You say consumers have expressed that but I'm not actually sure that is true. Sure people often buy things that are less durable but it is hard to tell the longevity of many products in advance, especially of tech for non techy people.
I used to do computer repair and the number of people who were furious to discover, years after they bought it, just how uneconomical it was to repair certain Apple products due to how unmodular those products were.
Plus say I'm buying headphones, obviously (to technologically aware people) wireless ones will break more often because they have more parts that can break and have batteries that will eventually go out. But after that I'm kind of stuck with buying a brand that has a good history, people don't write reviews of currently available products saying "I've owned these for 6 years now and they still work". And even if those reviews exist the company may have changed the internals of the product by now so that review is no longer valid.
Sure consumer purchase patterns don't reward building for longevity and I agree with that, but I disagree that consumers have necessarily expressed they don't care very much about it.
Skaevola didn’t say “expressed preference.” He/she said “revealed preference.” I.e. revealed by actual purchases. This is more meaningful than any other “expression.”
I used to do computer repair and the number of people who were furious to discover, years after they bought it, just how uneconomical it was to repair certain Apple products due to how unmodular those products were.
Plus say I'm buying headphones, obviously (to technologically aware people) wireless ones will break more often because they have more parts that can break and have batteries that will eventually go out. But after that I'm kind of stuck with buying a brand that has a good history, people don't write reviews of currently available products saying "I've owned these for 6 years now and they still work". And even if those reviews exist the company may have changed the internals of the product by now so that review is no longer valid.
Sure consumer purchase patterns don't reward building for longevity and I agree with that, but I disagree that consumers have necessarily expressed they don't care very much about it.