I'm not sure how we can get back to the previous balance. Fundamentally, the cost of an item is a combination of materials and labor to manufacture (setting IP

I'm not sure how we can get back to the previous balance. Fundamentally, the cost of an item is a combination of materials and labor to manufacture (setting IP issues aside). Goods are now much cheaper compared to repair labor because automation has dramatically reduced the amount of manufacturing labor required. To make things cheaper to repair than to buy, we'd need to either make them artificially more expensive (thus making them unavailable to many people) or make repair cost a pittance. Since troubleshooting and repair is inherently less automatable than manufacturing, the only way to significantly reduce the cost of repair is to pay people much less for repairs. And then who will want to do repairs for you?