Um… okay. Thanks for explaining my own link to me, I guess?
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I’ll second both parts of that.
A fun edge case, supporting the tiny bit of truth:
Back in the 90s, I was on a uni field trip to an oil refinery. Someone asked the engineer who was giving the tour “in the event of fires and explosions, which building would you run into?” He replied “The oldest one within sprinting distance. 30 years ago, we knew a lot less about the limits of materials and overbuilt everything. These days we’re more economically aware, and only use what we need to.”
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In my work, this reduction of product lifespan is called “quality control”. As in: “the customer does not get quality they didn’t pay for”.
Once upon a time, to make products meet the warranty dates, they were simply given a budget and overbuilt as much as money would allow.
After the Japanese car manufacturers in the 1970s showed the world what could be done with quality control, the 80s and 90s were spent applying this to other industries. And they got good at it. The joke about machines now lasting for exactly the warranty period plus 24 hours isn’t really a joke - not overbuilding is a goal that’s been thoroughly reviewed and tested by the manufacturers’ quality control departments.
I believe this is a big part of why I can still use my grandmother’s hand-mixer when I make cakes, and I fully expect its replacement to last five years tops.
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Some of us are hoping 3D-printed parts will enable us to make repairs instead of dealing with crappy replacements. My brother did that for a older car with a broken part that was impossible to find. It wasn’t cheap, but cost a lot less than a new car.
ETA: It also keeps things away from the scap heap/landfill. 
How long does it take Tupperware to break down?
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No 3D printing required! People should get to know their local machine shops better. They can make anything you need. I maintain old steam engines as a hobby, for which parts have not been made for a hundred years or so. We make everything. Anything can be maintained forever if desired.
Everything in this world is more repairable than people think it is. We think things are less repairable than they used to be, but it’s more that we gave up trying, IMHO. My best friend repairs Apple stuff as a hobby and has replaced screens, batteries, cameras, etc in every iPhone and laptop model. People constantly say how modern electronics are unrepairable and that is untrue.
There’s a specific kind of kind of local machine shop called a job shop that will make any one off part for anyone for anything. A lot cheaper than 3D printing, I guarantee.
Sorry to rant, but it’s a peeve of mine that people think the new ways are required to do things we’ve been doing for a hundred years.
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That’s a nice theory. Now explain why expensive goods are still often crap.
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I think this is a huge factor in the encrapification of appliance markets. People can’t trust the more expensive model to not be a slightly re-skinned version of the cheapest one, so the risk is too high in investing.
Reliable information is also a problem. Most reviews are now from hours after a purchase, and can say nothing of durability, and old reviews may be for a thing that was once well-built, but after a restructuring of the company are now a visually indistinguishable copy but the guts and supply chain are totally different (Pyrex/PYREX as mentioned, etc…)
These shenanigans have tainted the market and hurt trust in the very concept of premium quality I think.
I run into this with earbuds and humidifiers most directly. I am afraid to buy more expensive earbuds because I break them so much, but I just don’t trust myself in buying more expensive ones because its very hard to find reliable information of durability, and models appear and disappear so quickly.
I must say though, when someone stole my 16" Ryobi “starter” chainsaw out of my car, it was a world of difference just stepping up to a Husqvarna for only like $200 more bucks. Gas goes further, chains last longer, fewer stalls. But the differences were immediately apparent.
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Clearly the only right way to do it is to smear entirely with thermal paste, wipe mostly clean and then overclock at 500 degrees for 2 hours. Rinse and repeat.
Because consumers have come to believe that brand stands in for quality, meanwhile luxury brands have sought out larger markets, meaning making some of their stuff more affordable, which helps to lower the quality as they seek to mass produce more of their product lines… Hence, less distinction between quality vs. quantity… plus more stuff is made in cheaper factories in places (the runaway factory model) with little to no protections for workers, who are desperate to make a wage to care for their families. As quality in even luxury goods decline, but prices keep going on, corporations are reaping larger profits from which to compensate their already overpaid CEOs, etc…
Of course, Sir Terry was writing his theory back in the 90s, when this was not quite so bad a difference.
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Hearted just for “encrapification” 
I agree though- consolidation has created fake markets. Like for washing machines, there were three brands that had three very specific feature sets. The cheap one was basic, the middle one was identical but had extra things that most people want, then the top of the line had three additional things some people want. Each were priced almost exactly $500 apart. The three brands in question were all made by the same company but they went out of their way to hide that fact. I only found out because I noticed the copy pasta in the manuals.
They had “engineered” this marketplace with the three washers that their research determined are the ones people want, priced them at the limit of what people will pay, and that’s it. It looks like competition and a healthy marketplace, but it’s all bullshit. We’re being told what to buy and given no real options. Meanwhile they are free to make all three washers to the same cost-cutting standard on the back end, all in the same factory. The feature differences were probably mostly software, too. Just to complete the grift.
The brands in question by the way, were KitchenAid, Whirlpool, and Maytag. All owned by Whirlpool. GE owns all the other US appliance brands.
The Korean brands are still independent, so Samsung and LG are worth looking at seriously and will be actually different.
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Sadly, it appears that Samsung and LG are so digital and “special” that they don’t hold up to the grind of constant use, even sometimes to their warranty date. I hear from a lot of owners and adjacent maintenance folks that they’re the first to die, and are generally unrepairable for less than their purchase cost.
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And/or simultaneously sharpen it.
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…but think of the Burning Man sculpture and/or Weapon of Mass Destruction someone would eventually turn it into 
Our LG washer is a bit of a ship of Theseus, after 8 years of service I’ve replaced so many parts of it. I have to do the pump motor every 6 months or so. Of course, it’s a small washer/dryer single unit with a condensing dryer supporting a family of 4 and runs nearly around the clock. We’ve probably paid for it twice by now, but we’re not really supposed to have our own washer in our apartment so can’t risk the super seeing us replacing it…
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Exactly the case with my Samsung. 
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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!
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My LG washer started rusting pretty quickly, with rust particles mixing with the clothes. The warranty process was useless. Don’t buy an LG washer.
Didn’t know KitchenAid was part of it. I bought the so-called “commercial” Maytag and it’s been fine so far. No screen, no jingles. More expensive but hopefully won’t require replacement like the fancy ones.
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Poor Dixie. What will happen to her tour…
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I can recommend Miele washers and driers, (our drier is 16, we just replaced the washing machine at 14, as it was at the point of a full overhaul), their dishwashers not so much.
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