They really didn't last forever. Survivors bias is all. They broke, just more permanently then others.

this is simple. apart from legit improvements like efficiency (for example pwm motors in heat pumps), those markets will eventually saturate over a business region. but stocks must go up.

I remember when I was in uni, living on-campus in a student dorm. Living conditions were not great, the rooms were small and they stuffed 3 or 4 guys in each room. We each had a bed, a chair, a tiny wardrobe, a shelf and half a desk. No fridge. Each fall, when we got back to school, there was an effervescent market for old used refrigerators. Everybody was buying and selling fridges for the first 1 or 2 weeks. One year we bought a 50 year old Zil fridge made in the USSR in the 60's. We paid like €10 for it. It was heavy as hell and we had to carry it up the stairs to the 4th floor. The thing made a loud, continuous buzzing which helped drown out one of our colleague's thunderous snoring. We loved it. I don't remember what happened to it or who got to keep it after we disbanded, but I'm sure it still works.

Sadly the old disc world Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness boot theory applies.

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness."

Built to outlast the owner.

When my parents were kids, their home-ec class consisted of repeatedly hammering into their heads to cook meat at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or else they'd get sick because the refrigeration was so unreliable

Golden age revisionism is a comforting illusion that edits out the past’s flaws and distorts reality; it becomes dangerous when it shapes decisions based on nostalgia instead of truth.

Those 1980s fridges for ex lacked ice makers and water filtration, used far more energy due to inefficient design, struggled with consistent temperatures that spoiled food faster, often required manual defrosting, and had poor seals that let cold air escape and raised costs.

Golden age revisionism is the chief tactic of blow hard Republicans. Ever hear, make America great....again?

My modern fridge automatically defrost itself and has an incredibly silent compressor. More than once I forgot to close the freezer door correctly and still it's not covered in ice on the inside. It uses so little energy into its day to day operation.

My modern drier has a heat pump built in to effeciently heat the air. It also detects how long it needs to run to get my clothes to the perfect dryness.

My modern dishwasher has a heat exchanger system to retain the heat from the dirty water to warm the fresh water. This saves energy.

Modern devices maybe have their problems. Sometimes with cheaper components or worse repairability. But don't pretend like the only innovation we had over the years was to add wifi to your appliances.

Survivorship bias. All the ones that broke aren't around anymore.

^as said by somebody who never had to replace the motor on their washer, or the burned on their range, or the belt on their dryer, or the elements in the water heater...

The reason they always worked forever was because your dad bought replacement parts from the appliance repair store and didn't complain to you about it.

This is literally one of the top 3 good things about YouTube

You mean those things that are 10x less efficient?

I too can build a wooden box that will last you multiple lifetimes. But it won't keep your food cold.

Yep. Have four of those type. Occasionally, once a decade or so, I have to maintain em. But otherwise I milk em. Like cows.

Admittedly, the timer of my old microwave isn't reliable anymore, since it's spring got weak. But it would be easy to fix, if i get to it sometime. Staring at a screen has higher priority.

Edit: typo

Ah, the good old days when your "dumb" refrigerator would kill children playing hide and seek because the latch wouldn't open from the inside. When it was lined with asbestos because that's literally the best insulation that exists excepting aerogel. When the mercury thermostat would fail—leaking mercury on to your food (and aerosolizing some which would be breathed in as soon as you opened it)—and it would freeze everything inside, complete with an interior wall of snow that could take days to defrost. It used old school freon, destroying the ozone layer. Or before then, fun highly toxic gasses like methyl chloride!

Those were the days! When a breeze through the house on a day with wonderful weather could blow out the pilot light in your oven, slowly leaking gas into your house, exploding and destroying the entire home late at night while everyone is asleep.

Then the wonders of electricity came along to produce ovens that were hooked up to 220V lines without a grounding wire, and wiring that would slowly fail over time, eventually making contact with the metal frame, electrocuting anyone who touched the device—or anyone that touched the person touching it.

Ovens were built different "back in the day"! They didn't have anti-tip brackets, resulting in loads of children sitting on the oven door, spilling boiling liquids down upon them.

The best were those old washing machines, though! You could lift up the lid and look inside to see your laundry spinning at high speeds! Just don't reach your hand in, or you could find out what the term "degloving" means.

Ah yes, the good old days of appliances.