Why Don't We Fix Things Anymore?

It’s not just because we’re lazy

I am not a great fixer of things. When something in the house breaks, I tell my wife there’s no need to call a repair service — I’ll fix it. She gazes at me with love and pity. It’s unlikely the thing will get fixed. I’m stuck between my unwillingness to pay for expensive repairs and my greater unwillingness to suffer through detailed instructions on YouTube. Thus we have a faucet that spins freely without giving water, inset light fixtures that need to be completely replaced, an uninstalled ceiling fan, and a broken sconce with ancient, dangerous wiring. I hereby confess that it’s time to spring for the electrician. It just costs so much.

Our refrigerator broke last year, so we called the repair company. They sent a technician, who commenced to “run diagnostics,” which meant he hooked a computer up to the fridge and pressed a button. He consulted the computer and announced that “it’s no big deal, you just need a software update. Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.”

Pardon me? A software update? For a fridge? Are fridges supposed to have software? Especially software that’s supposed to make the fridge break? The Internet tells me that if a fridge has software it can do all sorts of fancy things, like keep inventory, create shopping lists, or send alerts if the door is left open. I’d be content if it just kept the food cold. No such luck.

New fridges are far more energy efficient than old fridges, but they’re more complicated. Image courtesy of the Sierra Club.

We paid the $350 for the software update, but we only got one more year of life from this cursed fridge. It broke again, and we got a new one for $1,100. That’s the price of fixing the original fridge three times.

Oh, you know what else broke along with the fridge? The dishwasher and oven. In the end we replaced all of them, and swore a vendetta against this company’s appliances, to be pursued pitilessly for a hundred generations. (I won’t name the brand, but let’s just say that this particular company also makes cell phones.)

I had a bigger question concerning the economics of this: why did the cost of repairing the fridge compare so closely with buying a new fridge? Why do we buy new things instead of fixing things?

It’s tempting to go with the Golden Age Fallacy: that things were just better in the old days and people worked harder. That’s the direction that Vox goes in this article: people used to value quality, workmanship, repair, and timelessness. Things are just getting worse, according the Vox.

I don’t buy it. There’s a better answer, rooted in the way prices have changed over time.

Think about the change over time in what it costs to buy something new versus what it costs to fix something. The long-term trend in the prices of goods versus services, as we see in the graph below. (“Goods” are products that you can touch or hold. “Services” are tasks that people do to help each other. Both are products that help fulfill human wants.)

You’ll notice a trend: since 1993, the price of services has increased faster than the price of goods. The prices for services have outpaced inflation, while goods have stayed below the (long-term) inflation rate.¹ The blog Full Stack Economics provides a title for this: “Cheap Goods, Expensive Services.”

What happened? Over time, people have learned how to make lots of stuff more efficiently. This is largely the result of automation and offshoring. It’s easier to make more goods faster. But if you want someone to do a service for you, say, to watch your kids or repair your fridge, they’re no more efficient than they used to be.

This means that as time has gone on, we’ve been able to buy more stuff. Hurray! But it also means that there’s a steeper tradeoff between goods and services. In order to get a service, you have to give up more goods.

This means that our time has gotten more valuable. That’s good for people who sell services (they get paid more). It also gives us a reason to buy replacements rather than fix things. It’s more cost-effective to throw things out than to hire an expensive repair technician or to do it yourself.

There’s an important lesson for our personal finances here. Every day, we’re enticed to buy stuff. Over time, that stuff has gotten relatively cheaper, and easier to buy. Why are our houses full of clutter? A major reason is that we can actually afford it more than we used to. We can actually fit more TVs, electronic devices, food, clothing, and so forth into our budgets than people did in 1990.

But beware! The moment you need to pay for a service – an electrician, plumber, therapist, cosmetologist, doctor, or lawyer, you’re suddenly faced with costs you weren’t ready for. (My lawyer friend has a t-shirt that reads “talk is cheap, unless you’re talking to a lawyer.”)²

It doesn’t mean we’re poorer than we were in 1990; it means that our tradeoffs have changed. On any given day, you have to say “no” to more goods in order to be able to say “yes” to the same number of services. The relatively low price of phones, toys, and clothing makes you think that you can afford them. Until you can’t.

Then you find yourself shelling out $350 for your fridge’s software update.

1. What about inflation? The inflation rate in this graph is represented (more or less) by “average hourly wages.” The lines above wages have had higher price increases than the inflation rate. Products that are below wages have gone up less than inflation. This graph misses the nasty bout of inflation we’ve had since 2021. But the point stands, since this is about the long-run relationship of some products to others.

2. What about K-12 teacher pay? It’s well known that teachers aren’t paid enough, hence the “teacher shortage.” It’s not actually a teacher shortage; it’s a shortage at the salary that state governments are willing to pay. State governments must increase teacher pay if they want it to keep pace with comparable services.