As far as “reman better than new,” surely you realize there are performance shops that will blueprint and balance to better than factory specs, use a forged crankshaft vs cast, hyper…whatchamacallit pistons, etc.
to use a more mundane example, I would say a small engine shop that rebuilt a Briggs and Stratton Quantum engine to factory specs (but substituted a metal cam for the factory plastic) as supplying a “better than new” rebuild.
@TwinTurbo, I have listened to what you say and I thoroughly respect your opinions on not just this issue but all others. 
Why are problems not present in droves? I cannot answer that. It could also be that problems have been present in droves from the get-go and by the time any complaints surfaced enough miles would have accumulated that problems were blamed on lack of maintenance.
A long time friend of mine was a long time Ford mechanic as an independent and I know he was doing bearing replacements all of the time. Maybe oddball mains are the reason why he was busy.
Who knows?
I’m just saying that through 4 sets of bearings that the mirror image of each thrust bearing did not measure the same thickness by .0015.
In more understandable terms, that would be the equivalent of machining a crank .010/.010, slapping an .010 bearing on one side and a STD. on the opposite side.
That doesn’t even get into the issue of why a thrust surface flange is not flat and varies dimensionally from one bearing shell to the other.
I freely admit that I do not understand this at all; and never will apparently.
It is true that many things can be made better than original, “better” being subject to interpretation, but that isn’t what “remanufactured” means. And that, Joe, is the subject under debate.