It has gone the same way as physical goods. My parents still have appliances (food mixers things like that) that still work and they bought them in the 1980s. Good luck getting anything to last that long these days.
I’m sorry to say this, but this is survivorship bias. We produced plenty of crap that broke a few months after use even 50 years ago, it’s just that you don’t notice the crap because it was thrown away after it broke and all you see now is the stuff that surprisingly made it for decades. That’s not to say that enshittification and planned obsolescence is not a thing, it’s just not as extreme and “we used to build things that lasted” as people would like to believe.
It is true that merely from the observation of old things, you cannot conclude that all things lasted long.
But as a matter of fact, from different observations by many people and areas, mid- to high- end stuff really lasted much, much longer. It was as an average rule more simple, less compact, and it lasted and still lasts really long without degradation.
There’s also maintenance blindness. It is easy to see how something lasted forever, when you weren’t the one doing the maintenance and repair work everyday. Also, many “good ol’ immortal appliances” neglect to mention how most of the parts are actually brand new or it wouldn’t be functional otherwise.
It has gone the same way as physical goods. My parents still have appliances (food mixers things like that) that still work and they bought them in the 1980s. Good luck getting anything to last that long these days.
I’m sorry to say this, but this is survivorship bias. We produced plenty of crap that broke a few months after use even 50 years ago, it’s just that you don’t notice the crap because it was thrown away after it broke and all you see now is the stuff that surprisingly made it for decades. That’s not to say that enshittification and planned obsolescence is not a thing, it’s just not as extreme and “we used to build things that lasted” as people would like to believe.
It is true that merely from the observation of old things, you cannot conclude that all things lasted long.
But as a matter of fact, from different observations by many people and areas, mid- to high- end stuff really lasted much, much longer. It was as an average rule more simple, less compact, and it lasted and still lasts really long without degradation.
There’s also maintenance blindness. It is easy to see how something lasted forever, when you weren’t the one doing the maintenance and repair work everyday. Also, many “good ol’ immortal appliances” neglect to mention how most of the parts are actually brand new or it wouldn’t be functional otherwise.
The ability to replace parts is part of why they last so long
Yeah, nowadays everything is sealed with Premium Vibranium Super-Ultra-Hiperglue™©® and you can only repair anything if you pay more than even just buying a new one. It’s diabolic.
Also, programmed obsolescence it’s actually a thing. Here’s high quality bibliography about it:
https://librairie.ademe.fr/economie-circulaire-et-dechets/3516-etude-sur-la-duree-de-vie-des-equipements-electriques-et-electroniques.html
https://www.ademe.fr/presse/communique-national/allonger-la-duree-dusage-des-objets-un-gain-pour-la-planete-et-pour-le-porte-monnaie/
https://classactionslawsuits.com/cases/apple-iphone-batterygate-throttling-consumer-class-action-se-1781542117438
https://www.ifixit.com/News/11208/batterygate-timeline
https://www.ifixit.com/News/66879/iphone-14-parts-pairing-results-apple-is-still-trying-to-monopolise-repair
If you say so