It's a consequence of, first, having assembly lines and later assembly lines 'staffed' by robots.
Once upon a time manufactured goods were expensive and labour was cheap.
Now it's the other way around.
So it's cheaper to chuck most things when they break rather than try to repair them.
From a maximising p.o.v it makes sense, at least until such time as there are robots that will do housecalls
My washing machine broke and I fixed it in 10 minutes with a $3 part ordered from Amazon. There was even a video on youtube showing how to do the repair.
It doesn't always work out this well. The heating element in my dryer broke. A new element would cost almost as much as a new dryer, so I got a new dryer.
Well done with the repair.
When our then 10ish yr old washing machine broke, the repairman charged about 40 to 50% of the cost of a new one, which in fairness wasn't exorbitant taking his time and overheads into account.
But it was clear that I'd never get another repairman out.
That was also close on 10 years ago and surprisingly that domestic appliance repairman is still in business.
My friend's father had his vacuum cleaner die after 30 years. He went into the store and asked for another good quality one like that, and that he was happy to pay more for that kind of quality. The sales guy just laughed.
Why would anyone expect to find a quality appliance in a store these days? It's a toss-up as to whether you'd even be able to find a crappy hard drive enclosure at Best Buy. Brick and mortar are expensive, only the highest-margin items can be profitably stocked anymore. Raising the price just means the item will get ignored by everyone except people like your friend's dad.
This is a common story: "I went into the store and asked for ______. The sales guy just laughed." Has it ever actually happened to anyone? That's not how retail employees work at all.
The sales guy didn't laugh at my friend's dad, just at the concept. It also doesn't mean he was rolling around on the floor like in a cartoon. It's really not that far-fetched a story.
