The 9-dollar popcorn at the movie theater is not as good.
The guy here that commented on you get what you pay for has a point. I remember riding on planes was an adventure. I remember going into the cockpit and talking to the pilots. I remember getting a set of pilot wings and playing cards. The tickets were 3x the price in real dollars though. Same with some appliances, the cost is almost the same for an appliance made in the 60s, that is part of the reason why th old stuff was made so much better.
There is economies of scale though. They could make a better appliance for double the cost imo
Did anyone see that new game Crimson something, looks like no gameplay slop.
I don’t wanna jinx it but there’s old restaurant equipment that is fucking 50-60 years old that’s only maintenance is greasing it every few months. Indestructible
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Washing machines from the 70s still going
New washing machines giving out before 70 washes
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I definitely agree when it comes to movies - modern movies look too polished and fake.. watch any movie from the 70s or 80s and it looks like you are watching real life people in real life situations.. in 2026 it’s just too glossy
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For the most part people totally lack perspective on these things.
I graduated from high school in 1991. The used car I bought was 5 years old had like 50k on it and it was a total shitbox. Everything broke all the time. Everyone I knew drove shitty cars. There isn’t a thing as a 5 year old used car with 50 thousand miles that is a shitty car today.
I drove my shitty car to my job at a supermarket. We had red delicious apples, the world’s shittiest apples, and like 2 others. The amount of variety and quality of food today is light years beyond what was available then. “Shrinkflation” and other corner cutting in processed and fast food is a different matter though.
I think there may be a case to make for some appliances where we have added technology and cost and they aren’t better. I like to make fun of useless features when shopping for that stuff.
My biggest financial regret is selling my 1990 corolla.
I’d kill to get my hands on one.
This is why when everyone was raiding my ma’s for old furniture, electronics and shit from childhood they would just pack up in their basement I went straight for the pots, pans and her kitchen aid shit including the only working can openers in our bloodline. Which I have to hide or they’ll go missing. Yeah, they have can openers but they replace all the time. Lodge cast iron set that is legit as fuck. Better than the new ones. That was my granny’s. Industrable.
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Hell yeah dude. Old furniture is really smart too. New furniture is shotty and looks generic. We bought a couch last year that has been repaired twice already
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I agree but I dont care about furniture as much as food and that was a fair deal to me. I think I gotta griswold in here somewhere, too. I snagged all the old silverware, too.
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It’s not the looks only. Some “iconic” furniture pieces look like the originals but were made in a country where it for some reason always ship with some annoying issue to remind you that you’ve made a purchase and waited 18 weeks for delivery and now every time you use it you have to get annoyed by a squeaky sound and spend another 8 weeks trying to get through to support and possibly go through the delivery process again (because they have those kinds of margins on shit from China that they can easily ship you a new one.)
Are you guys sure stuff is lasting less time? Time goes faster when you’re older, it may just seem to be wearing out early
General public has a misunderstanding about science, engineering, technology, innovation.
When we look at the cycle we don’t start at the poorest example of something with lowest value and keep building it better, which is what you would think but actually we start often with a product that is NOT optimized, we don’t understand the problem yet very well. Meanwhile we have a lot of excitement around it. A lot of very intelligent people are working on it on ground floor. We are quite often working with mind of building this new area/product or solving this new problem and there is a lot of future value being considered at this time when it comes to investment being put into it.
We often end up with a product that’s quite over engineered, over featured. What happens over time is that future potential growth goes down, engineers and other people working on these problems are working to reduce cost as their primary objective. Use cheaper materials, less labor, you go through various rounds of execs getting hired, they have to justify their salaries, you have PE companies buying these things and have to return some value. So you have all these downward cost pressures as growth goes down, gets more mature, and you have something that was engineered above what it needed to be to provide the basic functionality needed. These 2 things work in tandem where eventually all the extra value is completely stripped out until you reach a product that essentially only does the absolute bare minimum it can do to solve whatever problem it does.
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4 sandwiches? I used to weigh 400 lbs and I’ve never eaten 4 sandwiches from McDonald’s in one sitting
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It’s almost as if having a system where nearly all companies have non founder CEOs that just exist in order to create my quarterly profits is ruining the world.
Things we buy are lower quality than ever but also more expensive than ever.
See my post… sure execs are part of the problem.. and it’s not about them being non founders. The problem is exec turnover. Same with private equity and other forms of capital when they’re working on a 5 year timeline it’s destructive.
But even without all of that advancements in engineering and understanding lead a weaker product not a better one. If you look at the development life cycle products end up weaker not stronger.
I get it Jaime. You’ve made a good point about engineering that stuck with me some time back as well.
But it seems to me, companies constantly seeking to reduce costs and increase prices to constantly increase quarterly profits is the core of the problem.
People are so focused on profits that they overlook the fact that everyone else has the same mindset, or producing the cheapest possible product and selling it for the highest possible price that they get screwed too on everything they buy from others.
It may sound silly but it’s the exact opposite of the golden rule we were taught as kids.
We have created a society and marketplace that is the exact opposite of the golden rule.
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