Couldn't agree more. I would not want to go back to the "good old days" for any of the above. Excellent point.
What I am having trouble articulating is a certain beauty of mechanism design that can be thougt of as a blending of art and functionality. Someone mentioned the book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance earlier in the thread. This book discusses the concept.
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in decades. I believe I read the book three times before I was in my early 20s. It did have some important things to say about quality. I think is never been common to find things which are highly functional and with atheistic beauty. Steve Jobs and Apple seem to have the magic formula.
I do wonder why so many people view memories of old places and things with a rose colored filter. Just a quick glance around the house and I see significant improvements in everyday objects, from refrigerators that consume less energy and have adjustable shelves, icemakers, and different temperature setting for different areas, to Velcro on lots objects, cordless drills, Swiffers, longer lasting paints that don't fade in sun. All these things are much better (at least more functional) than stuff made 25 years ago.
I had an discussion with friend about new vs old movie. My friend in her early 70s say that the movies from the 40s and 50s were better, I disagreed. This week I was helping my 83 year old mom with Netflix, and I was suggesting some old classic movies. She surprised me by saying that while they have rented a number of old movies they weren't nearly as good as she remembered them! Good for mom.
I was reading an essay in Newsweek (IIRC) and the author was lamenting that because of computers, people design things be the bridges or financial product, with much smaller margins of errors. He was marveling that driving through Europe you see lots of bridge still functioning after a 1,000 years. Roman architects over engineered things and so there system was more resilient to shocks and stress. In contrast to America where bridges fall into rivers. A nice romantic notion and of course the author applied it to our financial systems, if only there was more slack (e.g. less leverage) things would have turned out better.
IMO there are couple fallacies with this way of thinking . First there is huge amount of survivor bias in our memories, we remember the beautiful Grand Turino that ran great for 200,000 miles but forget the Chevy Vega that died after 12,000. Similarly I doubt there is a book on Roman Bridge failures 100 BC To 600 AD, even if I am wrong, nobody using these bridge has ever read it. Second there is huge opportunity cost to make high quality objects, thousands of peasant toiled very hard build a Roman bridge that would last 2,000 years, but wouldn't have some of that effort been better spent letting the peasants build a school, or a better home for themselves? Would bridge that only last two hundred years while allowing peasant to have better homes been a better trade off for Roman society? While I admire the craftsmanship of a Swiss watchmaker who can make a watch that will last 100 year and keep time within a few seconds a years, I'll note that neither of my dad's Rolex lasted much beyond 10 years. From a strictly functional aspect my $15 Casio is superior in every respect. Isn't a lot of the effort the watch makers expended in making these things forever, basically wasted.
Of course, there is a little doubt that Walmart effect has resulted in too much cost cutting. I purchased a blender three months ago, it seemed lighter and less sturdy than my roommates previous one. Today while using it the plastic ring which you screw onto the glass container shatter in the middle of my smoothie. Beside ruining in the smoothie it created a mess, the fraction of penny in cost saving is clearly lost in the customer service cost and ill will. (It was an Oyster brand...)