This is just it, though. Quality things can last forever – if maintained and repaired and occasionally overhauled. But that takes knowledge and infrastructure and effort. In particular, it seems to me that it’s a function of the ratio of the price of an appliance to the wage of a skilled repairer. If we’re now at the point where a service call is $100, which gets you the chance of paying another $200 for parts, to get a functional (but still old and dirty and worn) stove, paying $700 for a new one with a warranty seems like a good deal. Now, if the new stove was $4000, that would be a different story.
We’re very efficient at manufacturing, not so much at individual services.
So the answer is probably to ban selling appliances for less than one tenth the average local income. This will boost the used and repair markets. Like the famous old cars in Cuba!
