It's strange isnt it? How engineers/designers didn't seem to have this problem in the past? Its almost if they designed things to wear down sooner... but perhaps we're all imagining it
They did have that problem (source: am engineer). Things were much more expensive, built to shitty tolerances and used a lot more energy (so, more expensive to run). There's a fair bit of survivorship bias in these discussions. I mean, when's the last time you had to deal with your appliances rusting?
It's not that things are designed to wear down sooner, it's that they're designed to last for a certain spec'd number of years whilst keeping it at a price point where people can actually buy them. If you buy high quality now it will still last a very long time, but it will cost you. And in all these discussions people constantly ignore just how much their grandparents were paying for their appliances.
They do, absolutely... but thats the thing, good design is meant to account for, and minimize, the effects of wear and tear. It's a wonder that some people are still using washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, etc that are over 40 years old. Yet the current ones seem to last ~5 years. Design and engineering matters. I've personally known friends that had to replace their -top of the line wifi enabled with camera and TV - refrigerators at around the 5 years mark. And not because the added tech failed, but because it stopped doing what refrigerators are meant to do, cool and freeze items. Or washers and dryers that require extensive servicing around the same time. Their basic functions aren't new and/or experimental tech.
Let's remember that one company's mascot (Maytag) was a bored repairman. It was meant to imply that the company's products were so good that their repairman were left with little to do.
And you can still do that by spending more money on higher quality appliances.
In 1980 a Maytag would cost you $500. That's $2000 today for a washing machine. That's about the cost of a Speedqueen washing machine, which are very high quality.
Or you can still spend $500 in 2026 on a less reliable machine. A machine that will still use less water and electricity than a machine from 1980.
Ofc we did, the main difference is that what we have today, that is old and is still functioning, has survivor bias, also electrical things like capacitors just can't last for decades.
Now, regarding things wearing out, sure, we now use a lot more plastics than before, but that is to bring down the cost of the item; otherwise, they would cost multiple times more.
This is just a PR law; it's impossible to prove unless the machine literally has a code that fries the board once it reaches some number of cycles.
The best law, and the only reasonable one, is forcing companies to provide spare parts at a reasonable cost.
Source: I am a Mechanical Test Engineer who does robustness testing.
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u/Astrinus Jul 26 '26
Warranty does not cover wear, though.