Industry and automation made production way more cost efficient
It should be cheaper to build a new part(, and change that part,) than a new whole(, and buy that whole).
And i.d.k. if it’s the only reason : the cost of producing is much cheaper outside the west, it’s cheaper for westerners to buy from non-westerners, and conversely.
If i keep the example of the computer mouse, it couldn’t cost 20€ if it was produced locally, if only because it takes much more than 2 cumulated hours to build one, at a minimum wage of 10€/h.
Conversely though, it’d mean that it’d be very expensive for a non-westerner to buy products made in the west, which is the case, but we can still manage to sell them because we have a monopoly on new technologies(, with e.g. Japan or South Korea, but then again their minimum wage is high as well so it’s the same remark), such as planes or softwares.
jacksilver@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Just look at houses or cars (which are designed for repairability) and you’ll see that building new is almost always easier and cheaper (although that doesn’t mean it’s never worth it to repair).
A good example is any electrical or plumbing work in a house. You need to identify the issue, access the problem area, fix the problem, then patch the area back up. This is why repair and maintenance is such a huge part of home ownership.
Sadly as things become more complex and minituraized the ability to repair them also becomes more difficult. You can sometimes cannabilize multiple pieces of electronics to create a functional one, but it’s almost impossible to repair a motherboard/circuitboard for a tv/laptop/electronic. And that’s not even getting into plastics, which are almost impossible to work with after they’ve been finalized for a product.