If consumers are still buying it they'll keep making it. Shops stock the new products because they're the ones people buy most of. Take food waste for example, it's the height of fashion to demonise the supermarkets, so they get all the blame, but 70% of all food waste is in the home and just 2% in the supermarket. Nobody's forcing idiots to buy more than they can eat.
Yet if you look at the supermarkets assortiment now, it's looks very different from 20 years ago, they changed product offerings and consumers had no other choice then to buy or go to an other store. But also if i go to a supermarket here the choice is basically between making from scratch or buy ready meals. If you look at a dutch or german or Belgian supermarket there is an whole layer in between with food that isn't a ready meal but isn't raw either. It is available in supermarkets here the offering is just much smaller. and that also makes the demand lower, so no i don't agree with the statement ''it's consumers fault there is an lack of choice'' you could only safely state that if for example Tesco changes all of its stores to offer more what i dutch store offers and then people start avoiding it. But i don't think that is what happens if they would do that, long term poeple would change their buying habbits.
I'm not into bashing anything but, 70% of home food waste is sill a whole other number then 2% of supermarkets, supermarkets also have more options to sell their food waste before it becomes food waste. I know Marks and Spencers sells there unselleble meat to some company that still does things with it. And the reduced aisles are an other way both of reducing their loss and reducing their waste.
Edited to add, what i really mean to say is if people don't value their food it also gets thrown away much easier, if you spend hours makng it it's harder to bin then just having spend a few pounds on it and having to drop it in the microwave to make it.
There aren't any software locks on fitted kitchens, sofas, fridges, clothes, they all get thrown away just because they're out of fashion.
Clothing and sofa's agreed, Appliances, Sadly you're wrong, things like washing machines, fridges etc. have software in term these days and need software updates to tell it you replaced a pump for example. Only the manufacutrer has this software, so if the mechanic they send plays ball you are at least 70£ are something in just for them to turn up, more likely they refuse to authorize a part you installed so you're forced to pay them to supply and install the part.
A other trick is part availability for example if i need to replace the bearings on my machine, bearings itself cost under £10 in general but the manufacurer doesn't sell these, they only sell you the whole drum, making repair uneconomical for most machines.
Economic Growth
The growth that makes everyone richer also makes labour more expensive, but the automation that generated the growth when applied to production can't be as readily applied to repair, because automation requires repeating the same task many times, and each repair is unique. That means that it gets cheaper and cheaper to buy new, but more and more expensive to repair, so the longer we keep chasing growth the more products will become uneconomical to repair.
That is only true if new devices are developed to become obsolete within a few years, if devices, appliances and cars are developed to be serviced and be able to be repaired they are not at all more expensive to repair, it's just that giant companies makes less money because people can last longer with their devices. there will always be those who replace their device after a few years but the fast majority doesn't do that unless they are forced.
Miniaturisation
Small products sell, but if you want repairable you need reversible manufacturing techniques, and they militate against miniaturisation. Integrated circuits use less space than discrete circuits, glued is stronger and more compact than screwed, etc, etc. It irritates me intensely that I can't unplug the battery from my new laptop now it's knackered, but pluggable uses more space. You could unplug a valve from a telly, but you can't unsolder one of the billion transistors in a microprocessor. Microprocessors are also a lot cheaper than wiring up a billion valves.
Well making devices smaller has it's pros and it's cons but if we look into the niche markets, for example framework laptops, fairphone, Cmf phone, we see that it is possible to make devices that are repairable and small.
Btw it's still possible to replace or unplug the battery on your laptops if it's built in you just have to remove the cover. But i share your frustration on that matter, it's again something that benefits the manufacutrer more then the consumer.
on the matter of intergrated circuit on laptops, to be honest if you looked at the priced last time we still had replaceable cpu's (roughly up to the third generation of I3/5/7) it wasn't that economical. but it agree having the option removed it worse still.
The throwaway society is a product of economic growth, miniaturisation, and status competition.
No it's a product of greed and a side product that can develop as part of economic growth, in the 80 and 90'' it was for more coming to repair your own eletronics and therefore manufacurers would also supply manuals that who explain how to open and device and such.
In the car industry that is still common and that has lead to it's own economy with afermarket parts brands improvements etc.
Organic food is more expensive because it costs more to produce. It could be and should be cross subsidised by taxes on the unhealthy stuff but it isn't because consumers won't vote for it.
It's because we use only a very small percentage of available farm land in the world that happens to be owned by a few big corporations, if we would use modern techniques to maximize farming output not only could a country like the uk(and even a tiny country like The Netherlands) be self sustainable but also we would have much cheaper organic food because it does have to travel that far. But it hurts the profits of those who lobby in the uk and EU. and that why we see fewer farmer instead of more see policy's that make the life of farmers harder instead of easier but benefit said massive companies, because they drop a few millions for ''emission offset'' that they later rebate from the taxman and the person behind the desk in the UK or EU sees numbers that show they are cleaner then the farmer on the corner. But it is of course all made up.
Would this be mobile phones you have in mind? I worked in radio design, so I know a bit about it, but my employers made equipment for the professional market not the consumer market. We weren't churning about a new model every couple of years, because there was no need for it, professional customers make decisions on factors like necessity, performance, economics, reliability, serviceability, etc, not fashion.
No, yes mobiles phones are an good example both of how user can defy modern technology and blockages if it has an open source system. For example the Samsung Galaxy S4 still get updates from the open source community(so they can run relatively modern android) just as many Pixel devices we are talking about 10 year old phones.
But blocking devices made obsolete because of hardware limitations we see everywhere, i have a cycle light from Vodaphone that doesn't work either becasue vodaphone dropped support, i'm now trying to edit the installer so it just ignores the sim card part.(as it blocks the light from working completely)
And we have many devices these days that do not wrok anymore because they need to connect online for whatever reason and then the company that makes them goes bust.
I have routers where i install open source router os-es on(like openwrt/dd-wrt etc.) on and then i sell them on, without these systems they are useless and outdated but with this system you extent their lifespan as it does not have the limitations of removing features because the company wants to make a premium or basic model.(or just replace it with an new model every 2 months) and they are updated and thus secured.
I already give some examples above of other apliances sadly we live in a world where repairing device gets harder and harder.
I agree that coorperate devices are much better, well agree i understand you're sharing your experience, i'm just adding that my experience is the same, if i need to replace my laptop i rather buy i used bussiness laptop then a new off the shelf at tesco. With laptop you either need and bussiness laptop or an top end gaming laptop if you want some decent quality.
