waehrik t1_iroa0mm wrote on October 9, 2022 at 7:46 PM

Reply to comment by FictitiousThreat in Miele (2004) and Curver (1973). Both in constant use since purchase. by JoLudvS

That's exactly it, plastics nowadays can be and are value engineered and have the potential of being far better but most often aren't. There's a lot of survivorship bias here too. Because all of the cheap stuff from 50 years ago has long been sitting in the landfill. You can absolutely buy good stuff today but it'll cost a lot more

turikk t1_irop9tt wrote on October 9, 2022 at 9:29 PM

I'm glad you're admitting to survivorship bias since "they don't make it like they used to" is the oldest trope in the world. I'm pretty sure it's one of the phrases on the Rosetta stone.

waehrik t1_irozk9z wrote on October 9, 2022 at 10:47 PM

Absolutely. There's also the fact that back in the day things were intentionally overbuilt prior to the introduction of finite element analysis and CAD design. And engineers had to intentionally make things overbuilt in order to make sure they were sufficiently strong enough. Sometimes that meant it was adequate, other times it meant that it was so overbuilt that was impossible to break. Value engineering for many common products didn't exist 50 years ago because it wasn't possible.

conanmack t1_irqxvss wrote on October 10, 2022 at 11:15 AM

It was more likely that value engineering did exist but was not widely adopted. Every company must know the costs of production to survive and grow. Adjusting them through different business cycles.

Increasing shareholder value has most likely lead to a focus on value engineering and planned obsolescence. A constant stream of sales is deemed more important than solid and reliable products.

waehrik t1_irsdjve wrote on October 10, 2022 at 5:53 PM

Exactly, and just as with survivorship bias that's what skews the bias of "good" to smaller companies sometimes. Sometimes they truly are better but sometimes it's also because they didn't have the large resources to perform the value engineering analysis to perform the cost reduction so had to overbuild. Nowadays the bar to entry is so low that anyone can do it. So the often-smaller quality driven companies really stand out. Those are the modern ones we see for sale today though sadly they're few and far between.

Ymirsson t1_irr2jc9 wrote on October 10, 2022 at 12:06 PM

Also one of the phrases about the Rosetta stone.