[masraum]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

And cars, domestic appliances, televisions, power tools, farm equipment, yada yada

What used to be considered 'durable goods' now seem to be "experiences". There's nothing of value left after the widget's been used up - and that a shrinking timeline - so now you pay for the experience you want to afford and require. Mercedes Benz vs Kia. It's the same appliance, it's just that the Merc offers a more luxurious experience until it craps out. A Bosch dishwasher vs Kenmore. Milwaukee vs Ryobi.

All of it's junk the minute it quits working. Which it will, and sooner than you'd like.

The problem is "we" want quality, and we want it REALLY cheap. I remember back in the day, not everyone had everything. Regular folks wanted lots of stuff and saved up if they wanted it bad enough. With today and the credit that anyone seems to be able to manage to get, everyone has the coolest phone, everyone has a giant TV, everyone has a nice car, etc.... Even with all of the credit, for everyone to have everything, the prices have to be ridiculously low to the point that things are built to price vs quality. I'm sure that there are still quality items out there, that last longer. Although, even most of those are still probably ultimately disposable. But since almost everything these days is built around some sort of computer, it's probably not realistic to be able to "fix" everything.

I think a lot of it is due to being built to a price. But I also think a lot of it has to do with the fact that everything is so complex that it doesn't make sense to repair a lot of stuff.

You can fix the differential on a 40 year old Porsche. What are the odds that a modern Porsche with torque vectoring diffs are going to be as fixable in 40 years?