Somehow our lord the efficient market decided that maintenance and repair are only for industrial scale things and consumer scale things must be inexorably driven to replace > repair
I sometimes wonder if there’s a deeper fundamental theory there beyond economies of scale
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Like, *by default* the operating assumption of the economy is that almost nothing is worth repairing.
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“Ending is better than mending; ending is better than mending.”
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Trust me, if I could farm out large-scale maintenance to cheap & skilled foreign labourers, I would.
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More directly to your point, I think we're failing to design consumer goods for maintainability. Especially when it comes to things like smartphones and lots of newer auto parts, the supply-side seems to prefer inexpensive manufacturing over modularity.
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It is a by product of constant upward mobility. Indian households used to store all plastic bags and containers they ever acquired but now they "don't go with the decor".
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It is cultural to some extent I think. The Japanese love getting everything they own repaired. So do the Taiwanese to the extent that they are Japanese culturally. Items range from suitcases to kitchen tools to leatherman jackets. A survey required but
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Relative labor costs. Cheaper to mass manufacture something new in SE Asia than custom repair something in the US.
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It's harder to automate. New parts are all alike, but every broken product is broken in its own way.
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