I remember in the 80s several National Lampoon covers that featured this concept. One had a tagline with something like “Welcome to America, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Honda Motor Company” or something like that. And then there is the slightly racist one in this image:

> That being said, electronics in our devices do tend to reduce the amount of water and power that appliances use. Dumb devices are extremely inefficient, even though there are fewer points of failure.

I fail to see how electronics in these (unpowered) devices in any way reduce the amount of power that they use.