The old curmudgeon speaks!
I guess that for me straight razor shaving is much like being able to disjoint and waggle my thumbs. Awesome to folks that can't, or don't!
That said, I enjoy the time that I focus on what I am doing. That may be the only few minutes of the day which I am "Right Here and Now!" Fortunately, I am retired and, so, am able to give the hobby artisanal part of straight shaving and razor restoring more attention than I would were I holding down a 50 hour week such as I used to. I still find Schick, Gem and Gillette type blade shaves nice and close. The blades are now about $1 each at retail. Up 20 times since I were young
On a cost basis, I believe that the onset of cartridge madness has put us behind in shave quality. Being an old fogy, I started and continued with injector razors for lo those many years. The original cartridges and the Schick and Gillette Techmatic band razors were in some ways a really good thing and at that time and the cost per shave was close to equal the regular individual blades which lasted about a week to two.
But, a new cartridge in usual retail buying mode is now about $4 and more in specialty shops. One cartridge gives a week's shave~ Back when, a pack of blades was $0.25 to $0.50 and contained 5-10 blades. That meant about 5 to 10 weeks of shaving! I made ~$100 a week then. Now have about double that as a geezer. So for me the cost of a week's cartridge shave has gone 40 or greater times more while my income has gone double. I don't see many common folks making $4000 a week!:boohoo:
As always, there are folks that find a cartridge shave makes their day and repels the 5 o'clock shadow for them. Who am I to tell them they are wrong.
Then again, I have had some old buddies ask "Who polished your face?" A couple now straight razor shave! And some still electric and cartridge shave!
YMMV
~Richard