I don't buy the survivorship bias thing for the most part. My mother has her original dryer, washer, deep freezer, and refrigerator all running at her house. These are all 40+ years old except for the washer which is probably 30ish years old. Also her furnace + water heater are 40 years old. If it was survivorship bias some of these appliances would've died.
Are you saying that none of their original appliances have died?
If not, do you realize that you claiming
" If it was survivorship bias some of these appliances would've died."
When "these" refers exclusively to those who haven't died is the very definition of survivorship bias?
I think he's saying Mom would have definitely remembered if she had had to replace every darn appliance in her house every 2-5 years, the way we do now, before eventually lucking out to find the one good washer, dryer, dishwasher, etc. made in their respective years.
I think a washer died around 35 years ago and her current washer is 35 years old. It seems improbable that so many 40+ year old appliances survived in one home if reliability rates or ease of repair were not significantly better in the past.
You're completely right. Things also usually had a warranty longer than the nearly-universal 365-day warranty they have now. It's utterly disgusting to me that you can purchase a refrigerator -- an item which weighs like 800 pounds, has a huge amount of metal in it, and which everyone would agree would be insane to be a yearly purchase, and yet if it needs even an average repair 13 months from purchase, it can easily cost more to fix than the replacement cost and thus be totaled.
In my opinion, any device whose manufacture requires an amount of resources approaching "large appliance" levels should be required to have a 10-year parts and labor warranty. I don't care if that makes them cost more. I hope it makes them cost more. It's insane the way it is.
n = 1 is not a great sample size for analyzing long-term trends with multiple factors (purchase price, maintenance/treatment of applicances, environment, etc)
They're name brand appliances, kenmore and whirlpool while the deep freezer is a revco. They don't look like top of the line models, probably just whatever was mid grade at the time. I thought about telling her to throw them away due to power usage but used a kill-a-watt to determine it wasn't worth it. I think the fridge and freezer each cost around $25/year to run.
