Indeed, this is how it's supposed to work in an ideal world anyway. You only need to have some knowledge of the items and their tech to evaluate if they are useful second-hand or not for you. What parts wear and break and what are you able and willing to repair?
I have bought pretty much all my tools used. I usually buy low-tech solutions so my biggest concern most of the time is that the carbon brushes need to be replaced (and some models make this simple operation practically impossible, while in some models it takes under a minute). And I always look for dirty things that need a lot of cleaning since they usually go for cheap, and I'm cheap.
All it takes is installing cameras and if anyone is caught up doing stupid shit the shoptime is over for them, permanently if it's anything serious.
I remember one clown kid in my class back in the days put a hottish drillbit to another's kid neck acting like a cool spy or something like that (we were 14 years old, luckily got only a mild burn which healed quickly). The teacher punched him in the face, probably not with full force but it was not a soft slap either, and banned him from the shop for some time. No incidents after that.
I was replying to your comment saying "Japan racist and nazi ally" existing in this specific context that is filled with the crystal clear logic: "the west" equals "white people" equals "bad" which means "Karp literally racist and nazi too".
Your comment doesn't even make much sense in the vacuum except maybe as a quick fact check, but then you can consider my reply as just an extension of your comment. There is always someone who doesn't know that the WWII was not really about white people vs. non-white people type of thing.
Maybe those racists should have gotten together, forget their minor differences, and commit even more atrocious acts since folks these days think they were all baddies (and white, the worst thing of them all!) anyway. The wars they fought were completely pointless.
If only there was someone to tell them that all whites are really the same, so they would have understood. Well, Hitler had some ideas of unity close to that (with idiotic things like excluding "those stupid eastern slavs"). Modern racists see nothing but the skin colour, they don't even bother measuring your skull. That's how bad things have gotten.
And the US crushed them, pretty hard. It was mostly white people who defeated that evil nation. Just like it was mostly white people that defeated Nazi Germany. Maybe people back then should have been more into the current "whites are all the same" level of thinking to prevent all those pointless wars.
Innate in this context may just well refer to the fact that he strongly believes that values rated pretty high in the west like democracy are inherently good and they should be promoted to the rest of the world. Note that I don't personally agree with that, I strongly think everyone should be minding their own business. Truly superior ways are copied and emulated sooner or later anyway.
Notice that you are just admitting the superiority of the west here, no weak culture with subpar technology or weak people can exploit or conquer others. And pretty much everyone has tried to exploit others as much as they possibly could, that's unfortunately just how humans are. Everyone has at least one objectively bad ancestor, no matter the race or culture.
The general attitude that manufacturing is only for people who suck at school is the driving force behind this decline. You are indeed left with mostly not-that-bright guys who don't even consider themselves skilled workers, and definitely don't go the extra mile to produce quality stuff. A guy half-assing his work earns just as much as the guy who puts his heart to it, that's the harsh reality of modern industrial work. If anything the guy who cares too much is ridiculed and considered weird.
The exceptional craftsmen still exist but they mostly work for themselves, for obvious reasons. They really don't want to be "managed" and bossed around like cattle.
Or it just might be that different people prefer different things. I'm a hardcore fan of header files too. Vim is my preferred way of dealing with text and I can do all kinds of magic with it with the speed of though and I prefer to use as plain as possible text files. In the rare occasion when the documentation needs more than ascii stuff it's best practice to write a nice tex and friends documentation plus a real tutorial anyway. And full literate programming style is hard to beat when you are dealing with complex things.
I have bought pretty much all my tools used. I usually buy low-tech solutions so my biggest concern most of the time is that the carbon brushes need to be replaced (and some models make this simple operation practically impossible, while in some models it takes under a minute). And I always look for dirty things that need a lot of cleaning since they usually go for cheap, and I'm cheap.