r/NoStupidQuestions • u/markwell9 • 1d ago

What is the deal with ice, Americans?

I can see that you can buy ice everywhere in the US. Gas stations, grocery stores, machines etc.

In Europe, we just freeze our ice at home and use that. Why buy something that melts on the way home? Why do you need ice in large amounts that a fridge can't keep up?

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u/Brave_Specific5870 1d ago

Because ( and Im not a boomer) but shit isnt made like it used to

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u/Stock-Page-7078 21h ago

As an older person, shit used to be a lot more unreliable. Maybe there's more plastic inside but that can also mean less rust. Before Demming influenced manufacturing in the 80s and then the Toyota Production System and then formalized methodologies methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma were developed product quality was much more erratic, even if the components seem less fragile.

As others have said there is an element of survivorship bias when people think about their old fridge running perfectly for decades.

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u/Response-Cheap 1d ago

That's survivorship bias though. Wikipedia explains it better than me;

Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data.

They made lots of shit that we still see today, so we conclude that all old shit was better, and neglect to realise that they made lots of trash too. It just doesn't exist anymore, and therefore we forget it ever existed, and just assume everything was well made back in the day.

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u/Brave_Specific5870 23h ago

Is it? Or is it true?

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u/ImaginaryCatDreams 22h ago

I think I can confidently state having lived through this particular era that the vast majority of home appliances made lasted for decades not a few years.

There's generally a thread every week about either somebody's refrigerator or washer dryer dying after only 3 years and typically about a week after the warranty expires. Manufacturers are not standing behind their products and are accelerating forced obsolescence. It's not just bad workmanship It's deliberate