Reply 240 of 434, by Jo22
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Personally, I've never been a fan about mass production or profit maximization.
Both are instruments for exploitation, I think.
I'm more comfortable with individualism, homebrewing and things that last for decades.
Even if that means that they're not super cheap and that I have to save money until I have enough together and I can buy them.
In my country, a bed or desk originally was expected to last among multiple generations.
And a quality product was handmade, usually.
My grand grand father had once built a tube radio to listen to AM broadcast radio.
He didn't "buy" a radio. He made it himself and was satisfied, and happy to have learnt something new. And that mindset wasn't too uncommon.
Back in these days, a lot of things were done in DIY fashion.
The houses were built from scratch, too.
A wooden chassis for a radio or any other purpose was being build by using a few wooden boards, a pencil and a jigsaw.
The founder of Bosch, a popular company for tools and appliances, is said to once have said "I'd rather loose money than trust".
Edit: And that's maybe why people bought IBM products back then.
"Big Blue" was a mean giant, maybe, but also produced things without compromises. Things that last.
All in all, it behaved very German here, I think.
It was no worse than Siemens, SAP, AEG or Bosch etc. It was a big company, with professionals as the primary customer base.
I think that's what it set apart from CBM the most, maybe (CBM: "We're making for the masses, not the classes").
And that's exactly the opposite to mainstream philosophy and super capitalism.
If you make good products without compromises, you'll keep having loyal customer base. Be it small or large, that doesn't matter so much.
(Just forget the nonsense told in economics. There's no infinite growth, resources are not endless.)
If they're professionals, they will pay a fair price for something their work depends on.
Because, their own life and that of others may depend on it (think of a drilling machine, a hammer, a welding machine, a chainsaw, a lab power supply, a quality measuring device/scope which depends on a separation transformer etc).
That's why, for example, my father, as a computer person working in IT, never was cheap on PC hardware/software.
It was the tool for his income, it simply had to be fully functional. It was an investment worth its money.
That's what it separated it from a game console or a home computer.
Or to quote a friend, a student, working in IT repair: "I'm too poor for bad tools!"
That's why, say, German cars still have a not so bad reputation, also.
Even the cheap cars produced for US market do still contain a minimum of quality.
They're rain proof, for example. 😉
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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