That falls under politics. We have gotten away from building quality repairable goods in the USA, and moved to cheap disposable foreign goods.
How many times do you grab a paper plate because your to lazy to wash a dish. The last few generations have never known any other way.
Consumerism has been an issue since the 70's.
I've watched this happening for a while now. Our kids don't understand why we take so long researching products before we buy them... Youngest asked me once if what I did was to find a product, buy it and then keep it for life.
His face almost fell off when I said "YES!"!
Electronics manufacturers not bothering to install a 25 cent fuse to protect a thousand dollar tv doesn't make sense... too expensive for them.
Meanwhile, designed to fail, nonservicable electronics with next to nothing wrong with them filling up our oceans and landfills.
We just produce more. More tv's, more polution, more waste, more debt for us, more profit for "them".
I do things differently than others, no doubt.
I fear when I die, my tools will be sent to the landfill too.
Our youngest plays a video game for hours a day where he plants, grows digital f'ing potatos!!!
Its consumerism but the issues are deeper in society and in greed.
Do we really still believe that the bearings in our 1:1 cars can ONLY wear out EVERY 12kmiles???
They are shipped without enough grease. Not no grease, just not enough for them to actually function as designed.
Our whole world is set up to fail in the same manor, for the same greedy reasons.
We keep poisoning our environment, our world for what exactly?
The fact that we still make low quality, low grade ANYTHING is a pretty good indication of the wastefulness of our society.