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That was one of the first videos were i disagreed with him completely... Looks like he let his personal politics get in the way. "yes they screwed over the co

That was one of the first videos were i disagreed with him completely... Looks like he let his personal politics get in the way. "yes they screwed over the consumer with their anti-competitive cartel but hey they were saving the planet so it is all forgiven" was is his basic take The ends justify the means. it was not up to the Phoebus cartel to choose what was a "better bulb"

armada651 3y ago
> yes they screwed over the consumer with their anti-competitive cartel but hey they were saving the planet so it is all forgiven That's a misrepresentation of his take. He does not say that the cartel should be forgiven for their anti-competitive practices. He just said that what is often referred to as planned obsolescence, may simply have been an early form of product standardization and wasn't necessarily intended to be anti-competitive.
scrollaway 3y ago
Did you watch the video or hear what you wanted to hear? His point was about the consumer’s end costs. It was cheaper to replace the lightbulbs than to be energy inefficient. He provided pretty solid evidence for that too. It wasn’t about “saving the planet”.
louwrentius 3y ago
I think you totally misunderstood the video, that wasn’t his point at all. Because of the increased efficiency, you saved much more on the energy bill, even offsetting the extra cost for more light bulbs which were cheap even back then. Even if you don’t give a fuck about the planet, most people care about their wallet.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  I understood, it was a "consumers are too dumb to pick correctly so the experts must choose for them" argument. I reject that mentality, it is a path to lots of unintended consequences not to mention government over reach when the "experts" we are forced to follow also have the power of government authority
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - louwrentius 3y ago
    The inefficient bulbs were also available as stated in the video but these bulbs only made sense for hard to reach/service locations. So people could pick according to their need. Seems to me you let your politics, prejudice and personal hangups totally cloud and warp what was actually said in the video.
georgyo 3y ago
His other points are better. The cartel dissolved many years ago, and there wasn't a flood of _better_ longer bulbs because there physically can't be. Longer bulbs have existed for a long time, but they are much dimmer in addition to using more power. As such they are not desirable to people. Even beyond the cartel, power plants wanted the higher efficiency lightbulbs to reduce strain. Those points are far better. In any case, the cartel's goal definitely wasn't saving the planet. Can you even imagine a evil shadow organization with that goal? Their goal was profit, and to get profit they wanted standards. Standards make it so a consumer can get various different products that work predictably. The world would be a much worse place without agreed upon standards.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>The world would be a much worse place without agreed upon standards. Yes "Standards" where they big player dictates to everyone else how they must do things.. Of course they hide it in a "standards organization" like how W3C is functionally a decision of Google at the point, but we do have "web standards" which are what ever google says Or how Microsoft more or less forced out OpenXML with Open Office XML which is anything but open... I could list 100's of examples Also https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
bombcar 3y ago
You can do your own long-life bulb - get a incandescent and a dimmer and run your bulb at a lower voltage. It'll be dimmer, but it'll last longer.

armada651 3y ago

> yes they screwed over the consumer with their anti-competitive cartel but hey they were saving the planet so it is all forgiven That's a misrepresentation of his take. He does not say that the cartel should be forgiven for their anti-competitive practices. He just said that what is often referred to as planned obsolescence, may simply have been an early form of product standardization and wasn't necessarily intended to be anti-competitive.

scrollaway 3y ago

Did you watch the video or hear what you wanted to hear? His point was about the consumer’s end costs. It was cheaper to replace the lightbulbs than to be energy inefficient. He provided pretty solid evidence for that too. It wasn’t about “saving the planet”.

louwrentius 3y ago

I think you totally misunderstood the video, that wasn’t his point at all. Because of the increased efficiency, you saved much more on the energy bill, even offsetting the extra cost for more light bulbs which were cheap even back then. Even if you don’t give a fuck about the planet, most people care about their wallet.

phpisthebest 3y ago
I understood, it was a "consumers are too dumb to pick correctly so the experts must choose for them" argument. I reject that mentality, it is a path to lots of unintended consequences not to mention government over reach when the "experts" we are forced to follow also have the power of government authority
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- louwrentius 3y ago
  The inefficient bulbs were also available as stated in the video but these bulbs only made sense for hard to reach/service locations. So people could pick according to their need. Seems to me you let your politics, prejudice and personal hangups totally cloud and warp what was actually said in the video.

georgyo 3y ago

His other points are better. The cartel dissolved many years ago, and there wasn't a flood of _better_ longer bulbs because there physically can't be. Longer bulbs have existed for a long time, but they are much dimmer in addition to using more power. As such they are not desirable to people. Even beyond the cartel, power plants wanted the higher efficiency lightbulbs to reduce strain. Those points are far better. In any case, the cartel's goal definitely wasn't saving the planet. Can you even imagine a evil shadow organization with that goal? Their goal was profit, and to get profit they wanted standards. Standards make it so a consumer can get various different products that work predictably. The world would be a much worse place without agreed upon standards.

phpisthebest 3y ago
>>The world would be a much worse place without agreed upon standards. Yes "Standards" where they big player dictates to everyone else how they must do things.. Of course they hide it in a "standards organization" like how W3C is functionally a decision of Google at the point, but we do have "web standards" which are what ever google says Or how Microsoft more or less forced out OpenXML with Open Office XML which is anything but open... I could list 100's of examples Also https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

bombcar 3y ago

You can do your own long-life bulb - get a incandescent and a dimmer and run your bulb at a lower voltage. It'll be dimmer, but it'll last longer.