In China, if your $180 camcorder breaks due to a burst electrolytic capacitor, you can take it to the corner electronics repair shop and pay somebody $10 to open it up, unsolder the bad capacitor, solder in a new one, and send you home with a working camcorder. In America, $10 wouldn't even pay the postage to ship it to a repair center, let alone the $100-200 or more you'd have to pay for the actual repair labor.
I have a TV that, due to some rough handling in a move, had one of the jacks for component input break off. It still worked if you could manage to get a cord to stay in just right (I think we had a solution involving tape, cardboard and clay), but otherwise was very fickle.
Presumably, somebody skilled in electronics could get a $2 jack and with 10-20 minutes or so solder a replacement into place. Instead, a TV repair shop wanted $75 just to diagnose the problem much less start fixing it.
I kept the TV (and did not end up getting it repaired), but the fact that someone here in the US would be more likely to spend $500+ on a new TV and just throw away the old one "because it's broken" is stupid, and I'd love to go to some shop around the corner and get it fixed for $10.