Too_Many_Tools wrote:
I am surprised that others have not responded to Ig's idea...it is an
excellent one.

Like an archaeologist, one can study the decline and fall of
manufacturing by studying discarded goods.

It is very apparent when one does this as to how many goods have turned
from good implementations to crap.

The end result forces the consumer to spend more money on goods that
would not need to be purchased.

And it is intentional.

....

Well, it's an idea -- how good of one is certainly open to question...

How, precisely, is it possible for Iggy (or you, for that matter) to
assign this intent of the unknown designer based on your observation of
a part at some later time after some period of time and (maybe unknown)
use/abuse? And that presumes the forensic ability to accurately
diagnose the underlying cause of the failure which is probably a large
stretch to begin with.

As said multiple times elsewhere in the thread, there are essentially
an unlimited number of cases where it can be shown that modern design,
technology and manufacturing produce products of far _greater_
reliability and function at far less cost than their counterparts of
earlier times. In many other areas, of course, there are products now
that weren't even possible even a few years ago, what more 10 or 20.

OTOH, there are examples where cost constraints and changing consumer
demands have reduced the ability to produce items in some areas that
have the "heft" and bulk of items of a number of years ago, that is
true. The problem in this thread is one of assigning motivations other
than simply being the response of producers to competition and changing
global economics and in some instances, response to increasingly
onerous regulation from both operational constraints and economic
policies.

It's no longer a case of individual manufacturers having the ability to
produce in isolation being insulated from outside pressures to sell
virtually any product. If it isn't as cost-effective as possible, if
there is any market size at all for any product, you can be sure
somebody else is looking to see how they can encroach upon that. How
to do that is basically one of two ways -- find a way to produce the
same product cheaper or make some innovation that introduces a
desirable feature for a small enough incremental price differential so
as to create perceived value or a desire for the "new and improved"
product over the old.

Nothing profound or diabolical at all...uncomfortable sometimes, yes...

I'm an old fogey, too, and I'd like a new '57 Chevy 2DR HT 'cause they
were really cool, but if it were built today identically as it was
then, it wouldn't handle anything nearly as well as most of today's and
an expected lifetime and operating cost would be much lower and higher,
respectively, than today's as well. Be hard to guess what it would
cost in today's dollars, as well, again assuming it were built in the
same manner as then.