Comment by perihelions

Largely everything has been solved so instead of some ultra expensive coffee maker just buy a Moka pot, and buy old/used stuff. Every 'scene' alive has associated gear, and of that gear, a small fraction is revered by the ultra-nerds. Find the ultra-nerds and follow them. They really don't like when their stuff breaks.

I've bought a ton of old stuff off eBay and similar sites and antique stores especially with this mentality. I can likely toss a grenade into my living room and most of my stuff will survive. I know my WWII sonar recorder will survive.

I bought a BMW 325is from 1988 and I've put well over 150k miles on it since I bought it a few years ago. Nothing leaks, nothing breaks, nothing squeaks, and it still gets 7.5L/100KM. A 36 year old car I got for $7k. One weekend, a Bentley manual, and youtube, and I was able to fix up the throttle body, replace ball joints, update my steering rack, and offset my wheels how I wanted. (On the flip side if I get into a crash I am insta-dead).

Like I wanted good outerwear but as you said, it's all premium market segment stuff without the quality. So I asked my friend who does bike-packing year round and lives outside what he wears and he gave me an entire notebook of gear, prices, longevity, and especially weights. I've had that jacket for 16 years now.

Same with laptops. Cheap modern $500 laptop, or ancient Thinkpad I can upgrade in an evening for $250, that will last me 10x longer? Infinite examples of this.

Had a very similar conversation with a plumber last winter. Pipes exploded because of the cold and flooded the basement. Plumber came over to fix the issue and we talked about the tools while working.

Paraphrased statement was something like "The company that makes these tools could make a high quality product that was rust, corrosion, and abrasion resistant. Except they don't. They make me a cheap wrench, that's planned for obsolescence, and rusts after a few months on the job. The company I work for could buy me a high quality set of tools. Except they don't. They buy me whatever's cheap and don't especially care that they have to buy it again in a year. And then they expect me to go to your house and care."

Joel - it really is a challenge to find high quality products even at high prices. Moreso at high and reasonable prices. I.E. getting your money’s worth. I hate being ripped off and have spent a lot of time researching producers and manufacturers to identify high quality products.

What I’ve found works is to locate special interest forums where experts talk about the best products, and to look for “whole products”. What I mean by that is to find products with as few “processed” or mass manufactured components as possible. Certainly there are exceptions to this, but as an example compare the copper pots and pans made by https://duparquet.com/ with the “ingredients” used on a typical pan you’d find at Wal-Mart.

The 3mm copper pan costs quite a bit but is made with real materials and skilled human labor. (No affiliation)

The Wal-Mart pan is the cheapest “metal” possible sprayed with a chemical coating and some generic styling and branding Homesense or something.

Certainly you can find some more affordable pots and pans with similar features as the website I shared, but you have to be careful.

Almost all electronics will by definition be planned obsolescence. A pan to cook meals? Like cities and good architecture we figured out how to make great pots and pans, knives, and more a long time ago and there isn’t a whole lot left to do.

Unfortunately population growth has led to a need for cheaper and crappier products especially in the west to maintain a perceived level of lifestyle.

Why would you want a house to last so long? Are you expecting your children and your grandchildren to keep living there after you die?

Sounds like a "shortage of (quality) labor" problem. Industrial products are great, but craftsmanship is lacking because almost nobody can afford it.

> Modern windows are amazing

The double pane ones, however, leak after a decade or so. Then the interior of the window fogs up, and you're looking at a major cost to replace them.

Prior to the industrial revolution most people did not live in stone palaces, and I doubt Pompeii was any exception. The population of Pompeii was 10k-20k people and they were probably supported by one or two orders of magnitude more subsistence farmers living in homes that mostly don't exist today.

You can build better than the code allows would be the point. Code cares about minimum levels of safety, not planned obsolescence or market segmentation. E.g. why not build homes out of concrete instead of wood? Why not use better roofing material than asphalt shingles? Etc.

Yes! While writing my comment, this came to mind, but I couldn't clearly remember where it was from.

Thank you for posting it.