I know people get frustrated with broken appliances and electronics, but I feel like once you look at the forces involved it seems fairly obvious that it'll happen:
* Environmental regulations require additional or more complicated systems - which adds points of failure (IE: Variable-speed motor controllers, Exhaust Gas Recycling, etc). They also require other changes - like using lightweight plastics where metals would have been used previously. Plastic fan blades crack, metal ones don't.
* Consumers, on the whole, only care about price and features. Those are tangible. Some people care about things like maintainability and longevity - but they make up a tiny, insignificant fraction of consumers. Thus, companies optimize for price - even if it comes at the cost of longevity. Any company that doesn't quickly loses market share to global competition from dozens of others that are more than willing to make that sacrifice and offer a better deal.
Those two factors explain everything about why modern appliances fail the way they do.
* Environmental regulations require additional or more complicated systems - which adds points of failure (IE: Variable-speed motor controllers, Exhaust Gas Recycling, etc). They also require other changes - like using lightweight plastics where metals would have been used previously. Plastic fan blades crack, metal ones don't.
* Consumers, on the whole, only care about price and features. Those are tangible. Some people care about things like maintainability and longevity - but they make up a tiny, insignificant fraction of consumers. Thus, companies optimize for price - even if it comes at the cost of longevity. Any company that doesn't quickly loses market share to global competition from dozens of others that are more than willing to make that sacrifice and offer a better deal.
Those two factors explain everything about why modern appliances fail the way they do.