Less expensive can be desirable. And perhaps the market could even find an equilibrium where some people would pay a bit more for appliances to be capital goods with longevity and serviceability and others would prefer the cell phone model.

But instead, when a consumer good becomes less expensive, our federal reserve overlords increase inflation to make sure most everybody is still being "encouraged" to work full time. This is their explicit policy! So we end up with the downsides of cost optimization (cheapness), but not the benefit (actually saving money).