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Related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence I would argue that the current economic system do

by acd 7y ago

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.

donclark 7y ago
If there is such a thing as planned obsolescence of a product, why do we not require it to be listed on the packaging and/or specs? Why not also include hefty fines for products that do not have this information listed cleary (like nutritional info), listed incorrectly, or simply fail on avg before the "POdate"?
- at-fates-hands 7y ago
  I just read an interview with Adam Minter who wrote a new book called, "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale" which addresses this. He was talking about putting a "durability" tag on clothing and other items which point out how long they will last. For instance, for clothes, how many wash cycles can this shirt take? How long before the materials start to breakdown? This would be on all clothing and textile items and then you can let the consumer decide if they want the less expensive shirt that lasts 10 washing cycles, or the more expensive one that lasts 50 or 100 cycles. He also talked about the paradox of the secondary smartphone market. Apple's products are a great example. The iPhone takes a bit of work to to even change the battery, so now the life of the phone is almost exclusively tied to the battery and how long it lasts. Most people just toss it when the battery goes bad and upgrade to the newest version. For the people who can actually change the battery, it's created an entire secondhand market for their products. One that is incredibly useful to consumers and the techs who are able to keep the phone going once the battery dies. For Apple, it's almost an affront to their practice of voiding warranties if you open the phone up and actively discouraging the whole notion you should be able to repair your own phone instead of having to upgrade it once the battery is dead. It was a really cool interview and Adam brought up a lot of other interesting things about our "disposable" culture.
  - zepto 7y ago
    Apple is a bad example. The fixed battery increase the overall durability and reduces materials over a design where there was a compartment that could be opened. Apple does battery replacements inexpensively relative to the cost of the device, and they supply batteries to 3rd party repair shops. They have also explicitly declared their intent to increase useful life of their devices as much as possible. The mantra that their devices are intended to be disposable itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it leads to the exact behavior of consumers prematurely replacing devices rather than simply having the batteries replaced.
    - jfim 7y ago
      > The fixed battery increase the overall durability and reduces materials over a design where there was a compartment that could be opened. > Apple does battery replacements in expensively relative to the cost of the device, and they supply batteries to 3rd party repair shops. How long does such a replacement take, and why would someone need to leave their phone in the hands of a third party in the first place? Back when most phones had replaceable batteries, it was just a matter of ordering a battery online and plopping it in. The extra materials needed for a battery door or lid are negligible (and significantly less toxic to manufacture than PCBs and electronics) compared to throwing away the phone outright.
      - zepto 7y ago
        Last time I had it done with my current phone, it was done in less than 15 minutes. Extra materials are not negligible - at the scale of the iPhone, even 1% of additional material is vast. In any case, is not only the extra materials that are the problem, it is that phones with a battery compartment are much more fragile, harder to waterproof, etc, and so they fail sooner anyway regardless of whether the battery is changed. Battery compartments are a red herring. It is already easy and economical to replace an iPhone battery. People discarding otherwise serviceable phones because they have been misinformed about the ease of battery replacement is the real problem.
        7y ago
- LameRubberDucky 7y ago
  Some electronic components, switches, plugs, relays, lamps, usually have a listed number of cycles they can withstand before failure. Back when I worked in the industry, some of these values were surprisingly low.
stevehawk 7y ago
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".
- ellius 7y ago
  Lack of perfect information is a well-known failure mode of standard economic models. It may be true that people value their inherently scarce time more than they value the improved light bulb buying decision they could make by obtaining more information, but that doesn't mean consumers don't value better light bulbs. It just means there's an inefficiency due to the cost to the average consumer of learning about light bulbs (or whatever product).
- ergothus 7y ago
  > it removes the need to create products that last a long time. I think the difference here is intent and effort. If you're trying for "cheap" (as the manufacturer), you won't care how well it works and don't try for anything more than the minimum necessary in terms of lifespan or quality. If you're trying for planned obsolesce, you will deliberately make it worse. That's the "planned" part. In this case, the cartel not only tested for lifespan, but FINED members that improved it. There have always been manufacturers that shoot for "cheap", and while people will call them on it, it's a different story from those that deliberately sabotage the product in terms of functionality.
- jacobush 7y ago
  That's not a counter at all, you are almost agreeing.
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  While homo economicus is mocked for being nonexistent there is a reason that perfectly rational actors are used in economic models -- in general people are extremely rational, it is just their priorities are not what you expect them to be. I'm sure you can find plenty of HNers whose friend groups express strong preferences to buying better. There's just nothing to buy better.
artsyca 7y ago
Absolutely going on by mistake or design with exports from certain manufacturing-rich countries
pixelbash 7y ago
Another possibility is that unplanned obsolescence is part and parcel of chasing bigger margins, and the companies with the biggest margin win out organically.
- artsyca 7y ago
  I'd call that implied obsolescence
harshreality 7y ago
To some degree you can get products with longer lifespans, if you look at commercial/industrial models. Sometimes you have to sacrifice fancy features though. I think the reason consumer products mostly suck is that manufacturers have been hiding inflation by cheapening construction. Occasionally it's for weight savings, but I think keeping prices lower is the main reason. People don't realize they're getting vastly inferior products to the one they or their parents had a generation ago, until it's too late.
- rollerboi 7y ago
  >hiding inflation by cheapening construction So true. I've heard for years that the size of our cereal boxes/chip bags/candy bars are decreasing, ever so slightly, while the price remains the same. Reminds me of that whole frog-in-a-pot thought experiment. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it jumps back out immediately. But if you put it in a pot of room-temperature water, and slowly raise the temperature, the frog gets acclimated slowly and doesn't notice that sooner or later, he's being boiled alive.
  - tomrod 7y ago
    The analogy is apt, but one must remember in the original frog experiment the frog's brain had been surgically altered. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_analysis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and...
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      > the frog's brain had been surgically altered. Article says removed.
      - tomrod 7y ago
        Yep. That certainly qualifies as an alteration! :) To be frank, I wasn't sure how much of the brain stem was left, but was aware of wikipedia's wording.
macspoofing 7y ago
>I would argue that the current economic system does not plan for maximum longevity of products. Of course not. And you don't want that. If you want quality, you can get quality but you'll have to pay for it. Are you willing to pay $500 for a quality drill, when a cheapo $40 drill is all you need? What's wrong with that?

by acd 7y ago

donclark 7y ago

If there is such a thing as planned obsolescence of a product, why do we not require it to be listed on the packaging and/or specs? Why not also include hefty fines for products that do not have this information listed cleary (like nutritional info), listed incorrectly, or simply fail on avg before the "POdate"?

at-fates-hands 7y ago
I just read an interview with Adam Minter who wrote a new book called, "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale" which addresses this. He was talking about putting a "durability" tag on clothing and other items which point out how long they will last. For instance, for clothes, how many wash cycles can this shirt take? How long before the materials start to breakdown? This would be on all clothing and textile items and then you can let the consumer decide if they want the less expensive shirt that lasts 10 washing cycles, or the more expensive one that lasts 50 or 100 cycles. He also talked about the paradox of the secondary smartphone market. Apple's products are a great example. The iPhone takes a bit of work to to even change the battery, so now the life of the phone is almost exclusively tied to the battery and how long it lasts. Most people just toss it when the battery goes bad and upgrade to the newest version. For the people who can actually change the battery, it's created an entire secondhand market for their products. One that is incredibly useful to consumers and the techs who are able to keep the phone going once the battery dies. For Apple, it's almost an affront to their practice of voiding warranties if you open the phone up and actively discouraging the whole notion you should be able to repair your own phone instead of having to upgrade it once the battery is dead. It was a really cool interview and Adam brought up a lot of other interesting things about our "disposable" culture.
- zepto 7y ago
  Apple is a bad example. The fixed battery increase the overall durability and reduces materials over a design where there was a compartment that could be opened. Apple does battery replacements inexpensively relative to the cost of the device, and they supply batteries to 3rd party repair shops. They have also explicitly declared their intent to increase useful life of their devices as much as possible. The mantra that their devices are intended to be disposable itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it leads to the exact behavior of consumers prematurely replacing devices rather than simply having the batteries replaced.
  - jfim 7y ago
    > The fixed battery increase the overall durability and reduces materials over a design where there was a compartment that could be opened. > Apple does battery replacements in expensively relative to the cost of the device, and they supply batteries to 3rd party repair shops. How long does such a replacement take, and why would someone need to leave their phone in the hands of a third party in the first place? Back when most phones had replaceable batteries, it was just a matter of ordering a battery online and plopping it in. The extra materials needed for a battery door or lid are negligible (and significantly less toxic to manufacture than PCBs and electronics) compared to throwing away the phone outright.
    - zepto 7y ago
      Last time I had it done with my current phone, it was done in less than 15 minutes. Extra materials are not negligible - at the scale of the iPhone, even 1% of additional material is vast. In any case, is not only the extra materials that are the problem, it is that phones with a battery compartment are much more fragile, harder to waterproof, etc, and so they fail sooner anyway regardless of whether the battery is changed. Battery compartments are a red herring. It is already easy and economical to replace an iPhone battery. People discarding otherwise serviceable phones because they have been misinformed about the ease of battery replacement is the real problem.
      - 7y ago
LameRubberDucky 7y ago
Some electronic components, switches, plugs, relays, lamps, usually have a listed number of cycles they can withstand before failure. Back when I worked in the industry, some of these values were surprisingly low.

stevehawk 7y ago

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".

ellius 7y ago
Lack of perfect information is a well-known failure mode of standard economic models. It may be true that people value their inherently scarce time more than they value the improved light bulb buying decision they could make by obtaining more information, but that doesn't mean consumers don't value better light bulbs. It just means there's an inefficiency due to the cost to the average consumer of learning about light bulbs (or whatever product).
ergothus 7y ago
> it removes the need to create products that last a long time. I think the difference here is intent and effort. If you're trying for "cheap" (as the manufacturer), you won't care how well it works and don't try for anything more than the minimum necessary in terms of lifespan or quality. If you're trying for planned obsolesce, you will deliberately make it worse. That's the "planned" part. In this case, the cartel not only tested for lifespan, but FINED members that improved it. There have always been manufacturers that shoot for "cheap", and while people will call them on it, it's a different story from those that deliberately sabotage the product in terms of functionality.
jacobush 7y ago
That's not a counter at all, you are almost agreeing.
snagglegaggle 7y ago
While homo economicus is mocked for being nonexistent there is a reason that perfectly rational actors are used in economic models -- in general people are extremely rational, it is just their priorities are not what you expect them to be. I'm sure you can find plenty of HNers whose friend groups express strong preferences to buying better. There's just nothing to buy better.

artsyca 7y ago

Absolutely going on by mistake or design with exports from certain manufacturing-rich countries

pixelbash 7y ago

Another possibility is that unplanned obsolescence is part and parcel of chasing bigger margins, and the companies with the biggest margin win out organically.

artsyca 7y ago
I'd call that implied obsolescence

harshreality 7y ago

To some degree you can get products with longer lifespans, if you look at commercial/industrial models. Sometimes you have to sacrifice fancy features though. I think the reason consumer products mostly suck is that manufacturers have been hiding inflation by cheapening construction. Occasionally it's for weight savings, but I think keeping prices lower is the main reason. People don't realize they're getting vastly inferior products to the one they or their parents had a generation ago, until it's too late.

rollerboi 7y ago
>hiding inflation by cheapening construction So true. I've heard for years that the size of our cereal boxes/chip bags/candy bars are decreasing, ever so slightly, while the price remains the same. Reminds me of that whole frog-in-a-pot thought experiment. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it jumps back out immediately. But if you put it in a pot of room-temperature water, and slowly raise the temperature, the frog gets acclimated slowly and doesn't notice that sooner or later, he's being boiled alive.
- tomrod 7y ago
  The analogy is apt, but one must remember in the original frog experiment the frog's brain had been surgically altered. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_analysis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and...
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    > the frog's brain had been surgically altered. Article says removed.
    - tomrod 7y ago
      Yep. That certainly qualifies as an alteration! :) To be frank, I wasn't sure how much of the brain stem was left, but was aware of wikipedia's wording.

macspoofing 7y ago

>I would argue that the current economic system does not plan for maximum longevity of products. Of course not. And you don't want that. If you want quality, you can get quality but you'll have to pay for it. Are you willing to pay $500 for a quality drill, when a cheapo $40 drill is all you need? What's wrong with that?