This is called survivorship bias. Plenty of hold houses were total shit. They're not around any longer. There is also a second bias of the depletion of natural materials older houses were made of, massive increases in population, and massively changed consumer tastes/requirements.
>Restaurant food quality seems like it's gotten worse and much more expensive.
This is a mix of things occurring, though some of this can be attributed to VC culture. I mean, I can go to some restaurants and get super high quality food. But anything that has turned into a franchize is no longer about selling a product, it's more worried about growth month over month. Then when you add things like general inflation, remember your (great?) grand parents talking about nickel burgers, things in our economy march up in price over time. Oh, then add in we're selling to global markets, where if you're old enough we were generally selling to local/national markets.
Communication and distribution has massively changed (a lot of this is thanks to the internet itself) which means the way markets operate have massively changed. We're just really starting to notice this now.
>There is also a second bias of the depletion of natural materials older houses were made of
This affects not just homes but like absolutely every consumer product thats been cheapened. Take furniture. It used to be even cheap furniture was solid wood. Now the cheap stuff, even the mid tier stuff, is all glued sawdust. Its hard to find good snags of furniture on the side of the road because that glued stuff dissolves like paper mache in like one day of rain. You chip a corner and it looks like hell and starts flaking and falling apart at that busted seam. Old stuff made from real wood can take quite a bit of abuse, get resanded, restained, and look like its worth some $$$ after an afternoon of elbow grease put into it.
There's a difference between survivorship bias and just straight up reducing the quantity/quality of materials for cost savings.
I lived in a (rental) house that was built incredibly cheaply. The handle on the sliding glass door broke, and I just ordered a replacement handle. It was the same brand as the original handle on the door, cost me about $30 for the whole replacement handle assembly. The replacement handle had about twice as much steel in it as the original one. They clearly still make the old part, they just sell the cheap ass easy to break one for cost savings.
If for example we start harvesting asteroids we may be able to provide everyone with a gold throne at low cost. But, providing everyone with with a platinum encrusted gold throne doesn't make hardwood grow any faster.
Unless of course you think the great oxygen catastrophe was a mistake.
> "This is called survivorship bias. Plenty of hold houses were total shit. They're not around any longer."
Nah. Like the old saying goes, pick two: fast, cheap, good.
Guess which two home-building companies pick.
I'm an owner-builder, and we contracted out some parts of our build. We were extremely lucky to find some excellent tradespeople. In conversation almost always there were remarks on a lot of tradespeople being on crystal meth!
My wife put in the insulation into the roof and frame walls. She had no experience, just read up about it, worked out how to do it right and did it. The contractors installing the plaster-board were dead impressed, and said it was the best insulation job they'd seen. My wife wasn't racing the clock, or doing it just to get paid. She did it so we have a nice warm house in Winter, and no tradesperson is going to approach your house with the same attitude. All they're thinking about is "beer o'clock".
> But anything that has turned into a franchize is no longer about selling a product
Yeah. Sadly the infinite growth mentality has destroyed many a franchise. Most of the franchises are simply rebranded sysco foods reheated in the microwave.
I pretty much just don't eat at old franchise locations anymore as a result. Why get fettuccine from olive garden when it's basically exactly the same as a frozen stouffers meal at triple the price. So a "chef" can heat it in the microwave for me? No thanks.
If you aren't getting your money back in endless salad and breadsticks while engorging on that fettucine, you are doing olive garden wrong. It is a restaurant best eaten by the heavy set and the stoned.
You aren't getting your money back on endless salad and breadsticks.
That salad bowl cost them 2, maybe 3 dollars of ingredients and those breadsticks are even cheaper. Unless you are eating 10 bowls of salad or 10 pounds of breadsticks, olive garden is winning here.
Companies don't offer "unlimited" stuff if they don't know how to extract more money from you than you can consume.
> Unless you are eating 10 bowls of salad or 10 pounds of breadsticks
This is exactly how the power users do it at olive garden. People even smuggle in tupperware. You only need to beat the average to be in the money, which isn't hard to do if you go hog wild.
This is called survivorship bias. Plenty of hold houses were total shit. They're not around any longer. There is also a second bias of the depletion of natural materials older houses were made of, massive increases in population, and massively changed consumer tastes/requirements.
>Restaurant food quality seems like it's gotten worse and much more expensive.
This is a mix of things occurring, though some of this can be attributed to VC culture. I mean, I can go to some restaurants and get super high quality food. But anything that has turned into a franchize is no longer about selling a product, it's more worried about growth month over month. Then when you add things like general inflation, remember your (great?) grand parents talking about nickel burgers, things in our economy march up in price over time. Oh, then add in we're selling to global markets, where if you're old enough we were generally selling to local/national markets.
Communication and distribution has massively changed (a lot of this is thanks to the internet itself) which means the way markets operate have massively changed. We're just really starting to notice this now.