I know I'm the gggggp and watching an impressive strawman :)
But one thing to remember, is if we were to price goods based on their creation, profits, AND externalitites (environmental of various sorts), these $400 TV's would likely be around $1000 or more. Land rehabilitation costs a lot, as does air purification and water cleaning of various chemicals. And land isn't exactly growing, so every new piece of trash in a landfill is taking up a limited resource.
Given all those things we currently don't include would easily tip the scales to "Repair". Sure, things wear out and die. Components can burn out. But we have the technology to fix them; we have the engineering to design durable and repairable things.
But because things are "cheap" (call it a loan from the future that we can't default on), its easier to enforce throw-away culture until we can't. But some megacorps make a few more bucks. And we end up with the DMCA, copyrights, and other obnoxious laws and technologies actively preventing us from fixing broken things.
But one thing to remember, is if we were to price goods based on their creation, profits, AND externalitites (environmental of various sorts), these $400 TV's would likely be around $1000 or more. Land rehabilitation costs a lot, as does air purification and water cleaning of various chemicals. And land isn't exactly growing, so every new piece of trash in a landfill is taking up a limited resource.
Given all those things we currently don't include would easily tip the scales to "Repair". Sure, things wear out and die. Components can burn out. But we have the technology to fix them; we have the engineering to design durable and repairable things.
But because things are "cheap" (call it a loan from the future that we can't default on), its easier to enforce throw-away culture until we can't. But some megacorps make a few more bucks. And we end up with the DMCA, copyrights, and other obnoxious laws and technologies actively preventing us from fixing broken things.