Limiting use of resources should not be humanity's main ambition. Encouraging human creativity - which buying new things does - is more important, in my view, than minimising use of resources. It is only this generation's environmentalist mindset that make such a big issue of resource use, at the cost of almost anything else.
Having said that, I am not saying that people should not repair stuff - people can do what they want. I was just pointing to the benefits of buying new things, which has somehow become a contentious issue nowadays. Hence, the downvotes...
I'm not convinced new things is the best way to encourage creativity: consider buying a new (factory-produced, line) car vs. a cheap repair plus commissioning a nice painting.
(I think scarce vs. abundant resources is too big a topic for a HN comment thread; suffice to say that I disagree, especially with the notion that we "make such a big issue of resource use, at the cost of almost anything else.")
That does not talk about creativity, but of creating things. Even if it did, I do not find it a valuable argument, in the current large-scale economy. Making him/her richer may stimulate the creativity of that entrepreneur, but the price of that is a horde of zombie consumers who cannot express his creativity by making/repairing stuff themselves.
In a small-scale economy, say where every village has a blacksmith, a tinker, a tailor, etc. the net effect might be positive, because it allows many people to spend time to become good at expressing their creativity.
