My washing machine started making weird loud noises recently. Had a repair guy come by and he told me it's the plastic gears in the gearcase wearing down. I asked him what it would cost to repair and he said with parts and labor it would be cheaper to buy a new one. He told me to just keep using it and deal with the noise until it stops working, so that's what I'm doing. When the time comes I'm considering paying $150 for the new gearcase and trying to fix it myself, but it's so stupid to that it's come to this

Parts wear out. Things break. That's normal.

The rose-tinted era of things being made to last never really happened. For each of the old survivor washing mashines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and Casiotron wrist watches that are still out there doing good work, countless thousands of others were recycled or landfilled because it was better to buy something different than to fix the old one.

It was never cheap to pay someone to work on stuff. The costs of hiring professional labor and the overhead associated with that labor (for service techs, that means things like vehicles, buildings, inventory, tools, training, insurance, book keeping, and covering next week's paycheck even if this week was slow) have always been expensive.

Parts have always been relatively expensive, too. Availability of parts has always been somewhat hit-or-miss.

It seems like an unpopular opinion, but I don't think it came to this. Instead, I think that it started off this way, and that it simply remains this way today.

So, sure: $150 for a new widget? Not so bad. Maybe a pro could get it done in a few hours (maybe they can even get two of them done in one workday!), while perhaps it will take you a day or two to work through R&Ring this thing on your own for the first time.

Whether the total investment (including time) is worth it to you is a personal decision, but that kind of decision-making is also not new. :)