And also, if anyone actually reads the page linked - just below his post you can see a reply from an appliance repair shop, stating that they repair about 1500 refrigerators a year, and they see maybe one compressor failure a year - further stating that modern compressors, even with their shitty design, are still the most reliable part that will outlast the rest of the applience by a mile.

And yeah, I agree with them actually - there's no way 1950s compressors had such low failure rates.

I do recall seeing an american ad for some oven brand from the 50s, where the leaflet advertised that an average consumer shouldn't expect to repair it more than 2-3 times in a 5 year period - and that was advertised as a selling point!