Buyers aren’t idiots, and they know it. An appliance retailer near me ran ads reminding consumers that the expected life of a dishwasher is five years. A salesperson in a big-box store told me the same thing about a refrigerator. Five years. That framing is absurd. My grandmother’s first dishwasher lasted over fifty. Her fridge too. Pretending modern buyers should accept radically shorter lifespans (plainly for their own gain) is condescension, not realism. And buyers feel it. Here are the...