I think hardware companies are especially bad at this. When I was young my parents had a colour TV that was 25 years old before they replaced it. Even then it still worked perfectly fine, they just wanted to get a flat screen that took up less room. Now it seems you are expected to replace TVs every couple of years...
Designed failure is clearly a central part of how capitalism presently works for the capitalists - virtually everything I've repaired [domestically] of late has had a tiny part that seemed engineered to fail and take down the whole device.
Case in point - my dad's kettle, the push button to open the lid broke. The tiny plastic lever in the internals that was the ultimate problem had been moulded with material from the pivot removed. There's no way it wasn't designed to fail within a short time period. Add back that plastic or otherwise reinforce that pivot and it would likely work for several more years.
Another example, microwaves: I bought two new, [admittedly] relatively bottom end, microwaves consecutively. Both appeared to fail due to the cyclotron, neither part was available to buy. So instead I got my parent's old microwave from the 1980s. It really pained me to get rid of those new shiny stainless steel boxes, made so attractive to the eye, in favour of the beige-and-brown monstrosity with the working internals.
if you want gear that can last and stand up to heavy use, buy professional kitchen equipment from restaurant stores. plastic consumer stuff is always cheaply built because they compete on price.
