I've had pretty good luck with appliances as well, but that does not mean they can’t be improved. Then came the purchase of my top-of-the-line dishwasher. I bought it because it was relatively silent. It stopped working after 4 years. The repairman replaced the motor ($500) and the DW died a year later, the control board failed. After some calls, the repair guys all said it would not pay to repair it. They claimed most of the new dishwashers were junk. Buy the cheapest and plan to replace it every four years. We have chosen to do without.

--

Slick design often makes appliances difficult and expensive to repair. If a similar amount of engineering went into ease of repair, we'd be better off. As it is now, we seldom repair we replace and ship the old to the landfill.

--

Paradise on Earth? Hardly. But if we continue to do things the same old way we will destroy our own habitat. No other living creature is stupid enough to do that. But rest assured there will be no change. The human epitaph will read: “We thought about doing something to save the Earth, but we could never figure out how to make a profit from it—so, in the end, we did nothing.”