As someone who is adept at electronic repair, I am absolutely certain that it's overwhelmingly because of high labour costs. I fix my own stuff for the fun of it, but there's no way I'd do it for a living because there are just much better uses of those skills in the modern economy. Just look at the prices for old electronics on eBay or Facebook Marketplace - unless the item is very recent, repair doesn't offer good value to the owner or a viable margin for a recycler.
People used to darn holes in their socks, but that's an eccentric hobby in a world where you can buy perfectly good socks for less than $1 a pair.
It's still a factor in the developing world. Those awful scenes of e-waste being melted down for scrap in open pits are symptomatic of the fact that a lot of devices just aren't worth fixing or dismantling for spare parts, even at third-world labour rates.
Manufacturing is heavily automated, which is the reason why you can buy a toaster or a clock radio for less than $10; without massive advances in robotics and AI, the only similarly automated end-of-life solution for those items involves a shredder and a furnace. Here in the EU, the manufacturer is responsible for bearing the end-of-life costs for electronic devices, but it doesn't really change the economics.
People used to darn holes in their socks, but that's an eccentric hobby in a world where you can buy perfectly good socks for less than $1 a pair.
It's still a factor in the developing world. Those awful scenes of e-waste being melted down for scrap in open pits are symptomatic of the fact that a lot of devices just aren't worth fixing or dismantling for spare parts, even at third-world labour rates.
Manufacturing is heavily automated, which is the reason why you can buy a toaster or a clock radio for less than $10; without massive advances in robotics and AI, the only similarly automated end-of-life solution for those items involves a shredder and a furnace. Here in the EU, the manufacturer is responsible for bearing the end-of-life costs for electronic devices, but it doesn't really change the economics.