Planned Obsolescence is largely a myth, besides a few blatant examples. There are a few factors that drive consumer perception of planned obsolescence
-Demand for cheaper products: Consumers tend to prefer cheaper products. This means cheaper materials and a product that doesn't last as long. Common household appliances cost much less than they did in the earlier half of the 20th century, and people act surprised when they don't last as long as an appliance from the 1950s that cost more than twice as much
-Survivor bias: Only durable products from the past survived, broken and unrepairable products were sent to the landfill. Therefore people only see the most durable products of the past and assume everything made back then was just as durable.
-Technical obsolescence: Old products become less useful as technology progresses. Why use a 100 year old still functional device when it is inefficient and technologically obsolete?
The article even mentions some of these factors with regards to the so-called planned obsolescence of light bulbs. Longer lasting bulbs are dimmer and less efficient, so it makes sense to design them in such a way to maximize light output over a certain timespan.
Yes, nobody says "we'll make sure this product breaks in 5 years."
Instead, they say, "We're going to have to support this for 5 years. Design it so that almost all of them survive that long, and don't bother trying to make them last longer. It's too expensive."
In the end, it's the same thing, just without the tint of evil.
If people wanted very durable goods and were willing to pay the necessary cost, they'd be readily available. Most consumers prefer the cheap, semi-disposable option.
A good Makita, Hitachi or DeWalt hammer drill costs anywhere from £500 to £800. It'll provide utterly reliable service over years of daily use and is fully repairable. A store-brand hammer drill costs less than £50, but you'll be lucky if it lasts for more than 10 hours of light use. Most DIYers buy the £50 store-brand drill, because they'll likely only use it a handful of times.
Rapid technological progress makes the semi-disposable option even more attractive. We have the technology to build a laptop that will survive 20 years of heavy use, but who wants to use a 20 year old laptop? Most people get a "free" cellphone upgrade every two years, so what do they care if the non-replaceable battery dies after three years?
The problem is that I as a consumer have basically no way to tell the quality of products anymore. I could spend thrice as much and still run the risk of getting a product that breaks the second the warranty runs out.
Well, you have no free, low-effort way to find out. Reading reviews, looking to consumer reports, demoing things are all options. Of course, they take time and effort. But, really, the backstop is to buy it, use it, and take advantage of generous return policies if things don't work out. I almost exclusively choose my retailers on this basis now.
You can get expensive repairable appliances while last; Miele washing machines, for instance. You'll just pay for them. Most people don't want to pay over a thousand euro for a washing machine, so don't.
Usually not enough customers are willing to pay for it to make it worthwhile. If that many customers would pay for it, then it would be profitable for the company to make products that way, and companies would make it that way.
Customers don't have enough information to make an informed decision. I don't mind paying twice as much for something that will last a lot longer, but without a lot of research the price signal is the only indication of quality and more often than not it's just a premium for a well known brand rather than actual quality.
Doing things that are unprofitable is also unsustainable on a large scale. It an only be done by using subsidies, i.e., other resources generated from profits, which does not scale.
Losing money is not a viable long term solution for a business, an economy, or mankind.
Also, the cost of repair has remained static or increased, while the cost of manufacturing has greatly decreased. Older consumer goods were usually much less reliable than modern equivalents, but it made economic sense to repair them.
In 1984, a 20-inch colour TV cost £329 versus an average weekly wage of £115. In 2017, a 40-inch HDTV costs £300 versus an average weekly wage of £530. TVs are now vastly cheaper relative to the cost of labour.
TV repair used to be very common. There were half a dozen TV repair shops in my town when I was a child. A lot of people preferred to rent, partly because the up-front cost was prohibitive and partly because the rental price included repairs.
Today, even simple repairs like a capacitor replacement are prohibitively expensive. Even if the parts cost pennies and it's a quick replacement, there's a minimum of two hours of labour just to get the back off the TV, find the fault and test the repair. Why pay £150 to fix your old set when you could get a new, better set for £300?
It's not great for the environment, but it's good for the consumer.
... aside from the American auto industry up through the 1980s or so. Planned obsolescence drove automotive design for years, prompting people to pursue new vehicles every few years. In contrast, European models could go a decade with little visible change, as long retention cycles were common.
MAD magazine had a great feature in the 1970s called "Planned Obsolescence in Everyday Products", parodying design fails in household appliances and such.
I knew a guy who lived through WWII, he was German. He came to America and bought a 50s Mercedes. When I met him in the late 90s, it had 1,000,000 miles on it. He said he changed the brakes twice and the clutch once.
Over course, I doubted him, but he went into great detail about how he had to drive in post-war Germany, as they couldn't afford replacing anything back then, so everything had to last. He was extremely careful with his down shifting, and only barely touched the breaks at the very end. Accelerated very slowly, etc...
I wonder how much WWII played in Germans making solid stuff still to this day. (and the rest of Europe)
Reminds me of the guy who drove his Accord up to a million miles[0]. Proper maintenance and showing respect for the hardware goes a long way towards hypermiling.
No, and you didn't suggest that he used it in any extraordinarily careful manner either.
His point is that what you have is a nice anecdote, and survivor bias means that you only hear about the products that ended up lasting, but not all the Mercedeses that bit the dust along the way.
> ... aside from the American auto industry up through the 1980s or so. Planned obsolescence drove automotive design for years, prompting people to pursue new vehicles every few years.
And now that everyone makes dependable cars, they simply change the headlight/taillight configuration every year to make one's car seem out-of-date much sooner.
Those infotainment centers don't help at all, either.
they simply change the headlight/taillight configuration
One example of this: the exaggerated "tail fins"[0] that characterized late-1950s American sedans started small, then grew almost annually for a decade.
But at least you could buy devices that would last for decades and decades.
Try finding a washing machine these days, that will last for more than 5 years or so before something breaks and renders the machine useless.
You may be able to find an industrial machine, made for hotels or laundries. But it will be very expensive and likely be huge and it will need 3-phase power. It will also likely not have a spin cycle, so you'll have to either air dry your clothes for ages or buy a separate clothes spinner (most driers need the clothes to have been spin dried first).
Whether I buy a cheap Whirlpool or an expensive Miele/AEG/Bosch or whatever, the quality and longevity is universally shit.
These aren't comparable; Miele is on a different level. In particular, Miele washing machines are properly repairable. Of course, they're also far more expensive.
EDIT: Missed AEG. These are essentially three tiers of product.
AEG is Electrolux's "premium" branding. In most cases, the same washing machine with different plastic will be available as Electrolux and Zanussi. Very much mid-range; better than Whirlpool/Hotpoint/Indesit, but that's not saying much. Should not be expected to be super-long-lasting.
Bosch (and Siemens, Neff; again, just different branding for the same thing) are definitely a step up. Some though not all machines are very repairable.
And Miele is a huge step up again. All machines should be properly repairable.
Real world finally fixed that issue. While selecting cheapest product still gets you the worst one, spending money on more expensive one doesn't guarantee it will be any better.
I have a Frigidaire unit that's on its 10th year and works almost as new as far as I can tell.
For every vocal person with a broken unit, there are multiple people with working ones. These planned obsolescence debates are mostly pointless without actual data (case in point: arguing about WD vs Seagate before BackBlaze started publishing their data)
The plural of anecdote is not data, but around here (Scandinavia) I've seen lots and lots of Miele and ASKO appliances which are way, way beyond 10 years old.
My 13 year old Miele washer and 9 year old ASKO dryer are still going strong without any signs of their age - and they are being run hard, what with three small kids in the house an'all.
This "everything was better in the good old days" attitude explains a lot that's going on in the world at the moment. Shame it's demonstrably wrong on many levels.
That riles me up, it's comparing ~2500usd (adjusted) appliances with ~200usd appliances while glossing over actual cost to consumer or equivalent priced quality.
The Whirlpool monopoly is a great example of planned obsolescences. They use cheap seals and plastic parts when they used to use steel. Most modern appliance seem to have a life span of 5-7 years because of electronics failure.
I had a Maytag ( owned by Whirlpool ) dishwasher, range and refrigerator all need repairs costing over $300 a device within the first 3 years. All of them failed within 2 -3 months of the warranty expiration.
In circumstances old analog tech can be better my dad (who is an EE) did some consultancy with London Underground and some of the 1930's equipment was going strong where as some of the 70's stuff was breaking down.
> Common household appliances cost much less than they did in the earlier half of the 20th century, and people act surprised when they don't last as long as an appliance from the 1950s that cost more than twice as much
I'll recycle a comment I made in another thread a year ago:
When clearing out my grandmother's house a few years ago, my uncle and I almost broke our backs trying to get the freezer out. It felt like it weighed a ton, even empty.
My grandmother told us it had been a wedding present, and that they had been totally awestruck at the time at the generous present from her parents-in-law. After all, a decent freezer cost at least 2,000 kroner! (At this time, the average yearly gross pay was just in excess of 7,000 kroner.)
My grandparents married in 1950. Since then, monetary value has been reduced twenty-fold.
You can still buy a top-loading freezer for 2,000 kroner; I just checked.
So - in 1950, you had to work for five months to earn money for a freezer (after taxes.)
In 2017, I have to work one day for a freezer (after taxes.)
Bought my house around 2000 and it had a GE Combination Fridge from the mid 1960's. Looks like this one [1] but in turquoise. Still going 20 years later and all I have done is clean the lint off the cooling fins a few times a year. My Kill-A-Watt says it is about as efficient as a modern fridge.
I think it is just very hard to impossible to judge the quality of an appliance just by looking at it. All external signals a seriously gamed by manufacturers. Even consumer reports does not do a total breakdown by electrical and mechanical engineers to let you know how good something is. Then, at most, 1% of people would care enough to read a quality guide. Price is easy to look at and compare.
Want to by a copper tank water heater that will last a century for your home. Good luck. I've got one from the 50's but I had to know to replace the thermocouple when that breaks once a decade and not just throw it out when it stops working.
Fridges also used to use more efficient coolant, which was outlawed. So newer fridges are typically worse, especially in that they run almost all the time and produce a more annoying sound.
Personally I use an ammonia absorption fridge, the kind of thing you usually only see in hotel minis and camping vans, because of the noise.
Do you know of any source for a full size one that could run on natural gas? Like you said, looks like they are all quite a bit smaller (or huge industrial systems). I do dislike the noise of refrigerators and if my current one fails I would like to try a gas powered replacement. Also, natural gas in California is way cheaper per unit of energy than electricity (thanks to Enron and other factors). A gas frig could be cheaper to run than electric here.
>Planned Obsolescence is largely a myth, besides a few blatant examples.
I suspect you are decent person, likely you have never been lied to or about in public to shame you (in court, city council, etc...), or been mugged or attacked, or suffered any major crimes. Or least, had many year battle with people that try to destroy your life.
I have, and know many other people who have, and I am no longer in any doubt that large businesses collude for money, a far lesser crime than what I have experienced first hand.
What is your point? Are you arguing that the article is exaggerating the role of the international standards body by calling it a cartel? I think one of the main points of the article is that if companies were acting in consumers' interest you'd see the lifespan of bulbs increase while brightness remained relatively steady or also increased (due to advances in bulb tech). As far as light bulbs go, as a consumer, I'd much rather pay more (and do) for a longer lasting bulb in the 27-35k temp range than perpetually need to replace bulbs that burn up at 45k+. If you're arguing consumers prefer brighter shorter bulbs and that that drove the market, you're directly contradicting the article which has plenty of citations and makes a very compelling argument. Care to share yours?
-Demand for cheaper products: Consumers tend to prefer cheaper products. This means cheaper materials and a product that doesn't last as long. Common household appliances cost much less than they did in the earlier half of the 20th century, and people act surprised when they don't last as long as an appliance from the 1950s that cost more than twice as much
-Survivor bias: Only durable products from the past survived, broken and unrepairable products were sent to the landfill. Therefore people only see the most durable products of the past and assume everything made back then was just as durable.
-Technical obsolescence: Old products become less useful as technology progresses. Why use a 100 year old still functional device when it is inefficient and technologically obsolete?
The article even mentions some of these factors with regards to the so-called planned obsolescence of light bulbs. Longer lasting bulbs are dimmer and less efficient, so it makes sense to design them in such a way to maximize light output over a certain timespan.