Thie is the way I see the history of shaving comments appreciated:

The year is 1885 men are getting excellent shaves and paying next to nothing for the shaves. Shaving is an art form passed down from father to son. Ocasionallty companies make large sales worth a couple hundred dollars for a replacement razor, where the family hierloom wheres out. Men are happy and the annual expense are low. Along comes Gillette Corp who looks at this situration and says "I can't make money off this situation I need to get something consumable into the act here." Hense the safety razor was born, but most stayed with the tried and true straights. Change came slowly as men migrated to the less capable safety razors which required less skill. Alas, the devil was where he typically is, in the details, so many companies got into making the blades for the saftey razor that Gillette Corp could no longer make big bucks with the relplacement blades. "I need a way to force people to buy our blades!" belows the chairman of Gillette Corp, engieers whent to work and came up with the entirely less capable but also a way to control the blades. The Trac II. The Trac II could in no way equal the safety razors in terms of shave quality but were also much more expensive and offered gillette a way to force their customers to pay more and more. Hence Gillette is happy and their customers are increasingly unhappy. But the customer's happyness with their product is irrelevant as long as Proctor and Gamble can continue to increase prices when ever and to what ever they wish.