3 ms·

No they are not. One is intentionally, secretly, and illegally introducing flaws to defraud an employer. The other is managing tradeoffs based on technical cons

No they are not. One is intentionally, secretly, and illegally introducing flaws to defraud an employer. The other is managing tradeoffs based on technical constraints.

perl4ever 7y ago
I don't think that planned obsolescence is unintentional. If it's not completely secret, it's not admitted to either, and it's not illegal because it's not illegal. Is it particularly that you think that there isn't a continuum from legal actions to illegal actions? Isn't it possible and common that two instances of similar actions can be on the right and wrong sides of the law?
- manfredo 7y ago
  Planned obsolescence is not at all unintentional, it is highly deliberate. Every product needs to plan for it's intended lifespan, from phones to nuclear reactors. Planned obsolescence and what this contractor did are not on any sort of continuum. This contractor was not making a trade-off, he deliberately sabotaged his work. This is not on any sort of continuum with optimizing phone's battery life for a certain number of years, or making similar tradeoffs.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    I agree with you to the extent that companies design their products to become obsolete in a way that actually considers all of the trade-offs in a way that makes optimal use of the resource at hand and does not intentionally shorten the lifespan of its products in an attempt to boost sales at the expense of generating additional waste and reducing the value of the finished product. Once you start doing that, you ARE being intentionally destructive.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    What I think you're ignoring is that they are both examples of utilizing dishonesty for profit. Planned obsolescence could in the abstract be just about making a trade-off between price and durability, but in all real instances it leverages the fact that the consumer can't reliably assess the ratio of cost to lifespan of a product. If the trade-off was transparent to the buyer, then competition would produce much more durable products, even if not infinitely durable.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > it's not completely secret, it's not admitted to either, and it's not illegal because it's not illegal. No, your assertion is quite wrong. All engineered products have service lives, because they all have failure modes that are taken into account in the design process. If a phone's failure mode consists of the battery dying the the battery will be designed to ensure it will likely work well for a minimum of x time following a typical usage pattern. Likewise an airplane failure mode is the fuseage breaking off due to fatigue, thus it is designed to be flown X times (takeoff/landing counts, number of hours in flight) taking onto account the likelihood of cracks forming and propagating. Targeting a certain service life in a design does not mean there is mischief in play. It only means engineering. Thus obviously planting time bombs has absolutely nothing to do with engineering a product.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    You're talking about 2 different things. The implication with "planned obsolecence" here is that the device becomes nonfunctional or less-functional because the manufacturer simply designed it to fail after a while. See for example the Phoebus Cartel, who actually fined manufacturers who made lightbulbs that lasted more than 1,000 hours.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > because the manufacturer simply designed it to fail after a while. You're missing the whole point. Everything fails after a while. Everything. It's the engineer's job to ensure that it fails only after X amount of use, which can be expressed in time of normal usage. There are no time bombs, only the fact that designers picked a small service life.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        The point is not that tradeoffs are inherently unethical, it's that in practice, deceiving the customer about those tradeoffs affects how they are made. You go to the supermarket and they have to post unit prices so you can compare, although this is gamed as much as possible. But you go and look at shoes, and you can only guess whether the $100 pair is going to last proportionally longer than the $80 pair. Some things, like tires and cars, you can get information from others experience and testing about lifespan, but even so, there is still a segment of the market that buys the poor quality products which is being deceived in the sense that they might well choose differently if it was thrown in their face how they are being screwed.

No they are not. One is intentionally, secretly, and illegally introducing flaws to defraud an employer. The other is managing tradeoffs based on technical constraints.

perl4ever 7y ago

I don't think that planned obsolescence is unintentional. If it's not completely secret, it's not admitted to either, and it's not illegal because it's not illegal. Is it particularly that you think that there isn't a continuum from legal actions to illegal actions? Isn't it possible and common that two instances of similar actions can be on the right and wrong sides of the law?

manfredo 7y ago
Planned obsolescence is not at all unintentional, it is highly deliberate. Every product needs to plan for it's intended lifespan, from phones to nuclear reactors. Planned obsolescence and what this contractor did are not on any sort of continuum. This contractor was not making a trade-off, he deliberately sabotaged his work. This is not on any sort of continuum with optimizing phone's battery life for a certain number of years, or making similar tradeoffs.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  I agree with you to the extent that companies design their products to become obsolete in a way that actually considers all of the trade-offs in a way that makes optimal use of the resource at hand and does not intentionally shorten the lifespan of its products in an attempt to boost sales at the expense of generating additional waste and reducing the value of the finished product. Once you start doing that, you ARE being intentionally destructive.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  What I think you're ignoring is that they are both examples of utilizing dishonesty for profit. Planned obsolescence could in the abstract be just about making a trade-off between price and durability, but in all real instances it leverages the fact that the consumer can't reliably assess the ratio of cost to lifespan of a product. If the trade-off was transparent to the buyer, then competition would produce much more durable products, even if not infinitely durable.
rumanator 7y ago
> it's not completely secret, it's not admitted to either, and it's not illegal because it's not illegal. No, your assertion is quite wrong. All engineered products have service lives, because they all have failure modes that are taken into account in the design process. If a phone's failure mode consists of the battery dying the the battery will be designed to ensure it will likely work well for a minimum of x time following a typical usage pattern. Likewise an airplane failure mode is the fuseage breaking off due to fatigue, thus it is designed to be flown X times (takeoff/landing counts, number of hours in flight) taking onto account the likelihood of cracks forming and propagating. Targeting a certain service life in a design does not mean there is mischief in play. It only means engineering. Thus obviously planting time bombs has absolutely nothing to do with engineering a product.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  You're talking about 2 different things. The implication with "planned obsolecence" here is that the device becomes nonfunctional or less-functional because the manufacturer simply designed it to fail after a while. See for example the Phoebus Cartel, who actually fined manufacturers who made lightbulbs that lasted more than 1,000 hours.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > because the manufacturer simply designed it to fail after a while. You're missing the whole point. Everything fails after a while. Everything. It's the engineer's job to ensure that it fails only after X amount of use, which can be expressed in time of normal usage. There are no time bombs, only the fact that designers picked a small service life.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      The point is not that tradeoffs are inherently unethical, it's that in practice, deceiving the customer about those tradeoffs affects how they are made. You go to the supermarket and they have to post unit prices so you can compare, although this is gamed as much as possible. But you go and look at shoes, and you can only guess whether the $100 pair is going to last proportionally longer than the $80 pair. Some things, like tires and cars, you can get information from others experience and testing about lifespan, but even so, there is still a segment of the market that buys the poor quality products which is being deceived in the sense that they might well choose differently if it was thrown in their face how they are being screwed.