Actually one of them was a bike shop mechanic for 10 years before going back to school and getting his Masters in engineering and taking a job at a space tech firm.

Your point about the abuse is accurate and why I qualified my statement about treatment. Don't power wash them.

Cheap bearings- which are probably spec'd on 98% of the bikes sold- are more prone to failure.
"Seals only reduce the size of grit to what can be "dissolved" in water and water will still get past most every seal given enough time and pressure." This is ONLY true for cheap or inappropriate bearings. A properly spec'd bearing will not have that type of failure but what the engineer spec's and what the sales/manufacturing department orders are not always the same.

My bike, an S-Works, was apparently spec'd and built with the appropriate bearings. In this case the price does reflect the quality.

At $500-$1,000 for a complete bike you know the quality isn't going to be the same. At $2,000 the components improve but the hidden bits remain crap. At $3000 the wheels improve, etc. I have no idea how much you have to spend on a modern bike to get quality bearings from the factory. There is also the concept of "planned obsolescence" which keeps bike shops and car repair shops busy.