It's been my experience that newer technology, though being more efficient, etc, breaks much faster than the old powerhouse tech from the 50's, 60's, and the 70's. I don't see my 1950's-something oven dying anytime soon. It will outlive me if I don't replace it for that one shiny new feature I convince myself I just have to have, or because it doesn't match my curtains.

So, yes, replacing stuff with new versions will bring more and more sales as opposed to building something that will last. Hence "planned obsolescence" and the war on making things repairable that we've seen lately. Great for business, bad for the customer.

To be fair, it's a bit more subtle than that. There's a level of survivor bias involved - all the unreliable appliances from the 50s-70s have long since been hauled off to scrap metal recycling, so what's left are the long-lived ones.

Modern electronics certainly can be made with much higher reliability than their mid-century ancestors, but the driving factor that prevents this is aggressive cost cutting that happily shaves pennies off COGS to shift the statistical distribution to the left. Unless consumers are willing to pay more for long-lived devices, this is doomed to continue.

This. Survivorship bias is somehow not allowed to exist when talking about old appliances.

Yet people understand it with cars. Maybe because it’s moving?

Because the mechanism by which most contemporary appliances turn into junk is the "control board" "breaking" (which seems like it must be flash endurance, meaning directly planned obsolescence) and is unrelated to survivorship bias - old machines used mechanical timers, and even when they started using solid state it was simple. I'd say it's actually fallacious to point to survivorship bias, because old machines were built with parts that could either be repaired or replaced.

I've got a relative's dryer right now that's acting up. Do I really want to do the work of calling around to a bunch of repair guys to find out which one won't charge me a fee to come out and say "it's going to cost more to fix than to buy a new one, and we can have the new one installed and delivered tomorrow" ? I've heard this trash spiel so many times at this point I don't even care to try engaging, despite not even having to pay for it myself.

No, I'll spend the 20 minutes taking a few screws off and looking at the thing. Then order parts. Then next week, an hour or two to replace the part. Then it will likely be sorted for the next decade, but if it does break again it will continue to be repairable rather than effectively a consumable.

> Isn’t the company going to make more sales in the future

Only if you don't overdo it. When your products break too quickly many customers will stay one-time customers and switch to products from the competition. There's also the reputation damage to consider.

And of course it works best if you have a fairly high market share. If you have a low market share most products on the market are from your competitors, so you can you are better off boosting your reputation with longer-lasting products (compared to other products at the same price point).

Come to think of it, the "break it faster to sell more" strategy works mostly in monopolies, duopolies or with market collusion (like the Phoebus cartel that lowered the lifespan of light bulbs)

Sure, but if the exec in question has moved on to another company by then, what do they care?