One way I heard efficiency described is the idea of a race car falling apart at the end of a race, doing its job in the most efficient manner as possible.
Of course, this is pretty much inadvisable in every day life. We need some 'inefficiency' to ensure that our stuff won't break apart at the wrong time.
But otoh, this kind of efficiency is probably the reason why washing machines and other household items are now breaking sooner than before ("planned" obsolescence)
But even if I want to spend more, how will I know I am no spending more on inefficient stuff like a touchscreen on my fridge? Spending more money is sadly not equal to better quality, but I don't know what designates it.
In my experience, getting a couple of years old used premium item (which used to be like double the price) for the same price of a new consumer item is always a good idea for example for Notebooks.
Compared to new plastic consumer class crap, older premium dell notebooks have excellent usability, they last forever and you can even throw them around without worrying about their metal outer layer breaking.
The downside is that they might look ugly for some people.
Also most people I recommended this, dismissed the idea, because buying stuff used were somehow unthinkable for them?
Is there? How strong? Out of that $100 how much of extra weeks of usage will I get and with what confidence level?
Also - Is it affected by the level of hardness in the local water and my patterns of usage ajd types of detergent I use? Does additional reliability affect any other parameters like energy and water usage?
In a multi-variable comparison like this it is impossible to say much about future past 5 years with much certainty, while the price is single biggest objective metric.
Well, in some ways it a rational choice by consumers: often times the newer product is does the job better, is quieter, using less resources.
Supposedly it's one of the reasons why homes (but not land) tend to depreciate in Japan: newer structures meet newer, higher safety standards. When you live in an active earthquake zone (also: typhoons), why wouldn't you want one that takes in account the seismic developments of the previous thirty years (generally how often rebuilds are done)?
It's all very well to say to it'd be nice for appliances to last longer, which isn't a 'wrong' statement, but looking at the efficiency gains over the last 20-30 years is quite remarkable.
We may now be hitting diminishing returns, so perhaps should turn to durability more, but it's not like buying new didn't get you anything in recent years.
there's a time horizon attached to efficiency that needs to be considered. Sometimes this time horizon is not explicitly examined, but is just assumed.
For the case of a racing car, if the engineers were told to design it with maximum efficiency possible, and it only has to last the race, then yes, why not have it break and fall apart at the end, if doing so means it runs at a very high efficiency?
F1 engines used to last only one race, 2 hours max. Now there is a rule that max 4 engines can be used per season, resulting in engine life of 20 hours or so.
Of course, this is pretty much inadvisable in every day life. We need some 'inefficiency' to ensure that our stuff won't break apart at the wrong time.