
Phoebus Cartel - EndXA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
======
skrebbel
I live in Eindhoven, home town of Philips, one of the members of this cartel.
Philips is _extremely loved_ here. They're the reason this city is a city at
all, they're the reason we're a prosperous region with of lots of innovation
(mostly hardware though, so not very HN-fashionable). We now have apartment
buildings named after their founders ("Gerard", "Anton", etc), lunchrooms
("Meneer Frits"), the local football stadium & club are named after them, and
so on. Statues. Statues! Not of a Great Leader back in some totalitarian past,
but of CEOs! Imagine putting an enormous bronze Elon Musk at the SF Caltrain
station square. That's Eindhoven. We _love_ us our Philips.

They were _crooks_. The amount of cartels Philips has been in is staggering.
They've been working to screw over their customers since the very beginning.
Look it up, any infamous technology cartel from the 20th century you can find,
big chance Philips was on it. When cartels went out of vogue they lobbied for
regulation with pretty much the same effect - Philips will do _anything_ ,
legal or not, to keep their margins up.

I really don't understand how easily people whitewash this shit.

~~~
fogetti
You basically described what's wrong with caputalism in general. And I agree.
Everybody shits their pants when there is a statue erected for the big leader
but somehow noon really seems to care about the impact of big Corp to the same
effect which is EXTREMELY troubling

~~~
skrebbel
Oh come on. I'll take Philips-built Eindhoven over a similarly sized city in
Turkmenistan any day. Plenty corporations are run by crooks but few people in
capitalist democracies are afraid that they (or their loved ones) could
suddenly disappear without a trace.

------
spqr0a1
Light bulbs are a bad example of the dangers of cartels. Incandescent
filaments are much more efficient at higher temperature but burn out quicker.
In the common case, savings from reduced electricity cost more than offset the
increased replacement rate for bulbs in accessible fixtures.

Short-lived bulbs were good for the customers. In a market with perfect
information people would have chosen them on their own. Unfortunately of 3
categories of information needed for an informed decision (lifetime, power
usage, and light output) purchasers only had a good measure of how often they
replaced bulbs. Usage patterns are too complex for improvements in a single
bulb to be obvious on a power bill, and human brightness perception is roughly
logarithmic so it’s not visually obvious how much brighter different bulbs
are.

Whether it was motivated by greed or not, the Phoebus cartel is an example of
big business successfully advocating for the interests of the general public
in the presence of information asymmetry.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Light_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Light_output_and_lifetime)

~~~
mrguyorama
Ah yes, how good for the consumer it is to collude to increase prices and
offer zero competition.

~~~
Scoundreller
You sound like a Canadian dairy farmer :)

~~~
core-questions
Shut up and drink your bag of milk

~~~
Scoundreller
i kept it at room temperature for 3 months and it already went bad. Merde I’m
going back to France.

------
acd
Related
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence)

I would argue that the current economic system does not plan for maximum
longevity of products. Rather it can be more profitable for an manufacturer
for planned obsolescence or simply make products which does not last that
long. As long as they do not get caught that is.

~~~
stevehawk
The counter to this is that people, despite saying otherwise, are not actually
interested in spending more money for a better product. Combine that with some
markets that have relatively short life between product generations and it
removes the need to create products that last a long time.

It's more fun and easier to blame corporate greed, but it's rarely the case.
More often than not it's just that people want "cheaper" rather than "better".

~~~
greggman2
> people, despite saying otherwise, are not actually interested in spending
> more money for a better product

Hmmm, cheapest Mac laptop $999. Cheapest Windows Laptop $199.

Sure PC sales are higher than Mac but isn't that at least one example of
people want better over cheaper since plenty of people choose the more
expensive (better?) product?

I don't think it's the only example it was just the first one that popped in
my mind.

------
jamesakirk
Here is the section in Gravity's Rainbow which tells the tale of Byron the
Lightbulb (the longest-burning lightbulb) and his troubles with the Phoebus
Cartel:
[https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html](https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html)

In a book full of strange meandering asides, this was among the most
memorable.

~~~
mjaniczek
Wow that was hard to read.

------
TooCleverByHalf
Planet Money ran an episode on the Phoebus Cartel not too long ago. Really
interesting listen.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/27/707388981/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/27/707388981/episode-902-the-
phoebus-cartel)

------
jasoneckert
I just explained this Wikipedia article to the person next to me.

They replied "Wow - I would have thought that a light bulb cartel would have
had a much brighter future..."

------
kylek
RIP
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light)

~~~
nhyun
RIP? It's not burned out yet:
[http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm](http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm)

~~~
mirimir
cam:
[http://www.centennialbulb.org/cam.htm](http://www.centennialbulb.org/cam.htm)

~~~
kylek
My bad, off by about 15000 years

(sorry, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776) .
The bulb is a critical part of the plot!)

------
ddoran
Previous discussion 1 year ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606748)

------
jml7c5
I'm hoping someone clever here has read a book about the cartel and can answer
this question: The wiki page doesn't go into too much detail, but is there any
evidence the primary goal of the cartel was primarily intended to increase
energy efficiency, or was it really pure unadulterated greed?

Honestly, were it for the sake of efficiency, I wouldn't mind it. Though the
metric of lifetime in hours rather than lumen/watt makes my approval
borderline rather than whole-hearted.

~~~
bad-joke
The first citation on the page[1] mentions researcher Markus Krajewski who
reviewed Phoebus records and concluded "It was the explicit aim of the cartel
to reduce the life span of the lamps in order to increase sales [...]
Economics, not physics."

Cursory searches of Markus Krajewski yield an IEEE Spectrum article[2] with
further references to his work:

> The 2010 documentary The Light Bulb Conspiracy explores the Phoebus cartel
> as an early example of planned obsolescence and includes interviews with
> Markus Krajewski. For more on the cartel and planned obsolescence, see the
> author’s "Fehler-Planungen. Zur Geschichte und Theorie der industriellen
> Obsoleszenz," in Technikgeschichte, vol. 81, No. 1, p. 91–114, 2014, and
> "Vom Krieg des Lichtes zur Geschichte von Glühlampenkartellen," in Das
> Glühbirnenbuch, edited by Peter Berz, Helmut Höge, and Krajewski (Braumüller
> Verlag, 2011).

Hope this helps!

[1][https://outline.com/JYvASt](https://outline.com/JYvASt)
[2][https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-
electronics/t...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-
electronics/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy)

------
tomc1985
How did I know the top post on this would be someone springing to the
defense...

------
macspoofing
The worst thing about the Phoebus Cartel is that for something that lasted
just a few years (and didn't really work), it is constantly cited as the
quintessential example of 'planned obsolescence' and therefore one of the
evils of capitalism. 'Planned obsolescence' itself, is an overstated and
overrated concept that is frequently conflated with common practices like
making a product cheaper through the use of lower-quality materials.

~~~
fsh
"Planned obsolescence" and "value engineering" have almost the same effect for
the customers though. Products are designed to just barely survive the EU's
two year mandatory warranty period.

~~~
stevehawk
They may have similar effects, but their intent is very different, which means
who gets blamed is very different. "Planned obsolescence" means evil, greedy
corporations. "Value engineering" means consumers want "cheaper" not "better",
which means we are the evil, greedy ones. But I'm not greedy, so it must be
the corporations!

~~~
fsh
Intent is very hard to prove. In my last Sony laptop the keycaps were held in
by hooks formed from a thin metal sheet. After a while (2.5 years in my case)
the hooks start to break and the keys fell off. The keyboard was riveted and
glued into the case which made it impossible to fix it. Was this the cheapest
way for Sony to attach the keys to the laptop? Maybe. Did it get me to replace
my otherwise perfectly fine laptop after 2.5 years? Certainly.

