The Disappearing Art of Maintenance
I think in general the human mind treats Maintenance as less important or not important at all. The ancient people realized this: When I studied Chinese in primary school, there was one ancient text that spoke about a discussion between a king and a famous doctor. The doctor explained that his brother was superior than him in the medical science but no one heard about him because he could always treat small illnesses before then evolved into terminal ones, so people said, &quot;Oh he is a fine doctor, but he only treats minor illnesses&quot;.<p>This text has been resonating with me for many years. Humans simply do NOT appreciate maintenance people TBH. Me as an example: I own a house but whenever I plan maintenance of my house I always tried to push it a bit further because 1) It&#x27;s expensive, and 2) Manual or company says that I need to do X every Y years, can I push back say 10% and still don&#x27;t break things? As for my electronics, unfortunately I never maintained them and in my earlier days I never had a computer that lasted for 3+ years -- they always broke down due to this or that reason.<p>And then both of my knees have degenerative issues; I had kidney stones; I need to maintain physical health but I was and still is too lazy to do that. I simply do not have the maintenance mindset.<p>This probably can stretch out to the whole society: We simply do not appreciate Maintenance people. They are usually lowly paid and have low moral because what they work is chore. They also do not get to enjoy creating new things. Basically you need someone who has the mindset to appreciate maintenance to be a good maintenance person, and a society of this mindset to support such work and lower the cost. Nowadays we do not. Nowadays we always doubt the necessity of maintenance and sometimes even accuse other people to charge a large bill for maintenance (sadly, this could be true). There is little trust between.