What's something that worked well, but was gotten rid of anyway?

1. The public library in my hometown was open 2 nights per week until 8 p.m. as well as Saturdays for the convenience of library users with day jobs. Now the library closes at 5 p.m. daily and is no longer open on weekends in an effort to cut back on staff hours and expense. Thus, it's deserted.
   — Back2Bach


2. Actual physical buttons in the car. All touchscreen is much harder/impossible to operate without taking the eyes off the street while driving. Tesla is the best example for it.
   — oryxsan


3. Previous versions of most mobile games before they were updated to improve monetization.
   — budjr






4. The British created our own little space rocket called the Black Arrow to launch our satellites. In true British style though they canned the project the day before the first proper launch and decided to pay the Americans too much money to launch stuff instead.
   — alric8


5. My dad had a fairly new Cadillac about half a decade back. It ran into an issue where the check engine light would come on even though nothing was wrong. When he brought it to a shop, as far as I remember they could shut it off but it would come back on soon after, and they said it was an issue that would cost quite a bit to permanently fix. He didn't want to spend the money to fix it, and it couldn't pass emissions tests with the light on, so he gave it away (*for free*) to a friend and bought a new car. I will never understand his logic hahaha
   — FalcosLiteralyHitler


6. California tried to implement a system of simple tax filing for state income tax. California would mail you a tax statement every year. You look at it, make any changes, mail it back. It reduced costs by millions for both the state and the residents. They did it for two years as a test (IIRC). TurboTax and H&R Block lobbied the fuck out of California state legislators to go back to the old way, and they did.
   — Anneisabitch






7. I don't know about other places, but in my city we had streetcars that were successful and operating, but General Motors bought them all and bankrupted them with (likely intentional) mismanagement so they could promote car lifestyles and sell more vehicles. Did it all over the US. Now we have a ton of traffic problems and are spending billions on putting trains and streetcars back because they're a more efficient mode of transportation. I know that we certainly wouldn't still be running the same trains from the 30s and would have had to spend the money to replace them, but we're now also paying insanely high amounts to redesign roads and acquire property.
   — Exact_bro


8. Target's medicine containers. They were easy to use/read, and actually looked attractive design wise. However, when CVS bought their pharmacy, they promptly discarded the design, and now all bottles look like regular old, confusing and ugly medicine bottles.
   — blvr