>Your point here undermines your previous argument about machine-made nails
>not being better. I doubt very much that the screw fasteners these
>contractors are using are hand-made fasteners.

Not good debating tactic, especially for a Devil's advocate. Your point was
that modern NAILS were better and cheaper, to which I directed my
dissenting reply.

>So essentially, you just have to look at screw fasteners as an extention
of
>nail technology for those whose evaluation of cost/performance/value
>warrants a higher degree of cost and performance. If the marketplace
>clammers for a better nail, industry will provide it, because industry is
>in the business of selling nails, screws, or whatever else anyone has any
>use for on a significant scale.

But screw fasteners are not an extension of nail technology. And the
industry didn't respond to a clammer for a better nail. Rather, an existing
technology, drywall screws, were adapted by carpenters fed up with modern
nail technology. So, in order to insure a quality product they were, in
fact, forced to abandon a quality-diminished product and switch to a more
expensive fastening technology. Eventually industry did respond by making
galvanized versions of the screws available. Something comes to mind here.
Isn't the story of evolving nail technology somewhat analogous to tomato
hybridization technology? That is to say, the evolution serves the purposes
of the producer entirely (hard, square, easily pickable and shipable
tomatoes that usually rot before they ripen) while the consumer can either
buy into the propaganda that worse is better, or, in an effort to achieve
satisfaction, can go the boutique route (hot house tomatoes- drywall
screws). Your argument that industry is response to marketplace "clammers"
certainly doesn't hold up in either of these cases. Have you ever met a
single consumer who has a good thing to say about the modern tomato? No?
Then why hasn't industry responded? I've never met anyone who has anything
good to say about modern nails either. And still industry respondeth not.
That consumers of tomatoes and nails have the option of going to a higher
cost product doesn't really help your initial argument that modern
standardization technology brings improved quality of life to the masses.
Unless you can show that living in houses with sprung walls, popped window
trim and loose floors and eating inedible tomatoes is an improvement over
what might have been available to the same class in an earlier time.

It may even turn out, someday, that the best and most durable and most
beautiful structures of all will not even use nails, or even wood, for that
matter. A thousand years from now, maybe the invention of plastic lumber
and epoxy glue will be hailed as the dawn of a great new era in
architectural technology. (Or maybe not!)

No argument with that. There is always the possibility that the marketplace
will start responding to what people want sometime in the next thousand
years.

Here's something to ponder. The guaranteed life of the economy line of Bird
asphalt shingle roofing  applied in the 1920's was 30 years. In the 1970s
it was 20. Now its 15. Do you think that that was in response to consumer
demand? Or what?

Bruce