> If you buy something from Manufactum, you know it'll last for the rest of your life.
That sounds like the opposite of how I want to shop. I don't want to have to think really hard about which trivial household item I want to spend the rest of my life with. I'd rather pick a random cheap one and then not feel too bad about replacing it, if necessary.
The hardware shop of old - most now long gone in the destruction of so many brick and mortar shops - generally sold things that would last years or a lifetime. No thinking was required. You could pretty much shop with brain off, and eyes closed and get decent stuff.
For each of those items, there's probably now 300 replacements on Amazon, and maybe one meets the old quality and life. Many of those aren't even cheaper. Sometimes the one that worked, the original from which all those cheap copies stole, is gone, killed by avalanches of shite. Now there's none at all that work as well as the one that spawned the shite. Thank you Amazon and eBay.
To buy a knife that retains an edge for longer than 20 seconds, or even stainless steel that remains properly stainless in typical kitchen use, or container that handles washing, freezing and maybe a few cycles through the dishwasher requires effort. Effort picking apart hundreds of eBay and Amazon listings selling almost nothing but awful shite. Effort to spend even £2, or you'll inevitably get shite. Effort to find and pay extra for some artisan variant that'll cost a bomb, and might - only might be adequate. Shite has become the normal expected state of things.
I would far rather not buy 20 shite things that I don't feel bad about replacing, in the search for just fucking one that works. Yet very often that's the only option left. Shite in a sea of shite.
When I was in maybe third grade (around 2001-2002), I managed to convince my parents to get me and my brother each a CHF 55 fixed blade knife from Manufactum. Sadly they don’t sell that particular model anymore.
Made in Finnland especially for kids, full tang, thick carbon steel bladestock (you definitely wont snap it), and a robust (kiddiesize) grip lined with red-dyed donkey intestines. Came with a leather sheath.
We (ab)used them extensively and all out friends at summer camp, who “only” had Swiss Army Knives were very impressed. I even lost mine in our garden for a few years, but when I found it two years ago I polished the blade, sharpened it up and it was back in action like new. I then gave it to my smallest brother (11 y/o rn) who enjoys it very much.
If he doesn’t lose it, I am confident his children will also get to play with it.
Finding a deal like that on Amazon will be significantly more challenging. We just flipped through the catalogue and the only knife they recommended for our use case has worked flawlessly.
Oh, so it's people like you I have to thank for not being able to buy quality items anymore. I thought it was a trend driven by companies, but it turns out the population of people who prefer disposable, short-lived items is real after all :/.
My guess is that it is driven by nobody in particular; it's just a natural consequence of how things are working these days.
Consumers shopping at big box stores happens for a reason; it saves them time and, at least in the short run, it saves them money. Big box stores offering excessive variety happens for a reason; they're trying to be all things to all people, and ultimately, having more different things on their shelves is an important part of their image as a one-stop-shop, and therefore a big part of how they compete for customers. Customers tending to just by the cheapest thing also happens for a reason. Having ended up in a store with excessive variety, and with no shopkeepers who know the product well enough to make any useful recommendations, just about the only concrete things they can reliably compare by are price and feature list. Manufacturers making cheap gizmos happens for a reason. They know that this is what consumers ultimately end up doing, so they realize that their job is to cram as many bullet points onto the back of the box as possible at as low a price as possible. They also know that consumers know that they do this, which is why they subvert what few heuristics consumers have left for trying to discern quality by doing things like sticking metal weights into the product for no other reason than to make it feel heavier.
etc. etc. etc. If there was ever a backstop to limit these forces, it was the specialty shop with the knowledgeable proprietor who had years or decades' worth of experience with every single product or brand on the shelves, and heard back from their customers when things turned out to be cheap crap. But nobody's shopping there anymore, because just picking something up while you're already at Shopko will shave your time spent running errands by 45 minutes, and nobody's shopping at their website, either, because paying 8 moneys to ship something that only costs 20 moneys doesn't really make any sense.
I _very_ much do not want to concern myself with pointless interaction that comes with personally selling used stuff. I never buy used things and I never sell them.
That sounds like the opposite of how I want to shop. I don't want to have to think really hard about which trivial household item I want to spend the rest of my life with. I'd rather pick a random cheap one and then not feel too bad about replacing it, if necessary.