Also, if you make machines that last a long time and are easily repairable, pretty soon you will saturate the market and won't have any new customers. If you can only sell to each person once, you won't have a sustainable business.
All the companies that made things that last forever went out of business.
If companies can't produce the high quality goods that we want and need, then what are they good for? They were supposed to compete with each other to see who can make the best products, not the cheapest junk.
This pathological capitalism has to go away forever. It's bad for consumers and bad for the environment. Companies exist because society allows them to exist, and they're allowed to exist because people believe they will fulfill their wants and needs. If they keep failing us in such spectacular ways, there's no reason for them to keep existing.
But a lot of people actually want companies to produce as cheap as possible - be it because they are poor or because they dislike regulatory interventions for ideological reasons.
Not saying this is great and I try to buy higher-quality goods if possible, but the reality is that needs and wants of high-income persons might be different to those of the poor.
It feels like a middle ground would be to make shit that lasts and decent amount of time AND sell the parts at a decent cost to keep them working for ever.
Parts provide a regular revenue stream, consumers don’t have to buy a new appliance every three years, and swapping a gear doesn’t cost 75% of a new appliance.
All the companies that made things that last forever went out of business.