These fallout shelters have a lifetime* guarantee!

It's a little bit China's fault. Because of competition between the Chinese manufacturers, it's not uncommon for a particular factory to underbid the price, produce exactly the requested good for a while, and then start quietly cheapening the design so that they can finally start making a little money.

It's why, if you're going to manufacture your goods in China, you need to regularly inspect the factories.

But, yes: the other problem is that China makes some cheap things cheaply because that's exactly what they were asked to do.

And let's go one step further: most consumers don't know whether the thing they're buying is durable. Sticking "durable" on the package is dirt-cheap. Actually making durable things is expensive. I'd guess that almost every consumer has, at some point, bought a thing they thought was durable, but it wasn't. Learning whether a product is durable generally takes some decent research about brands and products, and whether a particular brand just got bought by someone who just changed their quality to be much worse. We all have stories about how "X used to be good, but then they started making crap products."

So part of the question is "how durable does the consumer think this product is?" And if the consumer can't know, then you fall back on price again.

Massachusetts has some decent Right To Repair laws, but it's pretty much alone. It's one of the few ways you can get a Tesla repair manual right now: by being a Masshole.