. . . In a consumer driven society you’ve got pressure to provide the cheapest product you can because overall people are being conditioned and brainwashed into buying in quantity so they can afford only so much for any given item. Quality costs more so if you go for quality, unless you’ve got lots of money, you can’t buy as much. I’ve noticed certain brands of clothing that I once found sturdy, long lasting, and high quality have degenerated into stuff that wears out in a season. This is a degenerative case of the dialectical law of quantity and quality.
Burt, would you say though that lots of quality improvements can also be seen today? Materials science has allowed for lighter-weight cars, for instance. And computerized monitoring has resulted in more efficiency and less smoke.
I wish I had more time to contribute here these days, but with almost 3 weeks off school, the kids require more attention than usual, which is intense to say the least. (A rare year-end report from me should be in your e-mail box soon.)
Also, to the general subject of the human mesocosm, it seems to me that things are not so cut-and-dried as they might appear. Humans seem to have no end of ability to extrapolate nature’s trickiness by way of worry and obsession. The older I get, for instance, the slower I go when driving across a long bridge, especially if I’m on motorcycle. The more I think about it, the more frightening a bridge such as the Richmond Bridge in the S.F. Bay area becomes. The Golden Gate and Bay bridges remain no problem for me because the edges are not so apparent as on the Richmond.
Also, some of my most frightful moments in memory are of riding a motorcycle in heavy wind with quick-moving traffic just north of The G.G. Bridge where you plow through the curvy hills of southern Marin. Nothing in my memory has caused me to feel so exposed to the possibility of death.
Sure, some improvements as well. But there are also examples like the video player my wife bought back in the mid-80s. It had a steel frame, was heavy, and lasted for 15 years. The next one we bought at an inflation adjusted equivalent price was plastic, light weight, and lasted couple of years. But overall things are better today in many cases, if you’re willing to look for the good stuff.
