What bothers me about the short lifetime of things now isn't things like clothes, and cookwear, because those are easy to replace if they have issues. It is "infrastructure" items, like light switches, and plumbing parts. We had a leaking shower valve in our previous house, just dripped sometimes, but it would have cost hundreds of dollars to swap out because we would have either had to replace the shower enclosure or cut a hole in the wall in the back, unsolder the $10 valve, solder in a new one, replace the wallboard, and repaint the wall, if not the bathroom, to get it to match. Requiring both a plumber (I've tried doing plumbing soldering, and I'm not satisfied with the reliability of my joints) and someone to do drywall/painting (similarly with the drywall and my ability to finish it properly). A $20 valve could have lasted another decade or two. We've been told the "designer" faucets costing close to $1000 have the same $10 insides as the cheap ones, where are ones built to last?
Same deal when our well pump failed, as the well guy was putting in a new one he said "By the way, this pump won't last as long as the one I just pulled out." Great, so a company saved a couple hundred dollars making the pump, which we would have happily paid, so we could pay $1500 to get it replaced ten years earlier, as well as having another unexpected failure.
We did at least find out about a concrete bottomed water heater from our local utility company, so we wouldn't have the bottom of a cheap Home Depot one rust out and flood our finished basement unexpectedly and have to pay hundreds of dollars every 8-10 years instead of every 20-30 years for a plumber to replace it.