You speak like you don't have a lot of physical world experience. Maybe you went through school for engineering or something and have never worked a trade.

These systems that you have constructed in your mind don't tend to play out that way.

> design and manufacturing methods improve proportionally as number of parts grows.

The methods necessarily become more complex, but improve? Eh.

> our ability to design reliable parts is orders of magnitude above what it was when the fucking boomer was buying his first car.

Yea, sure, but do the incentives align with that?