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Partially true - capitalism will give you what you choose through your actual behavior of making a purchase rather than what you say you prefer or wish you pref

Partially true - capitalism will give you what you choose through your actual behavior of making a purchase rather than what you say you prefer or wish you preferred. I bought LED lights for my house back when they were $30/bulb and few people even talked about CFLs. My reason? I am super lazy about changing lightbulbs, especially in inconvenient places like a fixture in the middle of a staircase. Many years later I sold the house with original set of lights still working. I am similarly lazy about cleaning up glass shards from floor or dishwasher, but this one will not help, when it shatters it shatters into a bigger mess. Anyway, if consumers started to demand durability, market would respond, but most want pretty glasses at low price. No economic system is a match for human stupidity and on the other hand very smart people would make any economic system work by modifying it to be practical (add some social safety net and environmental protection to capitalism, turn socialism into hybrid system that also includes free market).

manoDev 2y ago
Go read the story… the east german manufacturer tried exporting it, but resellers thought selling virtually unbreakable glassware was a bad business. Same thing happened with the GE/Osram cartel for pushing shorter lived incandescent lamps to the market. It’s naive to believe only buyer behavior drives what products are available, when the market is fixed to limit offer. You’re probably confused between the meaning of capitalism and free market.
- rowanG077 2y ago
  Market fixing as you are describing is generally short lived.
- mrob 2y ago
  The Phoebus cartel isn't comparable, because incandescent lamps have an inherent tradeoff between lifespan and efficiency. Most of the output of an incandescent lamp is infrared. Running it hotter shifts it more into the visible spectrum, increasing lumens per watt, but also makes the filament fail sooner. It's easier to sell long-life lamps than high-efficiency lamps (bulb failures are obvious, but few people had the test equipment to measure efficiency of individual bulbs). The cartel avoided competition on lifespan that would have wasted a lot of electricity.
jjmarr 2y ago
That's one of the problems with a 100% free market. There's an implicit assumption that everyone is a perfectly rational economic actor that understands what goes into lightbulb durability. But does the average person really have the scientific knowledge to determine the mean-time-to-failure of different lightbulbs and the math skills necessary to know whether it's more cost effective to buy several cheap bulbs or 1 durable one? When you have that level of information asymmetry, people might value qualities like durability but can't guide their purchasing decisions with it because they don't know what ion exchanged glass is and why they should be looking for it. Not everyone is an engineer/scientist.
- throwaway598 2y ago
  Rationality and imperfect information are different things. Neither of which fit your example which is search cost. Not everyone knows a lot of things, it is impossible to know everything. Therefore tradeoffs are made. Which is rational.
- leobg 2y ago
  Now take a populus that believes it when a Twitter ad promises them free electricity from some China made plug in adapter.
toast0 2y ago
$30/bulb worked back then, but if you do it now, it could be a quality bulb that will last, or a $5 bulb that probably won't. I've got a big house with a lot of can lights, and it's not really possible to buy for durability. Obviously, incandescents are out, but if I buy a batch for a room to see if a model is durable, by the time I have a good idea, I can't actually get that model anymore, so it's not super helpful. And I'm not a monster, so I don't use multiple models in one room, so it's better to buy several at once. Different brand incandescents are fine together, but LEDs outputs vary and their startup and shutoff delays vary, and their response to dimming varies, and their failure modes vary... So yeah.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > can lights Well, there’s your problem. These things are just not a good idea; the heat has to go somewhere. Eight years ago, I bought a bunch of Ikea GU-10 LED bulbs, I believe 6EUR for two; I think roughly a quarter have since died. But they’re exposed spotlight fittings rather than recessed. Never heard of those lasting particularly long.
rowanG077 2y ago
This is precisely it. People will blame capitalism when they only have themselves to blame
- leobg 2y ago
  Isn’t that rather some kind of tragedy of the commons thing? I mean the system isn’t rigged because of those who care. But because of everyone else who doesn’t.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

manoDev 2y ago

Go read the story… the east german manufacturer tried exporting it, but resellers thought selling virtually unbreakable glassware was a bad business. Same thing happened with the GE/Osram cartel for pushing shorter lived incandescent lamps to the market. It’s naive to believe only buyer behavior drives what products are available, when the market is fixed to limit offer. You’re probably confused between the meaning of capitalism and free market.

rowanG077 2y ago
Market fixing as you are describing is generally short lived.
mrob 2y ago
The Phoebus cartel isn't comparable, because incandescent lamps have an inherent tradeoff between lifespan and efficiency. Most of the output of an incandescent lamp is infrared. Running it hotter shifts it more into the visible spectrum, increasing lumens per watt, but also makes the filament fail sooner. It's easier to sell long-life lamps than high-efficiency lamps (bulb failures are obvious, but few people had the test equipment to measure efficiency of individual bulbs). The cartel avoided competition on lifespan that would have wasted a lot of electricity.

jjmarr 2y ago

That's one of the problems with a 100% free market. There's an implicit assumption that everyone is a perfectly rational economic actor that understands what goes into lightbulb durability. But does the average person really have the scientific knowledge to determine the mean-time-to-failure of different lightbulbs and the math skills necessary to know whether it's more cost effective to buy several cheap bulbs or 1 durable one? When you have that level of information asymmetry, people might value qualities like durability but can't guide their purchasing decisions with it because they don't know what ion exchanged glass is and why they should be looking for it. Not everyone is an engineer/scientist.

throwaway598 2y ago
Rationality and imperfect information are different things. Neither of which fit your example which is search cost. Not everyone knows a lot of things, it is impossible to know everything. Therefore tradeoffs are made. Which is rational.
leobg 2y ago
Now take a populus that believes it when a Twitter ad promises them free electricity from some China made plug in adapter.

toast0 2y ago

$30/bulb worked back then, but if you do it now, it could be a quality bulb that will last, or a $5 bulb that probably won't. I've got a big house with a lot of can lights, and it's not really possible to buy for durability. Obviously, incandescents are out, but if I buy a batch for a room to see if a model is durable, by the time I have a good idea, I can't actually get that model anymore, so it's not super helpful. And I'm not a monster, so I don't use multiple models in one room, so it's better to buy several at once. Different brand incandescents are fine together, but LEDs outputs vary and their startup and shutoff delays vary, and their response to dimming varies, and their failure modes vary... So yeah.

rsynnott 2y ago
> can lights Well, there’s your problem. These things are just not a good idea; the heat has to go somewhere. Eight years ago, I bought a bunch of Ikea GU-10 LED bulbs, I believe 6EUR for two; I think roughly a quarter have since died. But they’re exposed spotlight fittings rather than recessed. Never heard of those lasting particularly long.

rowanG077 2y ago

This is precisely it. People will blame capitalism when they only have themselves to blame

leobg 2y ago
Isn’t that rather some kind of tragedy of the commons thing? I mean the system isn’t rigged because of those who care. But because of everyone else who doesn’t.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]