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There are some rose tinted spectacles going on here. White goods in yesteryear times were not that reliable or as good as the author imagines them to have been

There are some rose tinted spectacles going on here. White goods in yesteryear times were not that reliable or as good as the author imagines them to have been. They broke down, had design faults, had poor choice of materials and so on. Some things, particularly microwave ovens, are disposable. You spend £30 and get a new one. You don't get it serviced for £££ or buy the parts. Washing machines are a bit more borderline, you can order a new belt or heating element and put it on all by yourself, following some guide on Youtube and getting the parts from eBay.

danieltillett 13y ago
This is true to a certain extent. One difference is machines in the past could be repaired, now they just don't seem to be possible to fix. An interesting exception to the "everything is going to crap" thesis is cars. These are way more reliable that old cars.
- bdunbar 13y ago
  Eh. I've repaired a few modern appliances, worked on a 2003, 2001, model cars. Washer was a cinch, thanks to the repair manual (found online). The only difficult bit is diagnosing the car [1] was the makers assumed I'd have a diagnostic computer to plug into the port and read off whatever the car thought was the problem. Capitalism to the rescue! Any parts store (O'Reilly, Autozone, etc) will cheerfully plug their diagnostic computer in and _tell_ you what the problem is. [1] For non-obvious faults. When my Explorer threw a rod, that was painfully obvious.
ronaldx 13y ago
Good point... there is some important statistical bias here: The old white goods we can observe in use today are the ones which still work. Those which broke down are not remembered.
- Joeboy 13y ago
  My old (1990s?) washing machine broke recently. While that's not a great advert for older goods, what happened next was that I took the lid off, had a bit of a poke about, decided that it was probably worth fixing it, and got somebody to fix it for (iirc) about £70 (parts + labour). I haven't been through the same process with a newer machine, but I suspect that's not how it would have played out with a machine from the last few years.
zo1 13y ago
Agreed. It's also a very easy/handy line of thinking that sadly a lot of people are prone to: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days

danieltillett 13y ago

This is true to a certain extent. One difference is machines in the past could be repaired, now they just don't seem to be possible to fix. An interesting exception to the "everything is going to crap" thesis is cars. These are way more reliable that old cars.

bdunbar 13y ago
Eh. I've repaired a few modern appliances, worked on a 2003, 2001, model cars. Washer was a cinch, thanks to the repair manual (found online). The only difficult bit is diagnosing the car [1] was the makers assumed I'd have a diagnostic computer to plug into the port and read off whatever the car thought was the problem. Capitalism to the rescue! Any parts store (O'Reilly, Autozone, etc) will cheerfully plug their diagnostic computer in and _tell_ you what the problem is. [1] For non-obvious faults. When my Explorer threw a rod, that was painfully obvious.

ronaldx 13y ago

Good point... there is some important statistical bias here: The old white goods we can observe in use today are the ones which still work. Those which broke down are not remembered.

Joeboy 13y ago
My old (1990s?) washing machine broke recently. While that's not a great advert for older goods, what happened next was that I took the lid off, had a bit of a poke about, decided that it was probably worth fixing it, and got somebody to fix it for (iirc) about £70 (parts + labour). I haven't been through the same process with a newer machine, but I suspect that's not how it would have played out with a machine from the last few years.

zo1 13y ago

Agreed. It's also a very easy/handy line of thinking that sadly a lot of people are prone to: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days