You are selecting a very small and relatively recent subset of the category and using that to describe the entire category.

Some random asshole on the internet had a similar challenge when it came to not generalizing 300,000,000 people and sadly failed their challenge :'(

From my pov I think you’re repeating exactly what I said, but I appreciate the additional details.

My last point is that “the design life we choose” is usually dictated by non-engineering forces. A 12th century king can throw resources at a problem. A 20th century governor cannot, and doesn’t care to. They care about the bridge lasting until the end of their term limits.

Yeppers that’s the thought process. thanks for explaining better than me.

I’m considering most economic systems prior to…the last few centuries to be essentially slavery. If some random king owns everything…

Not the same as America’s slavery of course, nor is it necessarily legally structured slavery as existed in many societies, but nevertheless.

Every generation is peddled two insane concepts:

When they are young, they are told that they have a weird bizarre vernacular which sounds stupid to everyone else.

Then when they are old, they are told young people have a weird bizarre vernacular which sounds stupid to everyone else.

Then you die.

Labor was free because of slavery, so the economics were not the same. Current engineering has the concept of “over engineering” which is what cracked-up addicts in wall street call “building to last”, due to the “expense” of not being shortsighted on a quarter by quarter basis.