Is there a market for basic cars, appliances,etc?

[Brian Elfert]

Take GPS. It's a system that requires multiple satellites in orbit around the earth, synchronized via an atomic clock, and communicating with the ground via radio waves, which are received by the receiver which triangulates position, calculates it, and displays the results on a display made up of millions of little electronic dots. OR you could use a piece of paper. Yet GPS is often times the better approach, because the piece of paper forces a lot of complexity onto the user, including route planning, estimation of position, and errors in reading the piece of paper can be catastrophic.

GPS was mainly developed for military use. It was intentionally degraded for civilian uses for a number of years.

Up until 2014 I was still using maps and printed directions from Mapquest or Google Maps. It is a pain to drive and try to read printed directions. GPS navigation on a phone is much easier with the turn by turn directions. Sure, people made maps works for years, but it doesn't necessarily mean maps are better. Some service people would never give up their GPS navigation as they save a lot of time versus finding their next location on a map and figuring out how to get there.

[Edward Weber]

Well it's already been said but it depends.
I would however consider my default position to be a preference for over-built and under-engineered.
Technology is great but sometimes it can be used in ways that don't benefit the consumer. Just look at the right to repair situation as an example.

[roger wiegand]

I find GPS to be much simpler to use than paper maps. Never have figured out what use a piece of paper without a "you are here" dot on it is when you're lost and need a map. (Yes, I spent a lot of time wandering in the wilderness in my youth. It's a wonder I didn't die.)

Basic, or relatively basic, appliances and such are still available. People just don't much want them. You can get an excellent, but very basic "made in USA" SpeedQueen washer with about two mechanical buttons on it that will probably outlive you. Problem is they cost double what one with lots of bells and whistles costs. I have a gas range where only the igniters are electrical; everything else is mechanical. it works when the power is out. There's no reason it shouldn't last forever. Again it is about 3x the price of one with all the electronic gizmos and an expected lifetime of four years.

Last I checked (it's been a few years) you could still place a fleet order for a F150 with a manual transmission, untinted windows, hand-cranked windows, no radio, no AC, no back seat, and only two doors. They didn't charge extra for that, but they also don't readily sell them through regular consumer channels. The market for them among the truck-driving public is about zero, vs the $60+K versions rolling off the lots these days.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I would definitely prefer simpler appliances and cars in some respects. Luckily there still are refrigerators made without any water or ice dispensing involved, and I will be buying one this spring. Having lived with a commercial refrigerator for 20+ years it will be nice to have something that isn't quite so loud, and I won't need that much space inside it either. I prefer crank windows and am not fond of seat heaters, but as a used car buyer I buy what I can get a good deal on locally. More complexity to achieve greater efficiency seems worthwhile to me, but to have a motor and controller to move the window up and down just seems silly, since I have arms that can do that very easily and with no electricity required. I am another person who is strongly anti-garbage disposal. They seem to me like a way to create at least three problems while solving one problem badly, and that is not my idea of the way to get things done.

[Andrew More]

Up until 2014 I was still using maps and printed directions from Mapquest or Google Maps. It is a pain to drive and try to read printed directions. GPS navigation on a phone is much easier with the turn by turn directions. Sure, people made maps works for years, but it doesn't necessarily mean maps are better. Some service people would never give up their GPS navigation as they save a lot of time versus finding their next location on a map and figuring out how to get there.

Yeah, I remember, and I'll do you one better. I remember doing tour planning using paper maps to go from one state to another and hoping I didn't miss a turn or get lost.

I would agree with your assertion that GPS is better, but I would question which approach is simpler.
I've got similar reservations about other tools. Let's take a table saw or a powered jointer. Both are more complex mechanically, but once setup I would argue are simpler and easier to use than their hand powered counterparts.
So I think that a lot of things that are seen as "simpler" beg the question in relation to what, or for what tasks. Even the idea of using a car instead of walking, or a washing machine instead of a tub of suds implies a certain level of sophistication. Even the hand tools I mentioned require a certain level of technology to make them possible.

So I feel the question is more: can I buy basic devices that satisfy a certain level requirements that address my most common usages.

Oh, and that's before we talk about complexity to address externalities. I mean the idea of a muffle and catalytic converter on a car are increased complexity that isn't necessary to it's purpose, but they do make the user less obnoxious to those around them. We've seen this with other safety devices on vehicles, I suspect a lot of the sensors for determine people and other collision targets are going to become mandatory over time.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I've never used a GPS. I use Google maps to look up an unfamiliar location, then I take notes on paper as to any details I may need to know, or I leave the map on the screen and take the computer with me for reference since it has a nice blue line that shows my route. I carry a NY state atlas and gazetteer in the car when I'm going someplace new, and a map of Syracuse when I am going there to a new place since it has more detail. I also have a road atlas for the US, though I haven't been out of NY since 2011 as far as I can remember. I recently upgraded from a 1998 US atlas to a 2019 edition that was in a free stuff box on the side of the road. Lots of people who have come here by GPS have done fine, but many others have gotten lost or gone far out of their way for no apparent reason.

[Kev Williams]

I think the other question is what are we trading simplicity for?

Take GPS. It's a system that requires multiple satellites in orbit around the earth, synchronized via an atomic clock, and communicating with the ground via radio waves, which are received by the receiver which triangulates position, calculates it, and displays the results on a display made up of millions of little electronic dots. OR you could use a piece of paper. Yet GPS is often times the better approach, because the piece of paper forces a lot of complexity onto the user, including route planning, estimation of position, and errors in reading the piece of paper can be catastrophic.

The piece of paper will work without electricity, or the satellites, but I don't see anybody selling paper maps anymore. If you ask anybody, they'll tell you the GPS is "simplier" to use.

GPS ain't perfect. Just got a phone call 1/2 hour ago from a customer who couldn't find our house (I get these calls all the time)- The reason is because our actual numerical street address -1520- doesn't exist in the GPS database, so your GPS will just take a guess. The street it was added to in the early '60's, 1530, works every time...

[Lee DeRaud]

It's not GPS' fault that Garmin or Google Maps or whoever built the database some car's nav system uses doesn't know where a particular house is located.

GPS only tells you where you are, it has no idea where you're going. And it doesn't work with street addresses.

[Lee Schierer]

GPS ain't perfect. Just got a phone call 1/2 hour ago from a customer who couldn't find our house (I get these calls all the time)- The reason is because our actual numerical street address -1520- doesn't exist in the GPS database, so your GPS will just take a guess. The street it was added to in the early '60's, 1530, works every time...

Bear in mind that GPS is the satellite system. The devices in cars, boats, airplanes, etc use the satellite system position on the world information to correlate street/highway locata data from the device data bases put together by the manufacturer to display on the device. Many of these manufacturing data packages contain errors. If you end up in the wrong place it is not the fault of the GPS system. You can usually report data base errors to the device manufacturer to get it fixed.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Still use a MAP for directions. Going to our daughters, using GPS, adds over an hour and fifty miles to the trip. Drive older simpler vehicles. Work truck is 1988 Mitsubishi, and van I drive is 1984 Ford Areostar. Both have close to 250K on them. As for gas milege, how many more miles per gallon would I have to get to off set the $50,000 cost of a new vehicle, into which I would still have to put gas. At five bucks a gallon, I would need to save over ten thousand gallons to off set cost of new vehicle. Remember new vehicle would have much greater tax costs, along with insurance. As for appliances, we still have a Kenmore washer (top load) and Kenmore dryer, both of which I can fix. Being on well, and septic, water saving isn't an issue. My old GE Pot Scrubber dishwasher still does the dishes just fine, plus it takes less than 45 minutes to do a load. Same goes for washer.

[roger wiegand]

GPS ain't perfect. Just got a phone call 1/2 hour ago from a customer who couldn't find our house (I get these calls all the time)- The reason is because our actual numerical street address -1520- doesn't exist in the GPS database, so your GPS will just take a guess. The street it was added to in the early '60's, 1530, works every time...

You can fix this by reporting the error to one of the mapping services. Doing it through Google is easy see the instructions here. It will take several months to propagate through all the systems (longer if people are using standalone GPS receivers and don't update their databases), but eventually you will be in there in the correct place.

[Lee DeRaud]

You can fix this by reporting the error to one of the mapping services. Doing it through Google is easy see the instructions here. It will take several months to propagate through all the systems (longer if people are using standalone GPS receivers and don't update their databases), but eventually you will be in there in the correct place.

I live on a single-block cul-de-sac. In the dim infancy of Google Maps, I discovered that my street was mislabeled, some completely arbitrary name that doesn't exist anywhere in the area. The odd bit was that, if you searched for my address with the correct street name, it had no trouble at all finding it: the map showed it in the correct location and the provided directions would get you there. Took about a month after I reported it before it showed up correctly.

Another oddity has to do with the fact that my city is "left-handed". Most cities have even numbers on the south and west sides of streets, and odd numbers on the north and east sides...mine is reversed for north-south streets. So the directions Google Maps provides always shows "destination on the left", even though the map shows that it is on the right, A perfect case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

[Brian Elfert]

Last I checked (it's been a few years) you could still place a fleet order for a F150 with a manual transmission, untinted windows, hand-cranked windows, no radio, no AC, no back seat, and only two doors. They didn't charge extra for that, but they also don't readily sell them through regular consumer channels. The market for them among the truck-driving public is about zero, vs the $60+K versions rolling off the lots these days.

The F-150 XL comes standard with automatic transmission, A/C, and manual windows these days. It has a touchscreen because of the federally mandated rear view camera. The trick would be actually ordering and getting one these days. Ford is putting orders for the higher optioned pickups ahead of the base models. When there is a chip shortage they want to use available chips to build the more profitable variations first. The last year for a manual transmission in a F-150 was 2008.

[Jim Becker]

GPS ain't perfect. Just got a phone call 1/2 hour ago from a customer who couldn't find our house (I get these calls all the time)- The reason is because our actual numerical street address -1520- doesn't exist in the GPS database, so your GPS will just take a guess. The street it was added to in the early '60's, 1530, works every time...

GPS and mapping services are only as good as they are fed...the address issue you mention is typically because the local jurisdiction and/or the post office hasn't officially designated that house number in official records correctly or they haven't put in place a numbering system that's properly geo-located. (it's supposed to be correct because the 911 system relies on it) There unfortunately still are pockets of that in the country where stuff remains unresolved for this, even after all these decades when there was a designated system to normalize things.

"What" GPS system one uses can make a difference, too. I'm not in any way, shape or form fond of in-vehicle "native" GPS navigation systems because even with the "latest" map data loaded, they are sometimes a year or more behind reality. It's kinda like working with paper maps that have been in the glove box for a number of years. I find Google Maps and Apple Maps to be generally on par at this point, although I prefer Google Maps overall and have been using it for a long time now. CarPlay and AndroidAuto have made this a lot more convenient and safer for folks who have more recent vehicle models with the feature, too.

[dennis thompson]

I use GPS all the time and,yes it does make a mistake on occasion, but without it I make a lot more mistakes than it does.