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because repair doesn't make economical sense when it is cheaper to replace.
for most people, repair is expensive, time consuming, and difficult. It is not enjoyable or rewarding in any way. Replacement is far more immediate outside of very expensive long lasting items, like cars, homes, etc.
I do a lot of DIY, but the vast majority of people do not have the skills, patience, or time to spend hours figuring things out and then sourcing replacement parts to save a few bucks. They just want something that works asap, and replacement is almost always the faster option.
And that's half of how we ended up in the era of enshittification.
Let's say one of the control knobs on your 15 year old dumb stove fails, shorted out, where as soon as you turn it to low heat the eye is blazing hot at full heat. Do you?...
We went with option B, way cheaper than a new stove, plus none of the headaches of modern digital technology. Like, why do appliances need modern digital technology? A stove heats food, plain and simple, and that's all it needs to do.
And look at these new refrigerators coming out, that fail within weeks to months, maybe at best a couple or few years. When your grandma's old fridge was passed down from her mom and has been kicking strong for 50 years, save for that new door seal installed like 15 years ago..
Sigh, we live in a disposable dystopia anymore ☹️
You aren't painting the full picture. The new stove is probably more efficient, cleaner, etc. Modern digital tech makes them better at these things. I have a 20 year old purely analog stove. It sucks balls. But I'm too cheap to justify buying an new one until it breaks. That's entirely on me though.
You are also grossly exaggerating things. I have a 4 year old washer, it came with a 10 year warranty. it broke twice already but both times it was covered under warranty at no cost to me. It was electronic failures. It's super efficient and I love it. Granted if I bought a cheapo one that was $300, it probably wouldn't have such a good warranty.
There are lots of choices. Nobody is forcing you to buy fridges that break. And plenty of companies do consumer testing for you such that you can buy a reliable model.
What you have is nostalgia. I had computers in the 90s too... they broke all the fucking time. I barely got 1 year old of a HDD back then. So yeah you had to repair them. Modern SSDs last much longer because they have no moving mechanical parts, on time of being blazingly faster.
Shitty stuff was always shitty. Good stuff is will always be good. There were shitty computer brands and appliance brands 20 years ago, maybe you were lucky enough to never encounter them, but the notion that 'things are bad because modern' is complete boomer nonsense. Modern appliances are way more reliable, efficient and superior to decades old appliances. It's just that have different points of failure that your 20 old appliance didn't.
Same with cars. Old luxury cars had electronic gizmos that broke. Modern cheap cars are better than old luxury cars, so now they have the same extra points of failure. Like... if you want a car 80s/90s car that's purely mechanical... cool, go buy a used one. There are plenty of them out there, but they tend to be collectors items at this point because people only really want them for the nostalgia factor. For everyday use a modern car is far superior in reliability and comfort to those cars, esp apple to apple comparison. a 2026 mid range Camry has more luxury than a 2000s Lexus.
Yeah, you're right about shitty computer brands ~20 years ago. Turned out they were all shitty in the long run, as that was back during the Taiwanese counterfeit capacitor plague.. ☹️
As far as vehicles go, I don't much care for luxury features, that's just more points of failure. And now they got all the sensors, modules, cameras and stuff on the CAN bus, which is good for the manufacturer because it reduces the copper wiring, but bad for the consumer, as one faulty shorted sensor can take down the entire data bus and basically brick your car.
Just give me a vehicle that cranks, runs, drives, and stops when I got places to go, and is easy to troubleshoot and repair as necessary. The most luxury I care for is heater and air conditioning. I'll trade in the push button windows for hand crank rollup windows as long as the vehicle comes with a spare tire. I don't want any vehicle that tracks everywhere you go, records everything you do, and can be bricked remotely by the police.
Our current vehicle is a 2005 Hyundai Tucson, roommate's had it going on 4 years now I think, for $3000. At first it had some running issues, but after a new coil pack, crankshaft position sensor, and mass airflow sensor, it purrs like a kitten ever since. And those sensors are cross compatible between Hyundai Tucson and Kia Sportage from 1999 to 2010, meaning both used and new parts aren't too difficult to find.
And it's not on a payment plan, he outright owns it 👍