6 ms·

This comment reminds me of a story I heard years, years ago. I was living in central Asia, in one of the post-Soviet countries. (As an aside, I met quite a fe

by Frondo 10y ago

This comment reminds me of a story I heard years, years ago. I was living in central Asia, in one of the post-Soviet countries. (As an aside, I met quite a few people there who much preferred life under Soviet rule. Sometimes at parties in the countryside they'd even start singing rousing choruses of the soviet anthem!) Anyway, the apocryphal story goes, Krushchev is visiting a Western washing machine factory. He sees all the different models coming off the line, this one has two agigtators, that one has three speeds, whatever. He sees the churn of factory equipment. All that hustle and bustle to try and sell more washing machines. He laments, "Oh, you capitalists, you're so inefficient. Look at how much time and effort you waste on with all this competition! We soviets made one washing machine, and it works!"

negativity 10y ago
It's a little deceptive to label these kinds of sentiments as contrary to the premise of innovation. Experiments, by nature, require expendable resources, but an finished appliance intended for a consumer, with no end-user-servicable internals is not the sort of thing you want to have spewing garbage in all directions. The reality though, is that we're all being railroaded down strict paths of planned obsolesence that are integrated into business models from day one. Yours and my waste should not be interpretted as an unforced error. It's carefully planned, with the intent to fund more plannings sessions to forecast more waste. ...at least down among these lower eschelons we inhabit (speaking for myself, so as not to make assumptions about who reads this), and then there are those who ride above it all and skim from the fruits of our obesity.
- Retric 10y ago
  There are side channels for places like apartment complexes that want a much longer device lifespan and are willing to pay for it. Planned obsolesce is much more common on the 'mass market' channels than the industrial channels. You really can still buy refrigerators that will last 30 years. They just don't have built in ice makers etc. PS: The 50-200% premium may seem steep, but if it lasts 5x as long then you more than break even.
  - jabl 10y ago
    > There are side channels for places like apartment complexes that want a much longer device lifespan and are willing to pay for it. Planned obsolesce is much more common on the 'mass market' channels than the industrial channels. Most apartment building were I've lived have these washing rooms, yes. Yeah, those machines are built like tanks and probably last at least a few decades. The size and weight of these machines are also more like a tank than what you'd normally consider a washing machine, so you wouldn't want one of those in your own apartment.. :)
  - noja 10y ago
    Where can I buy these 30 year refrigerators?
    - Retric 10y ago
      As a consumer a Sub Zero fridge tends to last over 20 years on average. And significantly longer than that if you clean the condenser annually. Past that, Arctic Air for example has commercial refrigerators which will last 30+ years if you do some occasional repairs. Though, they really don't look like home units.
Gracana 10y ago
You're wrong, I'm not lamenting progress.* The fact that our computers are so much faster now is pretty cool. But the fact that I NEED today's computer just to read an article or buy something online is absolutely ridiculous. * Well, aside from the indirect effect, where the needing-the-hotness leads to dumping toxic waste in far off countries we don't care about.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Do you really? I ran on a chromebook as a laptop for about a year without much issue. I upgraded this past year mainly to reduce my electricity consumption... the computer I had two desktops ago was plenty fast, and still in use (handed down) today. I'm far more concerned with the churn in phones than I am in desktops, though some laptops are particularly bad long term devices.
  - kagamine 10y ago
    Where i live you can get a phone contract that includes the latest model, a new phone, once a year. SO if you sign up now for an iPhone 7, in a year you will get a 7s, a year after the 8 and so on. You return the phone you have to the telecoms company. I don't know what they do with all of the returned phones, I assume they sell them on refurbished, but I also assume that a percentage of those that are not broken will fall into the telecom's basket of not cost-effective to refurbish. Those are phones that would have remained in use and continued to be used. Even then, the amount of new phones being manufactured just because consumers want to consume the latest thing with little to no real benefit is wasteful.

by Frondo 10y ago

negativity 10y ago

It's a little deceptive to label these kinds of sentiments as contrary to the premise of innovation. Experiments, by nature, require expendable resources, but an finished appliance intended for a consumer, with no end-user-servicable internals is not the sort of thing you want to have spewing garbage in all directions. The reality though, is that we're all being railroaded down strict paths of planned obsolesence that are integrated into business models from day one. Yours and my waste should not be interpretted as an unforced error. It's carefully planned, with the intent to fund more plannings sessions to forecast more waste. ...at least down among these lower eschelons we inhabit (speaking for myself, so as not to make assumptions about who reads this), and then there are those who ride above it all and skim from the fruits of our obesity.

Retric 10y ago
There are side channels for places like apartment complexes that want a much longer device lifespan and are willing to pay for it. Planned obsolesce is much more common on the 'mass market' channels than the industrial channels. You really can still buy refrigerators that will last 30 years. They just don't have built in ice makers etc. PS: The 50-200% premium may seem steep, but if it lasts 5x as long then you more than break even.
- jabl 10y ago
  > There are side channels for places like apartment complexes that want a much longer device lifespan and are willing to pay for it. Planned obsolesce is much more common on the 'mass market' channels than the industrial channels. Most apartment building were I've lived have these washing rooms, yes. Yeah, those machines are built like tanks and probably last at least a few decades. The size and weight of these machines are also more like a tank than what you'd normally consider a washing machine, so you wouldn't want one of those in your own apartment.. :)
- noja 10y ago
  Where can I buy these 30 year refrigerators?
  - Retric 10y ago
    As a consumer a Sub Zero fridge tends to last over 20 years on average. And significantly longer than that if you clean the condenser annually. Past that, Arctic Air for example has commercial refrigerators which will last 30+ years if you do some occasional repairs. Though, they really don't look like home units.

Gracana 10y ago

You're wrong, I'm not lamenting progress.* The fact that our computers are so much faster now is pretty cool. But the fact that I NEED today's computer just to read an article or buy something online is absolutely ridiculous. * Well, aside from the indirect effect, where the needing-the-hotness leads to dumping toxic waste in far off countries we don't care about.

tracker1 10y ago
Do you really? I ran on a chromebook as a laptop for about a year without much issue. I upgraded this past year mainly to reduce my electricity consumption... the computer I had two desktops ago was plenty fast, and still in use (handed down) today. I'm far more concerned with the churn in phones than I am in desktops, though some laptops are particularly bad long term devices.
- kagamine 10y ago
  Where i live you can get a phone contract that includes the latest model, a new phone, once a year. SO if you sign up now for an iPhone 7, in a year you will get a 7s, a year after the 8 and so on. You return the phone you have to the telecoms company. I don't know what they do with all of the returned phones, I assume they sell them on refurbished, but I also assume that a percentage of those that are not broken will fall into the telecom's basket of not cost-effective to refurbish. Those are phones that would have remained in use and continued to be used. Even then, the amount of new phones being manufactured just because consumers want to consume the latest thing with little to no real benefit is wasteful.