My kids do the same - they ask for Lego Minecraft sets or Lego Ninjago sets or whatever, build them and stick them on the shelf. They're horrified by my suggestion that they tear them down and build other random things with the bits. And, of course, a lot of the bits nowadays are so specialized that they have limited uses. When I was a kid most of my lego was just standard blocks.

Agreed, but what I've heard through is that Lego's finances were really struggling till taking the franchising deals. Given how good the quality of Lego always seems to be compared to cheaper brands, whilst I'd like old-style creative building (and cheaper!) Lego, I feel an unusual sympathy for them getting a bunch of money from these deals.

What a rediculous, and untrue, comparison to make. NASA (1) isn't a consumer manufacturing company, (2) makes an absolutely insane variety of types science experiments from space telescopes to supersonic planes, (3) absolutely makes/uses parts with orders of magnitude tighter tolerances than Lego holds.

They make plastic though. Surely they recycle the scrap

Lego's competition has been improving their quality in the last few years, to a point where I'd argue some are on par or better (Cobi, Mould King, Xingbao).

At the same time Lego has started to produce in China like almost any other competitor and their quality has lapsed somewhat. Especially color accuracy has allegedly been shite, even in some VERY expensive sets.

Lego just isn't worth an almost 100% premium, imo. If you're in Europe check out Bluebrixx and Cobi. One makes licensed Star Trek sets, the other licensed cars like Škoda, Opel, Fiat, and others.

Once I worked out that Lego work to the same tolerances as the transistors in a Pentium II CPU. It's probably a better example than NASA as NASA makes huge things that don't require submillimetre tolerances and tiny precise instruments that couldn't have been made a couple of decades ago.

Except there are competitors by now with equally good tolerances and overall part quality that still cost half as much, so that can't really be the reason

Something that I came up with during the pandemic was to buy, build, and then resell full kits in basically new condition on a site called Bricklink. It's like eBay for LEGO only, with an insane number of filtering options and seller base (FFS I found kits for sale I played with as a kid lol).

Doesn't quite work out to "free" and it's a bit of a hassle, but it solves that problem for me of wanting to enjoy a big involved build, but being a (boringly) sane adult who can't justify spending hundreds of dollars on tiny plastic (magnificently designed, engineered, and mfg'ed) bricks.

Edit: Check it out lol

For some people I could see it as a fun thing/whatever. I always see the end result being: now where do I put this... These things are huge (comparatively) and I would have to empty out a whole shelf somewhere just to house it.

I honestly don't get what companies are thinking with these prices. They're all raising prices, despite reporting record breaking profits, and for me the experience has been the same as yours, I just buy less or stop buying completely.

You already can, the shape of the Lego brick fell into public domain, you can find legal knock off of their design (on AliExpress for example). The problem is that plastic and electricity cost so much you don't save a lot compared to an industrialised environment.

You wouldn’t download a brick.

Mono-color style probably significantly sooner than full color.