value out of their companies as possible. In creating a product, that means giving exactly what the customer will purchase. In a competitive and elastic market, if you miss expectations, your customers will not be happy, and soon you might not have customers. If you meet or noticeably exceed expectations, you will have happy customers. If you unnoticeably exceed expectations, you are doing nothing but wasting money. You should spend your money on things that customers notice and care about, and stop spending money on things that customers don't know or don't care about, because they just inflate your costs, and ultimately, the final price of the product. Designing a physical product is always a balancing act of cost, quality, and requirements. Designing a product with more robust components costs more. And the more robust it is, the more expensive it is. Today, there are very good tools for determining how products will behave in the real world. Engineers are good at knowing how long a part will last in a particular application. Material science is more mature, and so is CAD and other analysis tools. There are also many more available materials and methods of manufacturing. The result is that engineers today have many more tools to enable them to design a product that is closer to their balance of engineering targets. If someone sets price, quality, and functionality requirements, those goals can be hit more closely than in years past, when there were fewer materials and fewer manufacturing methods. Because of all of the above reasons, appliance manufacturers have been able to produce appliances that sell better. And in fact, the change in the typical lifestyle proves this -- household appliances that were once luxury purchases (which almost all of them were 70 years ago) are now expected in many households. There are many things that have changed in the past 70 years to make this happen. Prices have gone way down, manufacturing and material science has improved, new types of appliances have been invented, and new features have been added. However, I think it's also important to remember that mass market appliances are designed for the lowest-common-denominator set of requirements. Most home consumers, demonstrably, are not making purchasing decisions based on a product's ability to last 70 years. Should they? Maybe, depending on how long they actually want to use it before it goes out of style and they throw it away. Would it be better for the world and the environment? Potentially, under the condition that it would actually continue to be used. The bottom line is that most people don't buy heavy duty appliances because most people don't buy heavy duty appliances. However, heavy duty appliances DO exist! They're made for commercial market buyers who actually do put their appliances through heavy use and do have higher requirements for longevity and duty cycle. If you look at these appliances, many are built a lot like mid 20th century appliances.
• don_neufeld 3y ago
  I wonder: is this person incredibly bad at making purchases? I mean… just incredibly bad? Or do they not do maintenance? The LG washer and Dryer I bought 20 yrs ago still works a champ. Come to think of it, the only appliance I’ve had issue with in the last 20 years is my coffee grinder, which after about 10 years of heavy use I sent to Baratazza and paid for it repaired. So I’m just not seeing this, even a little bit.
  • don_neufeld 3y ago
    Hmm… thinking more about this, and seeing others comments, maybe… I’m unusually good at buying things? That’s an unexpected thought, but it did make me realize that I research every major purchase on some combination of Consumer Reports / Wirecutter / focused review sites, and maybe that’s unusual? Do most people not do that?
    • disgruntledphd2 3y ago
      Nope they don't. Since I subscribed to which (the UK equivalent of CR) my appliances have been much better quality for not much more cost. That being said, ask me again in a decade.
  • bnecessity 3y ago
    They mention in the article they bought "the only carrot slicer which was on sale". That's not a great selection strategy.
• hubraumhugo 3y ago
  To quanitfy planned obsolescence, I once built a database of broken things to identify how long they last, where they fail, and how much they cost per month of usage: https://looria.com/reviews https://looria.com/reviews If you have any junk products, please submit it there :)
• titzer 3y ago
  I see a lot of comments here defending the current junk culture. Whatever. There's no good reason a pair of scissors that has two steel blades should have a plastic handle, joint, and rivet. Anything with plastic moving parts (e.g. a gear) was intentionally designed to break. It's always done to increase profit, either now, by decreasing cost, or in the long term, by increasing demand by needing a replacement.
• mdip 3y ago
  Speaking from my own experience (anec-data being a home-owner for about 20 years and a member of a family who owned a home my entire life). (1) How "high-end" something is does not equate to how long it will last or how reliable it will be. Sometimes it's entirely the opposite (early generation Plasma did not outlive CRT equivalents but cost substantially more). (2) Targeting a specific brand "known historically (to you) as reliable" is pointless most of the time. All brands have levels, and the low end is same old crap. (3) Consumer reports turned out to be a sometimes useless great resource. Often the model being recommended is no longer available. Buying the next model burned me -- badly -- because the following model year dishwasher was required to use less water (EPA), it was the first generation of this new design and it meant not really having a dishwasher. (4) Dishwashers these days positively suck. I went through four of them in two years, returned two, resold one, suffering with the last (a Bosch that is -- at least -- quiet). The manual instructs not to pre-rinse the dishes, just "shake them off in the sink". Do they actually test these things with real food? Heaven forbid a kernel of Cocoa Krispies ends up on a bowl ... when mixed with milk and sent through a hot cleaning cycle, it turns into chocolate stone epoxied onto whatever in the hell it attached itself to. Oh, and that one kernel will turn into 40 little versions and attach themselves to everything. My buddy has dishwasher-something-he-got-from-Sears from the 90s with a garbage disposal built in. You can put a Crock Pot with the leftover roast in the thing, put in your hearing protection, turn it on, and everything is shiny in about 60-90 minutes. (5) There's a real market opportunity for a microwave without a weird UI. That's it: "without a weird UI". Mine has 25 buttons and a dial. Figuring out how to microwave something on anything other than "high" is sort of like figuring out an Escape Room. The microwave's "30 second" button sets the time for 30 seconds and starts it immediately. Hitting it again adds another 30 seconds. So that button's almost got a hole in the center where the text once was and the entire family either rounds up or stares at it until it's almost done, popping the door open with 15 seconds or so left. Of course, as a result of this behavior, the door safety switch is malfunctioning so you have to very slowly/carefully close the door while applying pressure in a very specific way or the microwave will refuse to start. (6) Sometimes you'll buy a cheap-o gas mower with every intention of upgrading it "when it kicks the bucket". And sometimes that mower will run, faithfully, every week, 3 months a year for 25 years. Some will continue to start on the first or second pull despite still having the original spark plug, wires, air filter, having never been tuned up, maintained, or cleaned and despite it having only had oil added (never changed) ... twice? ... in 25 years, when it was blowing black smoke out the exhaust. Sometimes the thing you want to fail will outlive you. Really ... do you need more than one button for "make it soggy and unevenly warm?"
• xivzgrev 3y ago
  I like the author’s honesty: “it’s also important – to me, emotionally -- to bury the reader in details of the unceasing material disappointments I’ve faced”
• blackoil 3y ago
  How much of it is confirmation bias? Pens, I use various Uni, few $10 fountain pens and my son as 40c fountain pen. All of them work decently well, some break when we drop them or loose the cap but nothing egregious. My wife is using 6 year old Oneplus which give no sign of needing replacement. I have 20 years old toaster. I used my LG washing machine for ~12-13 years before replacing it, same for my AC (>15 years)/fridge (~15 years) etc. Now I have had few bad apples, laptop that was junk in 2 years. AC that kept giving trouble.
• hooby 3y ago
  My grand parents live in an old farm-house, 100 years old or more. When that house was built - there was no electricity. That had been added later - and you could still see where channels had been hewn into the wall to put in cables and later plastered over again. But everything electrical in that house was repairable to a degree that seems unimaginable today. For example, every single power plug had screws. If you removed those, it would come apart in two halves, to reveal another set of screws that held the cable in. If you undid those screws, you could easily shorten or replace the cable - in case it was broken. There was no glue, no solder, and most of the plugs had even metal inserts for the screws to go into. The appliances on the other end of the cables were just as easy to take apart and put back together. And their insides were (mostly) free of proprietary parts - almost everything was "standard" stuff, that you could get replacements for, from a supplier of your own choice. Many of those appliances still worked perfectly fine, after my grandparents had died, and the house had been torn down. That doesn't mean they never broke - but if they did, my grandpa was able to easily fix them himself. And if he could not fix something, he still was able to salvage it for parts that then could be used to fix other things.
  • mijamo 3y ago
    I do not know where you are from but the description of the plugs basically match the ones still installed in France (although many don't require screws because they have built it fixations that just "click"), and I have never seen one that requires glue or soldering. Appliance life expectancy has also gone way up statistically, just like cars, although people often complain about the complexity of both. Most washing machines are pretty easy to fix for the parts that do break for instance. Of course if you get a dead motherboard it is not easy to fix, but usually wear and tear happens more on the mechanical pieces that are well documented and also now full of tutorials on how to change them on the internet. My parents and grandparents never dared doing anything on their appliances because nobody taught them to. I am not particularly handy but I have been fixing their appliances just following some basic instructions.
    • hooby 3y ago
      Not the sockets - I'm talking of the plugs that you put into the sockets. I haven't seen a plug with screws in ages. They all are a single molded piece now, aren't they? See: https://www.kulthifi.de/WebRoot/Store19/Shops/80012341/5E84/25E7/BAC1/9B8E/40BE/0A0C/6D10/9912/1_1.jpg https://www.kulthifi.de/WebRoot/Store19/Shops/80012341/5E84/... for example.
• spyrefused 3y ago
  I would add that not only the quality in general is degrading, but also the treatment of the brands and manufacturers to the customer. I believe that the feeling of abandonment (sometimes even scam) in which the brands subject their customers further deepen the feeling of lack of quality in general. A few years ago I bought a Samsung refrigerator. It came with a big "10 year warranty" sticker. After a couple of years or so, one day it stopped cooling. I thought what a piece of crap, but at least it had a warranty. I found out, over the phone, that the 10 year warranty was only for the compressor. Still, I was lucky because it was the compressor that had gone bad. But there was more fine print in the 10-year warranty: it only covered the compressor and only the price of the part. In other words, I had to pay for the technician to come to my house and replace the part. Almost 200 dollars for a refrigerator that had cost 800 and was supposedly under warranty.
• kaetemi 3y ago
  There's a generation of electronics that were plagued by failing capacitors that contained a flawed chemical that was produced based on a stolen formula that contained errors. There's also the wave of electronics that had issues with lead free solder. Recent appliances and devices seem to last longer again, aside from smartphones with pesky unreplaceable batteries that turn into spicy pillows after a year or two.
• hasoleju 3y ago
  Their might also be one other statistical artifact: Todays households simply own much more stuff. We possess so many items that we experience the failure of an item much more often than in the past where we owned less stuff.
  • InCityDreams 3y ago
    > Todays households simply own too much stuff. Very true. I moved to my current place with a single car of belongings - now, I'd need a truck. I have two flatbeds of trash just ready to go to the tip, and I'm looking to reduce even more. I'd love to just give it all away, but that would take a while. I am prepared to a) go without, and b) buy something again if i really think i need it. The amount of 'stuff' [another nod to George Carlin] I/we have really is ridiculous.
• alexashka 3y ago
  Folks here seem fixated on splitting hairs regarding which products have gotten better or worse and to what degree. The post has more to offer besides pedantry, if only you let it.
• coldtea 3y ago
  A lof of the discussion here focusing on cars alone. The other examples mentioned in TFA are far more convincing: things like blenders, suitcases, clothes, kitchen gloves. Take your favorite casual clothes, like t-shirts. In many there has been a clear enshitiffication going on, with lesser quality fabrics, that last less than a few decades ago, even when the brand and the model remains the same. How about Lenovo vs IBM laptops? Forget the red herring about the cpu being faster and such (which is about the electronics). Is it built to the same standards as those older ones were? Even the razor thin plastic grocery bags that are much much easier to pierce is a real struggle in a number of supermarkets I go to. And let's not get started on food stuff, where the product is supposedly the same, but the ingredients get shittier and/or the weight goes down, while the price raises even above inflation.
  • coldtea 3y ago
    I think the problem with cars is that it's a multidimensional change space (as they're a much more complex devices than something like a toaster or a blender or a piece of clothing), and in some dimensions they fare better (environmental impact of fumes, safety). If we stuck to aspects like local repairability, sturdiness, material quality, etc they wouldn't fare as well. But sturdiness for example also means they'd be more lethal on a collision, so there's a tradeoff with cars that doesn't exist in, say, toasters.
• nazgulnarsil 3y ago
  it's partially driven by scale. Take a good product and have it get accolades on the review sites and on reddit. The flood of sales triggers the manufacturer to find ways to cut costs. Saving ten cents doesn't matter when you sell ten thousand of something. But when you sell ten million, well you can hire people whose whole job it is to find ten cent cuts. Each cut itself isn't really noticeable, but eventually they add up. I learned about this from running a food company. Our competitors make their protein bars for, I'm told by a long time industry insider, 17 cents in ingredients.
• MrDresden 3y ago
  I can at least suggest the brand Wilfa as something that will last in the kitchen. Have the same kettle and bur coffee grinder that I bought back in 2012. My Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner is turning six soon and is going strong. The laptops I sadly have to agree on though.
• Animats 3y ago
  Are subscriptions to Consumer Reports up? They sort out good stuff from crap.
• ghusto 3y ago
  For the folks who are doubting his point: Is there anything you've bought new ten years ago that you still have (and works!).
• joduplessis 3y ago
  The article is not so compelling for me. I've used my coffee grinder going on 5 years now (almost every single day/multiple times a day). What is true, I find, is that you really get what you pay for (99% of the time).
• t0bia_s 3y ago
  I never understand why we bother so much about environment and sustainability but in same time accept low quality products and prefer buying new one instead of repair it if even possible. Make products last long and make them repairable should be priority for all manufacturers. But... It's not make profit I guess.
• charles_f 3y ago
  It feels like the author might be exaggerating ever so slightly, but it conveys a general feeling that things are built cheaply and without durability in mind. To me, whether it's worse or better than before is somewhat of a moot point. To follow their example: after a hundred years of building juicers, we should have global juicer expertise. The generations of juicers created, the feedback on the models, the breakage rate should have generated a general knowledge of the best techniques for juice extraction, of the materials that are most adequate for the task, and how assembly should be designed for maximum durability. But we don't. What we have instead is cheap juicers, which underlines the point that cheap is what matters in how the design. Be it for maximum profitability or low price point. Following on their other example about coffee grinders: last year I renewed my coffee making stack. I like coffee such az many here, and wanted good hardware; quality first, and cost a secondary concern. I took care of asking friends, watching videos, going on forums, reading tests. I ended up investing quite a bit in a Baratza machine, which is quite celebrated and very repairable, they sell replacement parts at reasonable cost, they even give you tips on how to extend longevity. All marks of a manufacturer who wants their craft to last. I suspect that you might be able to find the one juicer on some small website which ships direct from the manufacturer in Vermont. Juicing enthusiasts share their experience and knowhow on juicing websites and all swear by their mothers that this one brand revolutionized juicing for them. For equipment with any mild complexity, you need to acquire a relative expertise, and shop in the outskirts of the market. And obviously, you have time for that only for the stuff you care about. As per not picking the cheapest option, price isn't a good indicator of quality. Certainly if you keep surrounding yourself with the cheapest copies, things will always break around you. But you'll get more reliability from a Corolla made by a manufacturer which obsesses about quality, then from a Mercedes which targets premium and luxury. Additional manufacturing cost is generally used to add more features and better looking materials, rather than producing sturdier things. Anecdotally, I am still using the peeler I bought when I was a student over 20y ago. I can guarantee you that no research went into this option, and it was likely the cheapest option that Tiengong had to offer back then. I enjoyed reading this, it's well written and entertaining.
  • euroderf 3y ago
    IIRC... it used to be that the durable & repairable products also dominated markets as the top sellers. But "advances" in materials (moar plastic!), outsourcing & logistics (containers!), electronics (shiny! shiny!), etc. created broad new ranges of "junk" that were attractive for their better affordability, replacing the top-shelf stuff as best-sellers. Wider access to basic functionalities (if not durability & repairability) created more buy-in for the economic system and the underlying political system. Vote Consumerism! The top shelf stuff is in many cases still on the market, and might even be at roughly same-price after adjustment for inflation, but for Joe Sixpack, affordability trumps durability & repairability. This might be a dreadfully oversimplified explanation, but it's my strong impression after seeing decades of market (d)evolution.
• Roark66 3y ago
  >And the hybrid sedan with fifty thousand miles on it that also turned into a brick while going eighty down the freeway, losing its power steering, its power brakes, its power everything. And that is why "drive by wire" is a mistake in cars. It may be unnerving for someone who never drove a car with no power steering and no power breaks to suddenly loose it while going 80mph, but it's not going to kill you unless you're quite unlucky (it goes off the moment you try overtaking, you have to brake hard etc.) But if the power goes off with a drive by wire car? You're dead. "But airplanes", yes huge airplanes had drive/fly by wire for a long time. I still remember when people would prefer to fly Boeing rather than Airbus airliners, because Boeing planes still had physical connection between control surfaces and the yoke/pedals ,while the corresponding airbus model didn't. However, these are hugely expensive machines worth tens if not hundreds of millions of $ with teams of highly skilled maintenance personnel checking them out at a very tight schedule. Aren't there smaller planes with fly by wire? Yes, for example F16, and other military jets. How much do they cost, and how are they maintained? Probably the same as commercial airliners, if not better. So what about your typical "cessna"? I've looked online for a while to find any small plane using fly by wire and I didn't find one. When searching for cessna fly by wire I found Cessna is just "warming up" to the idea in their business jets putting one control surface "the flaps" on fly by wire while everything else is directly hydraulicly actuated by the yoke/pedals on their Columbus business jets. And Elon thinks it's a good idea for a car that costs $100k (supposedly $40 later)? What happens when that car is 20 years old? Unless they know for a fact it will be scrapped after 10 years than it's fine. Don't tell me about its dual/redundant motor and triple sensors, unless each motor also has its own battery with cables routed differently and a controller that can still do stearing when the other battery connection gets chewed through by rodents and contacts for this one are so corroded it barely works.
• euroderf 3y ago
  > As for the much of the cheap stuff – those Target mittens, say – they aren’t merely inexpensive, they’re valueless. In fact, they’re of negative value when one considers the waste or materials involved, and the wasted energy of driving to buy them, then driving to return them later – a second trip that in this case, and many others, wasn’t worth making. Instead, we took the loss. And the world took the loss. A small one, but they add up. "Value subtraction" was a key criticism of the Soviet system: outputs were worth less than inputs. Zoom out to our Big Picture (let's call it "life cycle analysis") and yeah, value is being drained away at every step. Some as dividends, some as environmental damage, some as political bribery, some as pure friction. So if this kind of price signal no longer works in the American economy, then maybe the American economy is fundamentally broken and needs replacing. Not to mention the political system propping it up. Rant concludes.
• pshirshov 3y ago
  Obsolence-shmobsolence. If you need a kitchen appliance, just buy Siemens. Of course the problem exists, but in many cases it's possible to buy stuff which lasts if you are willing to pay a premium.
  • charles_f 3y ago
    Meh, I've found that the correlation between price and quality is less and less obvious. A lot of the time to get quality you need to get into more specialized/semi-pro brands. Most expensive stuffs are sold at premium for more features, but generally consumer stuff is not targeting quality quality
• kristov 3y ago
  Assuming old stuff is more durable than new stuff: I wonder why older stuff was made to a higher standard? If people had less disposable income back then, why wasnt there an incentive to make low quality cheaper things? One possible reason is that it's technically difficult to build something that is just strong enough. In the past they were unable predict the failure moment to an accurate degree, so they over engineered everything.
  • mmcwilliams 3y ago
    Older stuff that is still around was made to a higher standard. There has always been plenty of junk and low quality goods around, they just haven't lasted.
  • jdietrich 3y ago
    >One possible reason is that it's technically difficult to build something that is just strong enough. In the past they were unable predict the failure moment to an accurate degree, so they over engineered everything. That's mostly the right answer. Value engineering is a complex and constantly evolving discipline, with the most important advance being the proliferation of injection-molded plastics in the 1970s - a single injection-molded part can replace dozens of more expensive pressed, cast or machined parts, albeit often with a reduction in durability. The other crucial factor is simply attrition bias - the past was full of terrible stuff, we just don't see most of it because it broke and went to landfill.
• cracrecry 3y ago
  Today you can buy a Miele household appliance. A liebherr fridge. A Dyson vacuum cleaner(I bought mine like 20 years ago and works like the first day). People can buy a stainless steel drum washing machine, or you can buy it in injection molded plastic. Most people buy the plastic one, because the other is much more expensive. Fair enough, the only problem is that you see the person who bought one with the plastic drum complaining about how it broke after warrantee period is over. People want things to last forever and be cheap, and that is not possible. Making an stainless steel part is way way more difficult and expensive that doing a plastic mold, and is not mass produced as much because most people do not want to pay it.
  • NoOn3 3y ago
    But unfortunately, you can never be sure that if a thing is expensive, it is reliable. It's a little difficult to find reliable things in today's market, but it's posible.
• tgtweak 3y ago
  Yes, obviously, but why? Good products are still out there but there are very few trustworthy sources of reviews that actually test the durability. Project farm comes to mind as a rare example. Consumer reports does a decent job but puts it behind a paywall.
  • kibwen 3y ago
    > Yes, obviously, but why? Because Adam Smith's invisible hand has torn the veil away from our faces and revealed that humans are so piss-poor at long-term thinking that we'll happily pay ten cents less for a washing machine that breaks down twice as quickly. Even ideal markets don't optimize for quality, they optimize for utility. And the revealed preference of the human utility function is "penny wise, pound foolish".
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > The strangely short power cords on electronics. That's lawyers, as well as the insane flagpole of stickers on each wire. The simple fact of the matter, is that people are willing to buy junk. They want a certain level of functionality, at low prices. Manufacturers (or software developers) have figured out how to provide a simulacrum of the functionality, for very low prices. These manufacturers put others, that make higher-Quality products, out of business, so you have a race to the bottom. I spent almost my entire career, at companies that make extremely high-Quality products, and am quite familiar with the requirements to enable this. It costs a lot; both time, and money. The difference between even a reasonably-high-Quality item, and a very-high-Quality item, in cost to manufacture, is kind of extreme (so their sticker price reflects that). It may seem that companies that make top-Quality stuff are rich, but they are not. The people that make a lot of money, are the ones that can push cheap dross, in large quantities. That said, people don't actually want low-quality. It's just that they don't want to pay the premium for the higher-Quality stuff. Manufacturers that figure out how to produce higher-Quality, for lower money, and in larger quantity, do well (think many Japanese -and now, Korean, manufacturers). There's a popular piece of a story, written by Sir Terry, called The Sam Vimes Boots Theory[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
  • myroon5 3y ago
    Information asymmetry plays a large role. Many people would be willing to pay premiums for higher quality but that's easier said than done
  • swyx 3y ago
    GNU Terry Pratchett
• nunez 3y ago
  > I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year Grind size and consistency are everything when making coffee. As such, good coffee grinders are expensive as hell because of the blades and motors. Mostly the blades. You can easily spend thousands on an espresso grinder (a grinder that can only grind ultra-fine espresso grounds, nothing else) because of this. My Fellow Ode, which can only grind for drip coffee, was $300. It is a significant improvement from the Breville Smart Grinder I had previously, which was a significant step up from the Mueller single-speed, single-size grinder I started with. I'm going to guess this was also the case 30 years ago, especially since they were bigger.
  • phaedrus 3y ago
    I have a German-made coffee grinder that was between $200 - $300 retail (though I got it for significantly less on clearance. It grinds well, but within a short time of getting it the electronics burned out. I opened it up to find a bafflingly complex circuit board with relays, opto-isolators, transformer, microchips, fuses, timers, etc. etc. Mind you this board has only one function: to turn an AC motor on and off. I noticed the motor is a brushed "universal" motor like you'd find in a vacuum cleaner; that is, old technology that can run on DC or AC and needs only two wires to run. This complex circuit board... wasn't even justified for being a motor controller, because there was nothing to control! I replaced the entire burnt out circuit board with a hefty 20A 120-240 VAC momentary switch from my parts bin. Since then the grinder's been working perfectly for about 14 years. But if I hadn't been willing and able to do that repair I might have gone through 10 of them in the same time. Part of making a quality product is restraint: to NOT put something on it (like that circuit board) that is unnecessary.
• cs702 3y ago
  Many of these junky mass-market products are currently stuck in a Nash Equilibrium[a]: Each manufacturer is unable improve the product's quality without increasing its retail price, but increasing the price would make the product more expensive than competing products made by other manufacturers, who are in the same situation. No manufacturer can improve quality without raising prices and losing market share. Their position is analogous to that of prisoners in the Prisoners' Dilemma[b]: Their best choice is the least-worst option for everyone. --- [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium [b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
  • efields 3y ago
    Thanks for this. I didn’t know there was a name for it. We’ve probably accelerated the effects that lead to the equilibrium in many product categories. It takes a big mover like an Apple to take the risk to move the needle now, but so many consumer products lack an Apple in that space.
    • cs702 3y ago
      > It takes a big mover like an Apple... or an ambitious entrepreneur with sufficient financial backing willing to take big risks.
  • truculent 3y ago
    What’s the implication for moving the equilibrium point? State action? Collective action?
    • cs702 3y ago
      Depends on the market and the product. The best way, in my view, is through product innovation by ambitious entrepreneurs who come up with a better solution. Instead of trying to making the equivalent of a faster horse carriage at cheaper cost, they figure out how to make the equivalent of an automobile, rendering horse carriages obsolete.
• hscontinuity 3y ago
  I think the undertone of the article is missed by a lot of people reading. A) The premise is that physical items which were produced because "machines" was the "power of the future" still; didn't become replaced by "code aided machines" sometime in the late 1970's and early 1980's. B) This premise fell upon society's roles in life at the time! As mentioned in the article, likely most of the devices were made and used because often they'd be purchased "once" and "for life". Because - if you were cooking in a kitchen in 1940, 1890, 1840, etc... You weren't going to switch careers/positions in 3-5 years. This applied to many industries. Then pad on all the cultural norms; women in the home, men working on farms, factories, etc. To much greater degree than today. C) Comparably purchased products had much, MUCH more limited competition in yesteryear. Mass competition did not show up utnil the turn of the 20th century, thanks to the industrial revolution of the 19th. So, in summing it up I think the undertone of the article if reading 'between' the lines explicity implies that today's society has reached a point where the needs of what we purchase are identically matched to what is readily available for purchase, the norm ecomonimcally, and the completely and vastly different society we live in - has proven exactly what Victorian moods had suggested: useful or beautiful; all else has no value. And yet we find the most absurd value in things we likely need not to.
• nunez 3y ago
  Mostly agree and disagree. Kitchen and household appliance quality in particular suffered because many of the companies that make them are now brands owned by a small set of very large companies who outsource manufacturing that used to be done here. Examples: - GE sold off GE Appliances to Haier, a Chinese conglomerate. Their appliances used to be made in Louisville, KY; they now mostly do final assembly, with significantly fewer appliances being made there - most refrigerators are made by Whirlpool, Haier, or Electrolux. Everything except high-end refrigerators are made overseas. - many appliances are incorporating more complex electronics to "provide more value" in the form of mostly-gimmicky features at the expense of repairability and lower bills-of-materials (I.e. basically everything that Samsung and LG make). Think: oven ranges with touch screen controls that render the entire thing inoperative should the screen or digitizer go out, washing machines with smart features and touch screens that cease to work when they throw codes, etc. However, most of these decisions are being made to make things cheaper to satisfy what customers want. Most customers will buy a $400 4K 75" panel that will maybe last three years and track the ever-loving shit out of them and their viewing habits instead of spending $4k 75" panel that will last ten years or more because quality doesn't matter; they just want cheap TVs.
• draw_down 3y ago
  [dead]
• black_puppydog 3y ago
  Previously posted on a different blog and discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34092749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34092749 (Dec 22, 2023; 319 comments)
• neonnoodle 3y ago
  Why? Reaganomics. It's the late 1980s--they shut down the plant and shipped your job overseas. Real wages flatten and stay flat. But not to worry! The products you love are now cheaper (albeit slightly crappier). You buy the cheaper thing more out of necessity than real "choice," since Baumol's cost disease is making everything but consumer goods outrageously expensive. There are more expensive versions of some products, but they're often just overpriced faux-luxury trim on the same junk. Luxury goods stay good, since the wealthy have several orders of magnitude more than you ever will in 1000 lifetimes. There used to be...what did they used to call it? A "middle class"...
• ForestCritter 3y ago
  If you shop by researching brand rather than price, you will find there are still good companies out there. Lots of cheap stuff is junk, some expensive stuff is junk. Even within brands there are differences. My fancy four wide slot cuisinart toaster has survived 20 years, lots of use many moves and getting slightly squished in an overstuffed trunk and is still going strong. Cuisinart coffee makers, however, lose their marbles at any power flickering, never mind outages. We can bemoan the onslaught of junk that we keep buying and therefore helping it grow, or just maybe we could put our money into companies that still make good stuff through some consumer research instead of believing the advertised 'best deal'.
  • bruce343434 3y ago
    Great idea, but how can you tell in advance if something will last 20 years, especially when its not uncommon that products change while keeping their name and looks?
• pabs3 3y ago
  We should stop putting stuff into landfill to start with...
• helpfulContrib 3y ago
  [dead]
• z3ncyberpunk 3y ago
  Water heaters are a prime example of generally durable design, replaced today with cheap crap metal that lasts half as long and is virtually only replaceable, not fixable.
• bbuff27 3y ago
  Before becoming a software developer, I spent 9 years as an HVAC technician, 5 of which were as an installer. One responsibility would be retrofitting new equipment into peoples homes, removing their sometimes 60-80 year old furnace/boiler. When I would take out such old systems, I would always get the same questions from the homeowner, “So this is going to last me another 60 years right?” In my head I would always laugh but kindly reply, “You’ll be lucky if you get 15 out of this one.”, which would be met with a look of disappointment and awe. Even the most expensive (and somewhat dangerous) appliances in your home are made as cheap as possible. The days you were taking out a 1920s boiler were some of the worst days. They were installed to stay forever.