Originally Posted by
BFisher
You're obligate cyclists are a small enough percentage of the population to be served entirely by the used market.
Not when the used market is being bled dry by the pandemic bored (not to mention newly subway-averse) snapping up the sound options.
Nor can an obligate cyclist spend a week hunting craigslist and travelling around trying to find something.
And then there's the structural problem with the used market - less and less of what's sold as a new bike is going to end up as a sound option there - many of the department store ones are too flimsy to survive, while increasingly exotic construction of high end bikes makes them less maintainable - steel of uncertain use history is one thing, carbon something quite else. Much of the affordable "good stuff" on the used market is decades old - and not being replenished. Several here have observed that a 90's rigid MTB would be a good choice, but that's a 20+ year old style less and less of which will be found every year.
In terms of not making garbage destined to be thrown away, I completely agree; but that doesn't mean not making anything, it means trying to get to a point where what is being made isn't garbage, but something that can have a series of service lives through several successive owners.