The main problem is that people want relatively cheap stuff, and that cheap stuff is made with cheap parts that don’t last as long.

That’s a problem, but these days the new problem is that even the expensive stuff is often still cheaply made and just dressed up with “premium” features and styling (that’s also cheap to implement, but artificially withheld from the lower-end models to punish people who pay less).

You can absolutely still get reliable appliances that are cheap to repair.

If you look hard enough, yes, but the other issue is that the shit I described above sells for the same price as quality but costs less to make, which means the glorified trash is more profitable. Even when companies care about their long-term reputation and don’t succumb to that pressure to enshittify, they’ll be out-competed by those that do and eventually go bankrupt or get bought out by private equity and forced to do it anyway. The market is littered with examples of companies that had great reputations for “buy it for life” products, until all of a sudden they didn’t anymore.