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0 pointseduction2y ago0 comments

> the thing falls apart every 6 months.

Where do you get this? Microwaves do not fall apart every six months. I had one that we had to replace after 4 or 5 years because we didn't clean the spills enough. We liked the quality enough we replaced with the exact same model.

You mention you think I'm young even though I said I was a kid in the 80s. I think it's actually young people who tend to romanticize old stuff. Those old microwaves were not miraculously better quality. The ones still alive today are, this is survivor bias.

The old ones were generally fine, the new ones are generally fine. They break eventually, implements exposed to the mess of cooking (liquids, steam, caked on grime) tend to, unless you maintain them, which guess what, no one does. We don't really have the time.

The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony, people stopped improving them. If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money. There's a reason no one is doing that.

People love to complain, today as ever.

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smaudet2y ago

>You mention you think I'm young.

Young or out of touch. Either just bought a microwave and it hasn't failed yet or old and have one that's lasted 5-8 years and don't have a new crappy one yet.

>The best evidence that the quality is fine today is that, by the article's own testimony

He said/she said. This is all assertion by opinion without facts. That said, it appears a year ago the trend was downward, for multiple appliance types, in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/220020/average-life-expe...

Anecdotally, modern appliances tend to break after only a couple years (based on reports I hear from friends co-workers, etc.). More cheap shit from China/etc. (my fridge drawers are plastic and snapped about 8 months into usage, something that should have a 13-14 year lifespan, and of course, is out of warranty already).

Trying to produce a chart of microwaves bought and produced in 2020 and how long they've lasted is much harder, and honestly you're bullshitting at least as much if not more than me here - plugging your ears and pretending everything is fine is less honest and not at all observant. Combining the facts I do have (actually decreasing lifetimes over a decade) and people complaining more, and an effective monopoly due to capitalism, I would say the reasonable conclusion is that actually no, microwaves today are not generally fine.

> There's a reason no one is doing that.

The reason is not what you think it is. Nobody owns microwave makers or microwave factories, so people just generally accept gradually shittier shit. People buying things is not people being happy with what they bought. There's a big big difference. Inflation remains at an all time high and people are pretty pissed about how much everything costs already - the system has already started to fail.

> If they really sucked someone would go in and make a better one and make a bunch of money.

Sure, if there are some millionaires with money to spare maybe they'll make some cheap reliable microwaves. But they won't make a ton of money. And since, nobody's interested in making reliable microwaves, and they have other things they are interested in doing (due to capitalism), microwaves continue to get shittier and shittier.

This is the whole point of the article, which maybe you'd have grasped if you weren't all "and they dare to question capitalism those damn dirty hippie socialists".

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