The message here speaks volumes to me -

[Chik]

Maybe rather than selling, the message was more about selling out.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the story was an allegory.
Anyway, I clipped it and have saved it all these years.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/09/m...a-visitor.html

By selling out, if the author or you are referring to charging the most amount of money for the least amount of time, thought and effort, yes, I agree. To some extent. There were always slackers, snake oil merchants, and swindlers. We just have more buyers today to nourish them.

[e-RICHIE]

By selling out, if the author or you are referring to charging the most amount of money for the least amount of time, thought and effort, yes, I agree. To some extent. There were always slackers, snake oil merchants, and swindlers. We just have more buyers today to nourish them.

Yes, I know.
Through all eras there can be found and referenced counterpoints to what's in the YouTube as well as in the article I linked.
I didn't think Joey B. tried to sanitize the decades used in his imagery; he shined a light on things he liked about them.

[zachateseverything]

As others have pointed out, there's always a romanticization of the past. I don't think humans are really wired to have consistently good opinions. Confirmation bias is a very real thing. We'll take in a couple anecdotes that support how we feel about a situation and neglect actual empirical data if it runs counter. As an example, frequently I'll see people bemoan that the world has gotten more dangerous than when they were kids but if you look at the actual crime stats, violent crime is much lower on a percent basis than it was in the 90's, 80's, 70's, etc. Similar examples:

- consumer items weren't built better in the past. they might use better (or at least heavier) materials in some aspects but consistency and build quality weren't very good. There were also huge issues with reliability in a lot of consumer devices prior to the advent of solid state electronics. For sure things were more serviceable than they might be today, but they were also a lot simpler in many cases.

- cars are another good example of this. As we get older we think about the cars we had or wanted to have in a better light but cars today are much better than the old ones. yeah, cars took a major styling hit in the 70's but the tradeoff for that was much better fuel economy and crash safety. and then just from the progress of technology all the other performances improved by leaps and bounds. a 2022 Toyota Camry Hybrid will do a 7.8s 0-60, a 16s quarter mile, and get 46 mpg combined. The TRD spec goes 5.6s, 14.2s, and 25 mpg respectively. Those are mind boggling performances when compared to say a 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS or a 1969 Camaro Z28. and it'll do that while comfortably seating 4 and not needing to be significantly serviced for 100,000 miles

- people complain about how dirty cities have gotten. yeah, I'm sure there's a problem with homelessness in a lot of city centers. we do have declining mental health support funding and an increase in wealth inequality. we also have declining funding for infrastructure repair, replacement, and expansion. but what we neglect to think about is how much impact the EPA has had on the cleanliness of our cities. you can see the difference in smog for example.

- people like to comment on how everyone has their face buried in their smart phone in public spaces while neglecting that people in those same spaces would have their noses buried in a book, magazine, or newspaper 50 years prior.

[Chik]

- consumer items weren't built better in the past.

This is dependent on the product category. It cannot be a universal statement either way. For example, if we are talking about motorcars, then yes, I agree even if I don't find most contemporary car designs easy on the eye. However, if we are talking about certain other categories, then this is not true. Cashmere in whatever form is just one example.

[j44ke]

Not sure I understand the dirty cities things. Does anyone remember NYC in the 1980's? Or just about any Italian city before 2000?

NYC has backslid somewhat due to a couple disinterested mayors, but it is still relatively clean compared to what I remember as piles of garbage and bombed out buildings.

I have a friend in Prague who is an architectural historian, and he was showing me some interesting buildings from the 1800's. I said that I would like to have seen these buildings in their heyday, and he said well, you are seeing them that way. These buildings have never looked as good as they do now, with full restorations and clean facades and streets that were not full of mud and manure and garbage and filth.

Nostalgia is a powerful creative tool for capturing the differences that one perceives from the times one remembers or wishes one had experienced. It delineates the absences, the losses, that one feels are elemental to one's current era and provides explanation to the tincture of sadness one perceives underlying the present. Partly hope and partly dismay, there is a complicated comfort in nostalgia that even if the future is not to be looked forward to with anticipation at least we can long for the past.

[j44ke]

.
.
One of my favorite passages, clipped from an early ‘90s article in the Sunday NYT Magazine.
To me, it expresses the same basic sentiment that the YouTube does, but in a sound bite.
.
.
.

There was a wave of these pronouncements on the concept of America (both as continent and as USA) from European writers and artists who were born before WWI and survived to see the rise of the United States as the European empires subsided. They seemed often to be complicated by how well their work sold in the United States (Balthus being but one example) and for writers, the huge boon to their careers that came from having a book made into a movie by Hollywood - a place entirely the antithesis of "European" aesthetically (even though the movie business was chock-a-block full of European refugees.) The newness was nauseating. And enticing. And even liberating. But they also demonstrated how impossible fully capturing the great expanses, the disparate landscapes, and the innumerable people was - snapshots taken by tourists, albeit highly perceptive ones.

One of my favorites is from John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman, who said, "America is in a way the inability to think of gold metaphorically."

[zachateseverything]

This is dependent on the product category. It cannot be a universal statement either way. For example, if we are talking about motorcars, then yes, I agree even if I don't find most contemporary car designs easy on the eye. However, if we are talking about certain other categories, then this is not true. Cashmere in whatever form is just one example.

I think that falls within the better materials clause I included above. Old cashmere yarn is better because the fibers were allowed to grow to a longer length before being harvested. But if we're strictly talking about garments, the quality you get vs the price you pay is through the roof vs where it was in say 1959. I'm not denying that companies do things like try to cheat on wall thicknesses of castings to save money.

[TonyP]

We have more things now, that are easier to get, but I don't know that that makes for a better life. In fact, that may weaken us as a people. When things are easy to get, we begin to think we deserve them, and not that we need to earn them. Earn, as in work and strive for.

[sk_tle]

We have more things now, that are easier to get, but I don't know that that makes for a better life. In fact, that may weaken us as a people. When things are easy to get, we begin to think we deserve them, and not that we need to earn them. Earn, as in work and strive for.

And we tend to favor trends in opposition to things that last.

A few months ago I was talking to my girlfriend and she had that grand idea of making our home her home as most of the furnitures and everything were chosen by me and , and additionnally while I was still married to another woman. The thing is I am struggling with the idea of replacing perfectly working things with new ones just for the sake of changing them. I mentioned that most of the furnitures my parents have, they have owned them for 50 years or more. They are even still using a dining table that is more than a century old, it was inherited by our grandparents. Even the Hitachi TV in their bedroom is the age of my brother, 45.

She just shrugged and said they all look dated. But is that an issue really?

[Chik]

I think that falls within the better materials clause I included above. Old cashmere yarn is better because the fibers were allowed to grow to a longer length before being harvested. But if we're strictly talking about garments, the quality you get vs the price you pay is through the roof vs where it was in say 1959. I'm not denying that companies do things like try to cheat on wall thicknesses of castings to save money.

Cashmere is no longer a better material. If you can walk into a shop like Uniqlo and get a cashmere sweater for under $100, albeit an absolute crap, it no longer belongs in your exclusion provision.

If we are talking about garments in general, there are some qualifications to be made. Yes, there has been an explosion of upmarket designer apparel whose distribution and marketing budget, which largely didn't exist in 1959, inflate the final selling price. On the other hand, there is "fast fashion" that didn't exist back in 1959 -- H&M, Inditex, Shein, etc -- and has essentially made the dry cleaning industry redundant because it's cheaper to buy new crap than have them cleaned.

However, is the cost performance -- the quality you get for your dollar -- better or worse today than in 1959? I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's not better.

At the other end of menswear, the prices on Savile Row/Naples/Rome for bespoke garments are high, but I really don't think they kept pace with inflation so I think they are cheaper today in real terms than it was in 1959. It doesn't mean the standards have been upheld. The oldest surviving firm on the Row casually admitting that they do the padding by machine and claiming they can do a better job at controlling the tension of the stitching is complete and utter nonsense; it's nothing more than a labour saving tactic.

The cloths that are available today, even from the famed cloth merchants and mills, are not what they used to be. You will not be able to find a barathea today that is of equal quality to the one used on my hand-me-down dinner jacket. They CAN still weave to the standards of yesteryear, but they don't, partly for cost reasons, but again, my point about prices in real terms applies here. Therefore, they have to be coaxed into doing a limited run for private commissions to do it.

We can talk about leather, shoes and other leathergoods, jewellery, etc. They are admittedly categories that were not consumed by the general public whereas today they are. Nonetheless, the point remains, not all things improved. In some cases, it was partly because labour practices were improved, health & safety standards were raised by eliminating the use of chemicals that were harmful to the workers and the environment, and other similar reasons. However, they don't make the product better in quality, just more responsibly made.

[gregl]

- cars are another good example of this. As we get older we think about the cars we had or wanted to have in a better light but cars today are much better than the old ones. yeah, cars took a major styling hit in the 70's but the tradeoff for that was much better fuel economy and crash safety. and then just from the progress of technology all the other performances improved by leaps and bounds. a 2022 Toyota Camry Hybrid will do a 7.8s 0-60, a 16s quarter mile, and get 46 mpg combined. The TRD spec goes 5.6s, 14.2s, and 25 mpg respectively. Those are mind boggling performances when compared to say a 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS or a 1969 Camaro Z28. and it'll do that while comfortably seating 4 and not needing to be significantly serviced for 100,000 miles

My neighbor has a beautifully restored 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator with the 428 SCJ engine. I asked him if he ever took it to the local drag strip to use it to its full potential. The answer was a resounding "NO!" Apparently the frame/unibody isn't sufficiently robust for that much power. They have a habit of warping the structure if launched too hard. Ah, the good old days...

Greg

[zachateseverything]

Cashmere is no longer a better material. If you can walk into a shop like Uniqlo and get a cashmere sweater for under $100, albeit an absolute crap, it no longer belongs in your exclusion provision.

If we are talking about garments in general, there are some qualifications to be made. Yes, there has been an explosion of upmarket designer apparel whose distribution and marketing budget, which largely didn't exist in 1959, inflate the final selling price. On the other hand, there is "fast fashion" that didn't exist back in 1959 -- H&M, Inditex, Shein, etc -- and has essentially made the dry cleaning industry redundant because it's cheaper to buy new crap than have them cleaned.

However, is the cost performance -- the quality you get for your dollar -- better or worse today than in 1959? I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's not better.

At the other end of menswear, the prices on Savile Row/Naples/Rome for bespoke garments are high, but I really don't think they kept pace with inflation so I think they are cheaper today in real terms than it was in 1959. It doesn't mean the standards have been upheld. The oldest surviving firm on the Row casually admitting that they do the padding by machine and claiming they can do a better job at controlling the tension of the stitching is complete and utter nonsense; it's nothing more than a labour saving tactic.

The cloths that are available today, even from the famed cloth merchants and mills, are not what they used to be. You will not be able to find a barathea today that is of equal quality to the one used on my hand-me-down dinner jacket. They CAN still weave to the standards of yesteryear, but they don't, partly for cost reasons, but again, my point about prices in real terms applies here. Therefore, they have to be coaxed into doing a limited run for private commissions to do it.

We can talk about leather, shoes and other leathergoods, jewellery, etc. They are admittedly categories that were not consumed by the general public whereas today they are. Nonetheless, the point remains, not all things improved. In some cases, it was partly because labour practices were improved, health & safety standards were raised by eliminating the use of chemicals that were harmful to the workers and the environment, and other similar reasons. However, they don't make the product better in quality, just more responsibly made.

If you're talking about luxury goods, maybe. general consumer goods though? stuff today is largely better than it was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. You'd do well to forget about high end garments and take a quick stroll thru your local walmart, target, or regional equivalent. I'm not even talking about fast fashion junk here, the quality of jeans that you can get at say Old Navy for not a ton of money would be mindblowing to someone in 1959.

Or to use another example, guitars. A late 50's Gibson Les Paul "burst" or a pre-war Martin dreadnought are at the pinnacle of what players lust after. They have the most nostalgia attached to them, big name artists used them, and as such they have the highest values attached to them for "production" guitars. They were also made using materials (rosewood) that aren't really available today. Would anyone actually be able to tell the difference between the $250k vintage guitar and a ~$500 modern mass produced guitar (given roughly equivalent setups) should it be played live or on a record? probably not.

[zachateseverything]

My neighbor has a beautifully restored 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator with the 428 SCJ engine. I asked him if he ever took it to the local drag strip to use it to its full potential. The answer was a resounding "NO!" Apparently the frame/unibody isn't sufficiently robust for that much power. They have a habit of warping the structure if launched too hard. Ah, the good old days...

Greg

yeah, the unibody on that original mustang platform (T5) was not robust, especially the convertibles. the guys that restomod them usually add some additional reinforcements to the torque boxes/frame rails. but sticking a powerful motor into an otherwise inexpensive car is a time honored tradition. Sometimes you end up with something relatively refined like a GTI. Other times you end up on the other end of the scale. When I was in college Dodge rolled out the Neon SRT-4, which was basically a $10k car with a $20k motor. I doubt many of them survived being wadded up by teenagers.

[bigbill]

My neighbor has a beautifully restored 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator with the 428 SCJ engine. I asked him if he ever took it to the local drag strip to use it to its full potential. The answer was a resounding "NO!" Apparently the frame/unibody isn't sufficiently robust for that much power. They have a habit of warping the structure if launched too hard. Ah, the good old days...

Greg

I worked at a mustang shop before I joined the Navy. A local had a Boss 429 that needed a new oil pan gasket and rear main seal. I did all that, and after reassembling it, my boss told me to take it for a short drive and check the gaskets. The car only had a quarter tank of gas, so I had to make a quick loop so the owner would have enough gas to get home. It got around seven mpg. It was a ridiculous car built to meet NASCAR requirements. It was like driving a top-fuel dragster that cornered like a tractor.

My stepmom's dad had a Studebaker Avanti with a supercharged 289 and a four speed. It had factory straight pipes and was stupid fast.

[Chik]

If you're talking about luxury goods, maybe. general consumer goods though? stuff today is largely better than it was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. You'd do well to forget about high end garments and take a quick stroll thru your local walmart, target, or regional equivalent. I'm not even talking about fast fashion junk here, the quality of jeans that you can get at say Old Navy for not a ton of money would be mindblowing to someone in 1959.

Or to use another example, guitars. A late 50's Gibson Les Paul "burst" or a pre-war Martin dreadnought are at the pinnacle of what players lust after. They have the most nostalgia attached to them, big name artists used them, and as such they have the highest values attached to them for "production" guitars. They were also made using materials (rosewood) that aren't really available today. Would anyone actually be able to tell the difference between the $250k vintage guitar and a ~$500 modern mass produced guitar (given roughly equivalent setups) should it be played live or on a record? probably not.

My first sentence was, "This is dependent on the product category." I've expanded on that. I would paraphrase the opening sentence if I can but am struggling this morning.

[vertical_doug]

Or to use another example, guitars. A late 50's Gibson Les Paul "burst" or a pre-war Martin dreadnought are at the pinnacle of what players lust after. They have the most nostalgia attached to them, big name artists used them, and as such they have the highest values attached to them for "production" guitars. They were also made using materials (rosewood) that aren't really available today. Would anyone actually be able to tell the difference between the $250k vintage guitar and a ~$500 modern mass produced guitar (given roughly equivalent setups) should it be played live or on a record? probably not.

Most of people can't tell the difference. But it is amazing for the people that can.

[marley]

Wow - the video and narrator - what a waste time - what a blow hard just pontificating on a couch - who has that time to pick out stock photos on the web to make a show and tell video.

Well I am glad he speaks to someone - I prefer Mr. Rogers

[Marvinlungwitz]

Most of people can't tell the difference. But it is amazing for the people that can.

Or think they can.

It always amazed me that Cliffs of Dover used to show up on "greatest songs played on a Strat" lists in guitar mags.

Until it became common knowledge that most of it was done on a hollow body guitar with humbuckers.

[zachateseverything]

Most of people can't tell the difference. But it is amazing for the people that can.

Nah. There are just a lot of people that have convinced themselves that they can hear a difference. The stuff that actually matters are pickups, effects, amps, and speakers. Basically, the things that apply a filter to the signal. The guys that fuss about tonewoods and finish types are the equivalent of the audiophile guys that stress over things like speak wires made from precious metals.

[e-RICHIE]

Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything!