Right—most of our stuff is so very much cheaper, especially relative to wages, than it was even in the 1980s, let alone earlier. Of course we aren't as interested in repairing our stuff, either DIY or paying to have it repaired.

This goes for food, too. Articles about food waste can be read as articles lamenting that food's so cheap it's not worth trying to recover all that waste.

I'm pretty far from a free-market superfan, but these two particular, perennial stories—"can you believe how much food waste there is?! What a tragedy!" and "nobody repairs anything anymore, what a shame"—amount to complaining that shit's way too cheap, to my eye. Neither's due to carelessness or wastefulness or laziness, really, but economy. Quintuple the prices on everything and watch food waste plummet and interest in repair skills achieve levels not seen in decades. But, like... I'd rather we not.