Around 20 years ago, I bought a leather purse with a built-in wallet. It served me well, but 15 years later it was worn out. I went back to the same store and bought another, but found that the slots in the wallet part were no longer big enough to accommodate a credit card or driver's license. That adjustment in material probably saved the manufacturer less than a penny per unit, but it made the purse useless to me. I have a similar story about a simple coffee filter. And my dryer? It contains no computer chips, but because so many others do, there is no longer an appliance repair guy in my town to fix a small problem. I'm sure you have your own stories about the decline of quality in products.
Kim Mas of Vox assures us that the phenomena is real, and explains the forces that go into the relative crappiness of everything we buy these days, from clothing to appliances. The only thing we can do is take care of what we have so we won't have to replace it.
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No one is forcing people to buy stuff all the time--what happened to the idea of "enough"? I'm glad they mentioned fast fashion, which creates a huge problem with waste; a lot of that stuff ends up in landfills. Just . . . buy less crap? Isn't that easier?
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Yes, leather wallets with small slits for credit cards to supposedly fit into are infuriating. Getting a driver's license out of it's slot is nearly impossible. I did come up with a solution, though. Get a thin piece of cardboard and slide it into the slot and leave about 1/2 an inch of it above the slot. Slide your driver's license into the slot and on to the cardboard. It will fit and when you need to remove the card it will slide out easily. It works and it's the only solution I have found that does just what I want it to.
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BTW, the purse I carry now is as old as my original, because one of my kids gave up on carrying a purse before it wore out.
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