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Originally Posted by Brutha  If a company build a product in such a way that it breaks before the lifetime is up, why should the buyer pay for the new product? Wouldn't it more reasonable that the company pays for the new product? |
If I understand you correctly, then this reasoning doesn't work because it requires someone (like the government) to decide what the lifetime of an product is. For instance let's say that the lifetime of shoes is decided to be five years by the government. One company makes low quality cheap shoes, and another one makes high quality expensive shoes. The expensive shoes last the whole five years due to being high quality, but the cheap ones get worn out multiple times during the five years. If the cheap shoe company had to replace the pair of shoes every year for five years, it would provide absolutely no incentive to make the cheap shoes. Thus only expensive ones would be available. Next thing of course the government would have to do is set a maximum price on shoes (so the poor can afford them), making the shoe industry unprofitable and killing it.
In other words, you can't set a universal lifetime for a product because its lifetime depends on its quality. And its quality depends on its price. There must always be cheap and expensive alternatives available so that there's something everyone can afford. Also, someone mentioned that for tech products it usually doesn't make sense to fix them due to the rate of innovation. For instance if you have a VCR that breaks, you'll probably want to get a newer one or a DVD player instead. It also doesn't make much sense to fix computers after a few years. Some computer parts like hard drives can't be repaired at all.