Quantity over quality?

[howitzer]

3 hours ago, AmperZand said:

Maybe it’s the grumpy old man in me speaking, but over the last few decades, I have noticed a lowering of standards in many products, services and people in the west, not just LEGO’s quality. From clothes from supposedly reputable brands that fall apart in no time to university-educated colleagues who can’t express themselves in writing and make errors of formal logic. The worst thing is that so few people seem to care about declining standards. Most consumers don’t seem to care, so LEGO doesn’t either. It’s my impression that only a few connoisseurs - AFOLs in the case of LEGO - give a damn. Maybe it’s just me, but it really does seem that way.

 

 

2 hours ago, koalayummies said:

No I've seen it with a lot of things as well. Even worse is when you factor inflation and how many things are always increasing in cost over time and yet wages for the majority remain stagnant. That thing that you have and rely on that just broke; try to squeeze the replacement in on your meager income.

This topic is an extremely complicated and wide in scope, but here's some thoughts.

As time has passed, more and more manufacturing has moved from handmade crafting to industrialized mass-production. With automated assembly lines you're able to fine-tune the quality so that it meets the standards you set but never exceeds it - leading to products that are cheap but just barely good enough. A skilled person on the other hand tends to make sure that the product is good enough by exceeding the standards, which is more expensive but allows for higher quality products, meaning that they also last longer in use. This ties directly into consumerism, where stuff must be made as cheaply as possible, so they can be sold in masses for high profit margin while still being cheap to buy too - and if something breaks, a replacement tends to be almost as cheap as repairing the old one, which of course is good for the manufacturer (they get to make more profit) but bad for the for the consumer (they have to spend time and effort in getting a replacement) and for the environment.

There are of course still some manufacturers which make high quality products intended to last, but it's hard to justify buying a 1500€ washing machine when you can get 5 cheap machines for the same price, especially for someone whose entire monthly wage would be needed for the expensive one. Here in Finland we have a saying, which loosely translates to "a poor person cannot afford to buy cheap things" - which tells a lot about the problem. High quality products are expensive as one-off purchases but they are cheaper in the long run - if you can afford one. This is one reason why it is so hard to improve your economic situation if you're poor, when anything breaks, you're often back to square one. TLG has long had the reputation of being one of those companies who never compromise on quality - and that shows in the price of their products. I really, sincerely, hope that the current issues with colours and other stuff are temporary and soon we can again think about TLG as a company rivaled by none in terms of quality.

Of course there are some products that are essentially the same now as they were 50 or 100 years ago, but which are now both cheaper and higher quality, thanks to advancing technology. Even the cheapest, lowest quality watch is today much better at time keeping than the best of clocks 100 years ago. Same goes to for example television sets, if you compare today's television set to something 50 years ago. Your mileage may vary, but I'd even go as far as to say that what you see in TV is now of higher quality than 50 years ago. Today everything can be made better than few decades ago, but a lot of stuff won't be made with better quality standards.