Comment by munk-a

Customers are incredibly short sighted when it comes to purchasing new things - shaving 10% off a price while cutting the expected lifetime of the product down from ten years to three is likely to capture most of the market.

I think this is a case where actors are acting in an irrational manner (i.e. not adhering to the perfectly rational actor assumption that's required for free-markets to function) and that necessitates government or other intervention to ensure that consumers are protected.

It's depressing because I absolutely agree with you that users aren't purchasing devices with an emphasis on being able to repair them. It is a pain point but not one that comes up at the register and so manufacturers are free to exploit the situation to provide marginally cheaper goods that require full replacement more frequently to ensure consistent sales.

Nobody wants to be like Hoover in the 90's that offered free plane tickets with vacuum purchases[1] and caused such an oversupply in the market that first party vacuum sales dwindled to nearly nothing over the next decade and that's fair. But we need to have a balance where we aren't rewarding manufacturers who build products that frequently break and for the consumer to make another purchase.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion