[carlosjobim]

In Western countries, the time of skilled repairmen is better spent repairing things which are much more important and expensive than consumer goods.

And a consumer usually has a much higher return from working in his specialized field to earn money and buy a new product, than spending time with difficult repairs of a broken product.

[JumpCrisscross]

Yeah, this is entirely a function of labor costs. If you want your stuff repaired, ship it to a low-labor cost economy or hire someone to whom it’s worth the time.

[carlosjobim]

To add to that; labour should be expensive. And lower repairability of consumer goods is a side effect that is worth dealing with for that benefit.

[hx8]

Just to take one step further, labor costs are largely a function of local real estate costs.

[JumpCrisscross]

> labor costs are largely a function of local real estate costs

Difficult to determine causality in that system. All we can say is places with expensive labour tend to have expensive real estate. (The confounding variable, I imagine, is immigration.)