Your great analogy provoked a thought, and at risk of taking it too seriously:
The bridge you describe sounds like one that was built and would be maintained in a more organic way. If we repaired more, we'd perhaps have more objects built like this. And we'd in turn learn much more about interactions between materials, and have a larger body of knowledge (and maybe folk wisdom) about objects built with such interactions.
But yes, more risk and uncertainty, which is intolerable in the current culture (though I suspect it could become more tolerable if our energy systems and supply chains start to break down, and the current calculus stops making sense)
The bridge you describe sounds like one that was built and would be maintained in a more organic way. If we repaired more, we'd perhaps have more objects built like this. And we'd in turn learn much more about interactions between materials, and have a larger body of knowledge (and maybe folk wisdom) about objects built with such interactions.
But yes, more risk and uncertainty, which is intolerable in the current culture (though I suspect it could become more tolerable if our energy systems and supply chains start to break down, and the current calculus stops making sense)