One country that has always fascinated me is Japan. I've always wondered how can people there possibly afford all the newest gadgets and technology that is coming out. While a country I admire is Vietnam. In Vietnam they never buy anything new, instead they always just repair old things. And it's not just repairmen, everybody can do it. More than once I saw ordinary people repair something that I wouldn't even have the first idea how to get started on fixing it.
Taiwan was a country like Vietnam, but over time is becoming more and more like Japan, much to my dismay. There used to be a plethora of repair shops of all kinds around the city, and lots of second hand stores which repair old gadgets and sell them. However those are really dying out as Taiwan becomes a culture where not only do you just buy a new one when it's broken, but you just buy a new thing when it comes out, regardless if you have a working older model at home.
As for how they can afford this, well this is tricky. Yes the cost of living has gone up while salaries have gone down. However with people living with their families until marriage or even after, they have much more disposable income. Of course the flip side of this is if they don't live with their family than they can barely afford rent and food, let alone a cell phone.
The death of repairs is quite disheartening for me. I'm always a person who wants to get the most out of something, and won't just get rid of it if it has some tiny problem. Which often means that people always ask me why I don't buy a new one. It's an ok question if they are offering to pay for it.
I get this question a lot with my TV which you can see has several scratches on it. I used to have a nice big TV which when it broke I would get repaired, however even after being only a few years old it stop being able to be repaired because with the decline in repairs, there stopped being parts. So the picture above is of my current TV that as you can see has several scratches on it. These are because it's an old TV that a friend's family replaced when their toddler scratched it up.
Which I guess is the only benefit from all of this. Because there are no longer repairs, and since people don't like to buy second hand things, you can sometimes get people's old things. Mainly because with all the trash laws, it's quite difficult to throw away electronics, especially large ones, in Taiwan.
