I used to hang out in the back of one of those repair shops, so I remember what they were repairing. There were through-hole components and chips with pin mounts, most armatures were pot metal.

If you looked inside a TV now, you'd see mostly surface mount components, and molded plastic armatures.

There's just not as much to repair anymore, things either work or they don't. I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm saying there was no conspiracy to drive repair shops out of business, just a general switch to more reliable (yes, more reliable) electronics, which happen to also be less repairable.

White goods are a different story, things like washing machines have been built in an increasingly cynical fashion.

You'd be surprised, I think, just how much can be fixed by indie shops still... Louis Rossmann [1] is pretty well-known around here since he documents everything, but if you watch, he's replacing capacitors that are fractions of the size of a grain of rice on Macbooks all day long.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBAZCUShuU4

> reliable (yes, more reliable) electronics, which happen to also be less repairable.

Why not both?

Who paid congress to destroy TV repair businesses? What did congress do to destroy them?

I don't think it's the throwaway culture; it's amazing to me that we have a society that doesn't see a problem with not understanding the concept of "repair" in general.

People legitimately think that repairing something means to just replace it. People think this.