In fact, in "shithole countries" where everyone wants to emigrate from, it is exactly the opposite: i.e. you try to fix everything even if it takes sooo long.
And the reason people want to leave certain countries is for totally different reasons than not wanting to repair something. In fact, I would say with quite some certainty that emigrees who repaired first before leaving would still do it after emigrating.
The real reasons, in my opinion, are: 1) it takes skill and will to repair something yourself, 2) something new generally feels better than repaired/used, 3) logistics make replacing/repairing less cost efficient, 4) with every replace, companies have a new touchpoint to try to upsell their customers, 5) it takes less time to go to a shop and replace than repair, 6) it takes some giving a shit about the environment to prefer the more complicated route. And probably more.
The reason almost nobody in first-world countries is getting their microwave repaired is because it often costs more than buying a new one. This is because the new unit is manufactured overseas in a place with cheap labor, but the existing unit has to be repaired locally with expensive labor.
Of course people aren't emigrating because they don't want to repair things. But they are often emigrating because they want to live in a place with high labor costs (i.e. high salaries), or for other reasons that are very strongly correlated with high labor costs.
Unless, you have businesses fighting for it to be repaired by making the microwave schematics impossible to find, the casing stupidly hard to open, etc. If you then have that a repair part is impossible to be found then of course only the truly motivated will attempt (and sometimes succeed).
Example: a friend bought an ebike with a bosch motor. Something happened and it stopped working. Now the only thing that is possible to be done with it, due to how the system has been constructed, it's to have it replaced by warranty and/or insurance. This is because there are locks on the battery that prevents it from being removed to safely analyse the system, the engine is covered by one piece that makes its opening borderline impossible, etc.
On the other hand, I have a top of the line ebike motor (Tosheng) that can be fully opened, its firmware modified and schematics and parts can be easily found online. That meant that when another friend had his motor break down, he could open it, see that it was only a gear that failed and replaced it for less than $10, he only needed to unscrew a coupleof screws to see what happened. With the world we are moving towards, the company would make you throw away the WHOLE bike instead of changing a broken gear.
Appliance repair might be a dying art but car repair is common. You can look there to see what simple tasks might actually cost. Something like installing new tires is probably comparable. It's not outrageously expensive but it's also not anything like ten cents.
1. The waste is still a tremendous shame, both in the materials that will realistically never be recovered in 'recycling', and in the toxicity that results from a lot of that trash created.
2. Jobs in repairing lots of things were arguably pretty good jobs, and we've traded these for, best case, more complete drudgery retailing/supply chain jobs as we get a new laptop every year or two instead of 5 years. Arguably a bigger failing of our economic system, which doesn't seem capable of adapting to global trade, or this shift we're discussing here, nor AI, but still a bummer regardless of fault.
It requires specialized and local labor. For products you can ship back to the assembly line, this can sometimes work. If you need a local technician, on the other hand, because the assembly line is in China or the product is heavy, yeah, it very well may be that there is no niche where repairs aren’t a material fraction of a new product.
Given the right guidance and difficulty level, I would enjoy fixing things in my washing machine.
I think in abundant society people would be able to have nice things and the time to take care of them.
No, it's the exact opposite, because the consumer is on the hook for the purchase price as well as any repair costs.
Labor is an input too. Fixing something in a way that saves some materials, but requires hours of skilled labor and specialized equipment doesn't straightforwardly mean you're saving overall.