Related, thinking out loud:

Why is the following timeline counterfactual (as far as I know) for basically all household appliances:

  1. it was invented
  2. it was commercialized
  3. some decades of varying modes of specialization, advancement, innovation
  4. reach technological maturity/saturation
  5. open source designs with idiot-proof manuals emerge
  6. everyone uses the open source versions
  7. maybe a freelancer market emerges
  8. it's no longer commercially viable
  9. it becomes a near-zero-cost improvement on the baseline human condition
  10. focus on new technology

The hopeful view (IMO) is that we're just at a point historically where things like washing machines and refrigerators are still at step 4 and people like me are starting to wonder why we're not further down the road? In 10-20 years maybe we'll be at 6 or 7?

The cynical view (IMO) is that the capitalist system operates by pulling a bait and switch on the average consumer. As technology becomes commercially viable, we use the slack it creates to pump everyone full of skittles and pretty little liars and then sell refrigerator-television-vending-machine appliances until the Decadent Society collapses under its own weight.

Maybe a more moderate view (IMO) is that it's naive to think that everyone could possibly have the time or desire to maintain their own refrigerators? FWIW My take on this particular view is that we should be trying to develop a society where it's not naive, where the average human stands on top of centuries of innovation rather than cocooned inside of it.

/idk