It's not forced on you. If you do a minimal amount of research (which LLMs are very helpful with!), you can still find durable stuff. A Speed Queen washer is still built like a tank. It's just that the less durable stuff is absurdly cheap now. /r/BuyItForLife/ is a decent place to hang out if you care.

If you really like to argue semantics, OK, nobody put a gun to my head and said: "Here, buy this washing machine that will break just two weeks after its meagre two years of warranty, or I blow your head off!". Fine. But it is, shall we say, strongly encouraged with marketing and it makes sure those less quality products are always the most prominent. Happened to me and many acquaintances with extended families.

Thanks for the Reddit link. I'll absolutely use it.

And I disagree it's a minimal amount of research but maybe I'll come around. There are things that were trivial to research indeed, some -- very hard.