If most of your interaction with Americans has been centered around the tech industry, then I can totally see you coming to this conclusion. Tech is largely mad

If most of your interaction with Americans has been centered around the tech industry, then I can totally see you coming to this conclusion. Tech is largely made up of people from urban areas, who didn't grow up around people who worked on vehicles. Many of those people also don't have extended family outside the cities. That's not everyone, of course, but it's far more common in tech than HVAC for instance. My dad worked as an agriculture teacher for 30 years. He's now retired, and has a 40x120 shop building on his property that I have access to whenever I need it. As a result, I drive a 35-year-old GMC pickup. Before that, I had a 25-year-old Jeep that I'd driven since ~2012. Even with the necessary skills, I had a very difficult time performing basic maintenance on my Jeep when I lived in a city. My apartment complex didn't even allow oil changes on the property, and there were no garages around that I could rent space from. I ended up doing a lot of stuff in the parking lot of the auto parts store near me - from oil changes to replacing the entire rear axle at one point. The police were called on me from passers-by multiple times, to the point that they knew me by name. Bear in mind, that's with the permission of the shop. In short, urban America is fairly hostile to DIY.