so
'
a little serious talk about toasters.
the plain truth is that the common toaster, the one that you almost certainly have sitting on your kitchen counter right now, represents the utter failure of the marketplace to supply kitchen appliances that haven't been frozen in time for the past several decades
today's toaster is just as barbarian a contraption as one you'd get from a '50s Sears catalogue.
@mona Is there any special virtue in not being frozen in time for the past several decades?
@ghost_bird when the frozen product is a piece of chintzy shit built down to minimum price, yes
@mona I guess you could make a more efficient element or better controls, but the cost of a basic model is so low I think it’d be hard to compete.
@mona I’d say the problem in this case is marketing and planned obsolescence, not stagnation - professional and home toasters seem like efficient minimum designs to me.
@ghost_bird yes, exactly. market forces mean that no better toaster will ever reach the consumer. there are only two real categories of kitchen appliance: absurdly expensive "professional" gear that is marketed to restaurants &c., and absolute bottom of the barrel consumer goods that haven't changed in seventy years and are now built to the absolute minimum level of quality that insures they don't fall apart within a week of removing them from the box.
capitalism really has caused nothing but stagnation