Less expensive can be desirable. And perhaps the market could even find an equilibrium where some people would pay a bit more for appliances to be capital goods with longevity and serviceability and others would prefer the cell phone model.
But instead, when a consumer good becomes less expensive, our federal reserve overlords increase inflation to make sure most everybody is still being "encouraged" to work full time. This is their explicit policy! So we end up with the downsides of cost optimization (cheapness), but not the benefit (actually saving money).
Household appliances have become much cheaper (inflation-adjusted and also in terms of hours worked to buy them) in the last 50 years so people are actually saving money. I don't see how you tie any Federal reserve/Central banks policy to the longevity of products.
Indeed, if products were getting cheaper in absolute terms (via deflation) not just in relative terms (inflation-adjusted, as is the situation now) this would not lead to people buying high quality products which last because the expectation would be that they would be cheaper to replace in future.
But instead, when a consumer good becomes less expensive, our federal reserve overlords increase inflation to make sure most everybody is still being "encouraged" to work full time. This is their explicit policy! So we end up with the downsides of cost optimization (cheapness), but not the benefit (actually saving money).