somethings disposable are good espcially in hte hospital somethings probably shouldnt be reused, would you want to use resuable depends that another adult used yestereday?
Can i get a source for "the average printer prints for only about 5 hours during its lifetime"? I am not able to find that claim anywhere else but it's a really interesting claim
Frédéric Bastiat, a french economist of the 19th century, wrote against stimulating the economy through destruction, on his Broken Window Parable. If some kid broke a window, it would generate profit for the glassmaker, he would spend it and so money circulates creating wealth for everyone! The child was a hero! The man with the broken windows then said: "But I was going to buy a new pair of shoes! I would have my window and my shoes, now I will have only my shoes, I'm poorer! And even if not, I would save my money and have it for an emergency, with would make me safer, or I would invest it in my bussiness, creating more wealth!". The same applies for planned obsolescence. Note that not every economist used to be so much in favor of capitalism. Some saw capitalism as a way to create distortions on the culture and the economy to favor the elites at the expense of everyone else. Georgists, mutualists, left libertarians and many others see capitalism as much as problem as a powerful government. You even have free market anti-capitalists, if you need to research on youtube. I would recomend The Low Overhead Manifesto, by Kelvin Carson (a modern day Mutualist), were he says that we don't just need an economic reform, but a cultural one, not at ballot, but essentially at grassroots level, were people take the matters at their own hands through DIY, 3D manufacturing, permaculture, resiliency, etc. It's a really nice read, it changed my worldview.
I lost my mom to cancer a few years ago. She had bought me a pots and pans set years prior. The pans were nonstick and starting to peel, so they were unsafe to keep using. When we mix disposability with sentiment, the result is heartbreaking. My identical replacement pan set sat for months as I built up the courage to throw away the old set. It still hurts to think about.
That's unfortunate. PTFE is a coating that's really hard to remove chemically, but if it's already peeling, maybe you can remove it mechanically by abrading it off.
here is an idea if you want to: turn them into decorations, glue some stuffs that is related to her cooking to it then just hang em for display. Maybe fake food or dried spices.
I've just switched my 2010 sewing machine, which had become very unreliable, for a 1957 Singer machine with no plastic parts that I can service myself and which works as well now as the day it was made. It's a joy to know that, if I continue to take care of it, I've bought my last sewing machine
@toyotaprius79 this is true, singer used to have a trade in program to convince people to "upgrade" to newer models and to get the older more durable models off the market (they were usually destroyed)
I absolutely love old sewing machines, I've gotten into the habit of finding beat up ones (usually for ridiculously low prices) and fixing them up so they can find a new home, it's very satisfying
Pah! 1957? I won't have any of that modern rubbish! 😉My sewing machine is a 1920s model. Seriously, that's an excellent choice. I love my old Singer sewing machine. It cost a fraction of a new machine, it's basic but works perfectly for what I need. And I have it out on display because it looks so beautiful.
As an engineer, planned obsolescence is rarely a conscious choice on first design... on first design. Then the "stakeholders" come in and that's when planned obsolescence is shoehorned in. But it's funky, it's never put that way, it's cost savings and resource availability.
What's funny is I worked for a large military contractor for nearly 20 years of my career and trust me, the stuff we made for the military was expensive and over-engineered to the hilt, certainly no "planned obsolescence" (other than obviously in a few decades technology would be better). But, yes, it's the old idea of "reliable or cheap, pick one".
This! I have always struggled with these accusations of planned obsolescence. As an engineer myself, never have I ever been tasked with designing or architecting anything with a target obsolescence timeline . It’s always been the stakeholders that come in and pull the rug out from under you by reducing resources or mandating a target price that lead to this.
@@bhanner95 That leads to what? You revising your design choices with a target? Engineers without budget, manufacturing and time constraints can of course design things that are very over spec.
As a child i disassembled everything, with reassembling i mostly failed, but that has changed now. I hate planned obsolescence and whenever something breaks i get excited, because i can repair and "fight" planned obsolescence. Its so satisfying. I have seen so many bullshit constructions. I dont believe anyone, when they say, it is to make products cheaper. They could let it costs 1-5% more and it would take at least twice as long to break. electric toothbrush - just a drop of locktight on a screw for a 120€ product - 5c? - thanks philips babyphone - just 1-2g more plastic behind the usb charging plug - 2c? - thanks philips Washing Mashine - a door with plastic frame which takes all the doors weight on the hinge? seriously? metal frame 5€? could go on... its ridiculous, the rental instead of buying principle is nice, so they build to last in their own interest but this has still to come...
I replaced a batch of capacitors on a pair of active speakers the other day…the manufacturer chose cheap ones that are know to fail, the ones I put in were 4x the price, at £4.50 each, but I won’t have to replace those in my life now.
I own an appliance repair company and I’ve noticed over the last couple years the manufacturers have done things on purpose, to make it very difficult to take them apart and fix them. Like bolting the lids on from the bottom side. so you have to have special extension tools and it takes an additional hour just to get the lid off
Or glass backs. You can't tell me that they are only an aesthetic design choice. They make phones even more vulnerable to falls than before. Or when I needed a new electric stove last year it was pretty difficult to find one with a frame and the shop assistant themselves said that the frameless stove tops break more easily in their experience.
well there's like out of your way maliciousness from Apple I don't have the experience that you do obviously but from what I've seen my tinkering it's just choosing what's the cheapest most half-assed way of doing it and let's do that. big blobs of hot glue usually hard the result
Exactly. "Ok fine, you can repair our stuff🙄 we're just gonna make it either next to impossible to take apart or make it so you must buy OUR proprietary tool to fix it"
There's also some poverty shaming going on with that, since poorer people are generally more likely to buy cheaper, "less sustainable" products. I romanticised buying more expensive but endlessly durable items for years when I was poor. Imagine my frustration when I finally got to the financial situation to buy more expensive "durable" winter boots - and they lasted for all of two seasons before the heal broke off. Brought it to a shoemaker and he told me repairing it would make it last for maybe two more weeks, since this was a planned structural failure that could not be repaired to last. Capitalism as it is truly is the largest scam there is.
Such a good point! This is the thing that pisses me off about market fundamentalist retorts of "if the consumer wanted more durable goods, they would buy them". Try it!! Your boots are such a good example
A "market oriented" regulation that I would support wholeheartedly on fashion would be state-enforced labelling on durability of goods in certain categories, with a regulator to test them. Even anti-socialist types could go along with that, surely. Fine, let the customer decide! But arm them with the information to do so: every t-shirt, every pair of jeans, every pair of boots, carries a label clearly marking its durability (maybe a traffic lights system? Or just bands for expected lifespan). Even the most neoliberal market-oriented intervention such as this could make such a big difference! Because at the moment, you can easily pay 5x the price to buy the "quality" product only to still find it falls apart in a couple of years! With clothes it's particularly bad, this is a problem that nebulous "market forces" alone, undirected, simply won't solve
Capitalists assume perfect information. However, a famous quote from the internet is the best counter to capitalism: 'Two things are endless: the universe and human stupidity. I'm not sure about the former.'@@Muzikman127 It isn't just consumers who are stupid, but even businesspeople are often stupid.
@@Muzikman127 i do want to mention that there is already a product category with a quasi durability label: foodstuffs, with best by dates. i mention this because most problems with best by dates easily paralell those a durability label would have.
"Right to repair" really is about the actual RIGHT - cause Apple started going the legal route by intentionally making it impossible to repair their devices and SUEING people that sold replacement parts (even those that were clearly marked and advertised to not be apple products). And Apple and others also started restricting functionalities, disabling features or even entirely bricking devices if repaired by anybody else than the original manufacturers (John Deer comes to mind - for example with mandatory software-updates they are constantly checking for new 3rd party hardware like GPS-receivers and if detected not only reject any communication with that hardware but also completely disable GPS-navigation even if the way overpriced, more error-prone and less accurate JohnDeer module is then installed).
Damn really? I never knew I was obligated to buy from Apple or John Deer so their choices limit my rights! Wait... *_shit_* who has a few k for a tractor and a mac!? I gotta get these shipped before anyone finds out I dont already have them! Fuck if only I had bought a Mac instead of a Framework I wouldn't be in this mess!
@@felixjohnson3874 "Damn really? I never knew I was obligated to buy from Apple or John Deer so their choices limit my rights!" And we found the bootlicker.
@@ABaumstumpf cope, I use arch with a degoogled android and a custom built PC. I value my rights, you value laziness and screeching that your rights are being violated because you cant be bothered to take accountability for your purchases. I practice what I preach, you don't practice and instead screech.
@@felixjohnson3874 yes we all know that you have to constantly cope. "I value my rights" You ahave already shown the only thing you are is acting the bootlicker.
Worked at a scrapyard and a repair guy would buy washers and dryers then fix them up and sell em, we’d only set aside the old crappy looking ones because the new ones were more difficult to fix and maintain. He’d call it ‘systematic failure’ and that was the first time I became familiar with the concept.
@@Happyduderawr Saying the environment never forgets isn't about assigning consciousness to nature or dipping into animism. It's actually more about emphasising the long-term impacts our actions have on the environment, something more than often overlooked in our capitalist system.
The fact that we rely on planned obsolescence, boom and bust cycles, and an endlessly growing economy are pretty clear examples of why our current system doesn’t work or, at least, wont work forever
Well all ya have to do is look at light bulbs to see how the other end also fails. In the early 1900s light bulbs lasted for 100 years plus some. The problem being when they sold all their bulbs, no one was buying any new ones. So once their customer bases bought all they needed... they went bankrupt fast, so fast that the remaining companies had to get together to make light bulbs shorter lasting in order to make any money to handle overhead. Meaning the sales they were getting when things lasted, wasn't viable enough to keep the lights running (sorry for the pun). That is the problem we have to fix before going back to long lasting products.
No you were right with the first one. We are at the dying point. Heaven forbid you could keep a phone for more than 2 years, or use a power source that didn’t kill the entire planet. Gotta make green baby
I bought a slightly dim but lovely Edison bulb about 8 years ago for my bedroom, just to be fancy. I was going through a steampunk kick. The funny thing is that as I was buying it, I was already thinking about which shape I would buy next once it broke. I didn't realise it would end up being the longest lasting bulb I've ever owned. 😂 I'm happy about the unexpected surprise. It's interesting how we just accept as normal items having a short a life.
And yet those same farmers are adamantly against any kind of regulation so in the end they settled for John Deere making an empty promise that theyd do better.
I was truly shocked at the idea of a farming equipment manufacturer stopping farmers from repairing their own equipment. Of all professions, farming has to be one of the most self-sufficient ones out there.
Regarding the "planned obsolescence" of buildings, my wife was a primary school teacher in a old northern mill town. Her school was a red brick building built in 1902 and was situated in the midst of mill worker terraced housing. Around 2010, it was suddenly "discovered" that the school was built on "dangerous" brown field railway waste and would need to be demolished. A new glass and steel school was built in the local park a number of years later. During the consultancy process with staff, my wife asked the architect what the life expectancy of the building was. She was told, "25 years." Within a few years of moving in, staff were having to place buckets under the leaking flat roofs.
Reminds me of the place where I work. A combination of poor initial construction and negligence have made the building almost unworkable. I would fix it myself, if that's what I was hired to do.
The teachers at my high school (the newest school in the county at least) always said they built the building as cheap as humanly possible. They closed the old high school but since the town people were distraught about it, another company bought the building and its partly a gym and sports field outside, and like police training building
I had never heard of the concept of planned obsolescence being linked to questioning whether you really own a thing at all, but it is such a revelation to me. Generally, our concept of ownership is linked to control. If I buy a chair, I control that chair. If it's a badly made chair, I can make it better, or just repair it every time it breaks. If I buy a phone, and the company I bought it from decides in 4 years time to make my phone unusable, and can do that remotely and without my control or legitimate informed and un-pressured consent, it is not me who has control over the phone, it is the company. Though I have payed for the phone and am called 'owner', in reality ownership has not been transferred, as all the power remains in the hands of the company. Now I am not saying that the only value in life comes through ownership, the idea of ownership is a whole other conundrum, but I do think it this power relation which we can call ownership, though it might be better to have a secondary term for it, has a large amount to do with our sentimental object connection.
It feels kinda like renting an object that was a object you bought to own. I think the saying goes like this: You will pay for everything, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.
The sad thing is that Fairphone tried to make phones more repairable but, due to their engagement with third parties who carried out the manufacture, the outcome was phones that were repairable... so long as spares were available. Spares for some of their models were available for an abysmally short period of time (18 months?) so those people who did not damage or wear out their phones within that period got no advantage from the improved repairability. Compare this with the British GPO which ran the state phone network for many decades. In the late 50s it commissioned a 'modern telephone', manufactured by private industry to GPO specification. The 'modern telephone' (700-series) was rolled out very slowly over a number of years, initially as a premium service. As subscribers rented their phones from the company, most subscribers were renting 300-series phones produced between the 30s and the 60s, and for many years after the late 1950s, a new subscriber would be rented a reconditioned, used, 300-series telephone and not a 'modern telephone'. After that, new subscribers were rented the modern telephones, but often given refurbished ones, not new. The GPO even had its own repair factory. The GPO had a great interest in keeping the phones running for many decades as it rented them out. They were both expensive to purchase from new, and extremely well-built. While mostly kept as curiosities, some are still in use and usually function after very little overhaul. Of course the GPO also had a virtual monopoly on phone purchasing in the UK and could call the shots. In fact, if you had a GPO line, the GPO would decide what phone you could wire to that line (no plug and socket in them days) so the subscriber simply had no option except the options the GPO offered him (her). I suspect the issue is that, adjusted for inflation, I am told a new 'modern telephone' would have cost around £350 IIRC, but that was with mass-production and the GPO itself was large enough to ensure spares would be available for many years. Clearly Fairphone could never have the purchasing power that the GPO did. Essentially, then, by making so many different models, it means consumers do not have the power to force spares availability, and, as such, while the manufacturers could make your phone stop working remotely, essentially all electronic goods will only work until one cheap stupid component goes and then if you can't get the part, it's all so much scrap metal (plastic).
A phone is a difficult one as people really don’t understand that processing power has to scale with data advancements and changes in software. Is it planned obsolescence, or is it that processing requirements are being scaled higher than what your 4-5 year old device is capable of efficiently running. You gotta remember 4-5 years in the tech world is ancient history If we’re talking about stuff like battery life being purposefully reduced though then that’s a different thing, but your phone becoming slower with time is quite normal. Look at advancements in processing tech between 90-2009 for a great example of this. Every year massive breakthroughs in computer tech were happening which pretty much turned your new system into a dinosaur over night, these huge yearly and bi-yearly advancements in performance only started to slow down around 2009 for CPUs (when the core I series launched) and for graphics cards it was closer to 2015 (when gtx 10xx cards launched) We went from 45nm transistors in 2009 to 22nm by 2012 with modern transistors now being 5nm in size. To put that in perspective in the span of 3 years transistor count went from 731 million to 2.1b
Use it up Wear it out Make it do Or do without. - Learned from my grandmother, who lived in the Great Depression. I have no idea where she got it. But it's something I use as a kind of mantra-of-reuse. Also: focus on buying recycled stuff. Recyclable is good, even great. But if we buy stuff that's actually recycled, we create a demand that industry will pay attention to.
I think this concept meshes pretty well with the idea of enshitification. If a company runs out of potential customers to expand to, the solution is to find new ways to monetize the existing customers, even at the expense of the quality of your product. Planned obscelesence is just one type of enshitification, but a particularly effective one.
I feel like.... the fact that everything is switching to being subscription based is the natural next step to that. Really annoying, and I wish we could just divorce capitalism already.
@@BackstabberDDAgreed. It is guaranteed that all subscription models will cost more per month than the cost to buy a product and replace it at some point in the future when you need a new or updated version. Computer programs are a great example of that; since people only use a few of the features of any program, we’re usually happy to keep on using it years past when the makers think we should upgrade.
@@BackstabberDDthe problem is not capitalism, unfortunately. The problem is monopolisation and globalisation, as well as consumer attitudes. The benefit of capitalism is we have the commodity of choice, something not available in any alternative system. There are good products being made, they are just harder to come by.
I've been on a repair kick recently. My steam deck (games console) stopped working and I opened it up and had all the internal electronics right there. I worked out the issue and fixed it. I felt so proud of myself and now everyone I turn on the console I have a warm little feeling of pride.
Same! And what's cool is steam directly links you to repair tutorials by ifixit which is just a very different mentality than other consoles have. I assume it's because steam is for PC gamers and the steamdeck developed from that culture. For me it was one of the thumbsticks getting out of alignment.
I used to do tech support for a phone company. Even when a problem was fully covered by warranty, almost nobody was willing to ship their phone back to Asia for multiple weeks to *maybe* resolve the issue.
Eh it depends, I have a lifetime warranty on my racelands coilovers, they cost around $1000 Canadian after duties and taxes. About a year after owning them one of the front struts failed, I contacted them, and they covered the shipping without issue. Cut to 5 years later, one of the rear shocks cracked, once again they covered it without any cost to me again. They also sent the replacement before I even sent off the old part too so I could have my car back on the road It really depends on the company you’re dealing with
I think another good example of planned obsolescence is your common home printer. I bought a Cannon printer a few years ago. When the machine was not working any longer, I realized it needed ink. I went to my local big box and found out the ink cartridges cost more than a new Cannon printer. I bought the new printer.
There are printers you can buy to get around this, both from Canon and other brands. They’re known as “tank” printers… each brand has a slightly different name for it… but they utilize a tank of ink instead of a cartridge, and you fill the tanks from a bottle. The bottles are really cheap and hold more ink than a cartridge does. The printers themselves cost more, but you eventually make up for it if you print enough… and it cuts down on wasteful production of more cheap printers that people buy instead of new cartridges. 😉
My HP printer died before the first ink cartridge ran out I'll never buy another one so much for their planned obsolescence business plan all it did was lose them a customer
I bought and repaired a used HP Laserjet p4015 because I didn't want to give HP money. It only has 80k prints on it and should last years with home use. 🥰
I think there is a bit of an ideological battle happening with this phenomenon as my mom told me that growing up, her dad would tell her, "They make those better now", it seems like for a while we were on course for reliability and reusuability being a product standard but capitalism seems to love to ruin everything...
@@kibbles5724 Yeah I get that Capatalism says "If it brakes then they will buy a new one". I would much rather Capatalism says "Make this product to solve this problem forever then move onto the next product and solve the next problem"
@@jamessharpe1717 The thing is that some companies were approaching a model of "always improve". The kaizen principle of Japanese companies like Toyota is just that. Never deviate from the original product purpose and always work to improve it, not upsell it. One could argue its the glimmer of hope within capitalism but I'd be selling you too much if I said that.
@@jamessharpe1717 There intuition is not to design early replaceable products, rather products that all classes will purchase. Like what they did with the simple sliced bread toaster. A cheap piece of shit for the workers below living wage and an over elaborate 10 times expensive for the wealthy non working class. They are simply following Reaganomics elimination of a middle class. There is no longer a market for a decent middle product. The service repairmen are disappearing because there is no longer a middle class that can afford their services. The wealthy class is simply too small to keep them in business. You might argue then, the Reganites fucked themselves.
Been thinking about this a lot the last few years. Products that lose their usefulness quickly are not just inconvenient and cause us to spend far more money than we should need to, thus forcing us to keep working harder and longer hours, but it also results in appalling levels of trash that has to go somewhere.
That was my thoughts too! How are you going to force people to go electric and switch this and that to go green, but planned obsolescence isn't on their radar at all. The same people yelling at their neighbors to go green are also the biggest spenders on junk
Planned obsolescence, particularly in automobiles, is why I just cannot take the environmentalism agenda seriously. An automobile is designed to last 7 years but I'm not allowed to have a plastic bag to carry home my purchased consumer items which are, themselves, wrapped up in plastic for the convenience of the manufacturers. So, "save the planet" as long as corporations can make their profits first.
Depends on the product, they can cost a lot less even replacements included, takes a lot of $5 jerseys to make up to the $200 quality one, same with shoes
@@38dragoon38Yep and electric cars have shorter life spans due to batteries failing and costing more than even a not very old electric car to replace.
2:19 I think a good reason why people are intuitively offended by planned obsolescence is the fact that it goes against what most people are taught about capitalism and the free market. When we‘re still in our school years, we‘re taught (in a simplified way) that capitalism incentivizes companies to make the best products possible (which naturally one assume would also mean long lasting, durable products). If they didn’t, then customers would naturally buy elsewhere. Yet not only is this not the case, but some of the most valuable companies in the world (I.E. Apple valued at over $1 trillion) have planned obsolescence as their big business model. Planned obsolescence is the name of the game for much of the global market, to the point where it can be difficult to find a company which sells quality product without having it in their business model. This is not to even mention the fact that a lot of these companies also make it a pain to repair the products yourself. This is not driving innovation or making the best products possible, it’s just misery for the consumers.
My mother's had a Nokia mobile phone for over the past 25 years. It's been dropped on the pavement multiple times and still working. The one time it needed a minor fix-up the staff in the mobile phone shop gathered around like it was some mythical artefact Xd
The thing is, it *does* inspire innovation. Innovations in making money. From a profit perspective, planned obsolescence was an absolutely genius innovation that the market massively rewarded, just as capitalism intends. The drawback? The buyers and the planet. But that doesn't matter in this system.
I was a musician in school, and the instrument I played was the bassoon. Bassoons are incredibly expensive because of the level of skill and specialty an instrument maker has to have as they are not exactly popular instruments and are very complex. because of this I have only played on cheap school rental instruments. I've played on 2, and they were both clearly older than I am. They were cheap, probably only worth $4,000, but i loved them. the second one was worse off than the first (had the first in middle school, and the second in high school)), even though it was clearly newer, It was plastic and had cheaper metal for the keys. I learned Instrument repair to keep this instrument together, to keep playing it. by the time I had to say goodbye, it was missing its whisper key, which I didn't even know how to use, staying in tune solely because I had shut closed a key with masking tape, and had made several repairs. once a week I would check that all the screws were tight with my fingernails. I loved that instrument, but I was never able to sound 100% with it. The part of the video where the repair shop guy talks about what its like for someone to do their first repair and the kind of sentiment you get for the object resonated deeply with me and this aspect of my life. I didn't realize how good I had become at woodwind instrument repair until I completely brought back life into a flute deemed unusable and unrepairable that had been designated to the spare parts bin. I played a scale on it! granted it was airy and not great but at least half of that had to do with my lack of skill playing the flute... Repair is a genuine skill that I believe is very human and is much like the feeling of creation, rebirthing something, breathing new life into an object. companies like this, shortening the lives of our material items and making it either not worth it to repair or just not possible is creating a very shallow materialism. I don't, in general, think wanting to have a lot of things is very bad (with nuance of course), but not being able to have things that will last our lifetimes is creating a sense of insecurity in our home environment. you never know when an appliance will break or when you will need a new dresser because the old one broke in the night. I have quite a few family heirlooms and at the moment I dont really think I have much from my life that I really want to pass on to the next generation. tl;dr repairing things is as human as creation and restricting that is crappy and makes everyone a little less satisfied with life.
Right, yeah I’m finishing my degree in oboe performance this spring and many oboes are made out of grenadilla wood which isn’t endangered yet but is on track to be if trade isn’t closely monitored. I’m grateful and privileged to be at a music school like IU Jacobs where one of our oboe professors played oboe in the Met Opera and is guest faculty at Juilliard. I mention this because, well it’s mandatory now for all of our oboists to learn what each screw does on our own oboes, at least the 15 main ones, learn all their primary and secondary keys for each screw, so we can do basic repairs on our oboes ourselves. I’m not sure many other oboe studios in the U.S. do this, maybe at Juilliard/Curtis/Eastman, but even then it’s been invaluable to get to know my instrument on that level, because so many professional oboists rely on busy repair workers for simple repairs. I don’t play bassoon but we do have double reeds and reed making in common, which is a whole other can of worms. I mean, cane is so expensive, a never ending money pit, for what? So 300 oboists with graduate degrees from top music institutions with the nicest instruments can audition for one spot in the Indianapolis Symphony? Being an oboist and classical musician is so unsustainable, and as someone that grew up on food stamps and played on a $200 oboe with mold on the keys who didn’t own an oboe until after I was accepted into IU Jacobs having played the oboe for a decade at that point, I can’t help but acknowledge the lack of sustainability. It sort of drives me mad honestly, I’m grateful to have a full ride to IU since I grew up in the lowest income bracket in Indiana, but I see all my colleagues and their families dropping 10s of thousands of dollars on tuition and costs for music school or especially for double reeds, buying cane. Plus for bassoon like I know professional bassoons like Heckel Bassoons cost $30,000-$40,000 with a 8-10 YEARS on the waitlist. Like… what? Not to mention every key on the bassoon, at least for nice ones, cost hundreds and thousands of dollars themselves to get them replaced. At this point I’m just venting but as much as I love music and the oboe I’m so sick and tired of this draconian self-centered and self-entitled b.s. that comes with being an oboist. Like single reeds like saxophones and clarinets can buy Vandoren reeds at a store but store bought reeds for oboes are a joke and even a beginner can barely play one because Jones/Emerald (the most popular oboe store bought reed brands) start leaking in a couple hours of use, it’s pathetic. That’s part of why I’m going into STEM, specifically combining my background of music with quantum computing. It sounds strange since sound is inherently a classical phenomena, but just as classical computers in the 1960s were developing alongside music the whole time, I believe in the next 10-15+ years we will start to see more creative applications of quantum computation. My research was the sonification of data from quantum computers, specifically a fancy phenomena called quantum decoherence which is the process of a quantum state decaying or falling apart in the time of microseconds which I mapped to hertz so you can sonify a.k.a. physically hear a unique representation of this data that’s usually in the time domain which gets mapped to frequency. All this rambling to say, I treat my brain and mind as a gift (from God or whatever you believe) and I want to use that gift to help better optimize and help the world around me, or at least, not feed into the endangerment of grenadilla wood, or buy and buy and buy cane for the rest of my existence, but rather grow and prosper in the beautiful intersection of art + science, that might lead to more impactful applications for humanity in the future (at least with quantum computing applications probably in health or biology).
@@alexalani10110 The unsustainability of the classical music world and all that comes with it is the exact reason I didn't pursue a degree in music. I just wasn't able to see myself being good enough to beat out everyone else for the good symphony spots. Your comment on jones really got to me because I never learned how to make my own reeds. I was really out here struggling to get even the barest of instruction from my band teacher, who really didn't know much about bassoons, so most of what I know is entirely self taught. Quantum computers are super fascinating though. I can't wait to see what kind of applications we can use them for! I really enjoyed the ramblings.
My ex has a grandmother who still has an old Soviet era refrigerator. Works like new, looks cool and unique and doesn't need to be replaced anytime soon. Planned obsolescence is such a joke I hate that people just accept it at face value
@@kiwikemist Yeah, that would be best. I just meant to contrast the comment against others where going out and buying the old version of something actually makes more sense than buying the new version. Another commenter mentioned getting an old sewing machine that worked just as well and was more durable than modern sewing machines for example.
My dad often complains about the lack of possibility of servicing his own car. In the last 25 years they have had 4 different cars because they got cheaper to buy than to send them to be repaired, and he could not repair them himself because of computerized parts that was not possible to repair, simply because the diagnostics kit costed several hundred thousand dollars. But he still has his motorcycle he bought in the 70s and it is still working fine because he likes to tinker with it and makes adjustments constantly.
This is why I simply won’t buy a ‘new’ car. 2003 Honda civic for the win! That car is so easy to service yourself, parts are cheap as dirt, they’re reliable as all get out, don’t have parts that are electronically serialised to the engine (as far as I’m aware), and if it breaks down past repair they’re fairly cheap to replace. I love my car, even if people think it’s a piece of 💩 on the outside. I love how repairable it is when things break on it, and how cheap it is.
What place diagnostic's consoles cost over $100K? I might not knoew all of them (like tyre and like tyre- and climate-control diagnostics and etc.).. Anyway, in Eastern Europe simplest few-brand diagnostics tablet goes for few hundred € or top shock-resistant universal one can be under €2000. Don't know what's needed for US cars.
@@albertobarbossa2590 I feel that now that we’re in the age of teslas that’s gonna get a LOT more common. Those cars are essentially just iPads or computers that drive with all the ‘smart’ shit they’ve got crammed in them. Plus cars now have so many more serialised parts, especially electric vehicles like teslas. You can’t even change your car battery on some gas powered cars yourself because you need to get it serialised to the computers in it. It’s frickin ridiculous, almost like apple overtook the car companies 🙄
Funnily enough, the manufacturers in the USSR distributed everything (specially electronics) with complete schematics and it was generally encouraged to maintain and modify stuff as you will.
I had a 1997 Mustang GT for about 5 years. It was my favorite car ever. And I personally did most of the work to it and had a lot of restoration done. I had always swore I would never get rid of it. Even if I one day got a newer car and kept it for weekends and etc. It was hit by a drunk driver and totaled. That's when it really settled to me how much the car meant. It wasn't just my old car. It was my car that had gone through so much with me and always gave back what I put into it. I was heartbroken for months over it and still am in a way. Even after getting another one. Cause even though my 2001 mustang GT is very similar. It's not the one I had and worked on all that time. I still have it's window sticker frames on my wall. And even though it was "just a car". It taught me a lot. And I'll always miss "that car"
My grandmother's washing machine is at least 60 years old now, she's never had any other in her adult life. Everytime it needs to be repaired (it's not that often), the man who does it reminds her to never dispose of that machine. Meanwhile, my TV decided it would stop working after 2 years 💩
My washer/dryer came with the house (probably vintage late 1970s), I bought in 1991 - the one repair I've had to do so far was the drain pump on the washer seized (bearings)... Besides the hassle of having to drain the basket first it was literally a $40 replacement pump, pull back a bit and lean the washer back against the wall to get underneath, and maybe 30 minutes to get the old one out and new one in.
@@captainz9 I also have an old Bosch washer that I got with the house. It lasted for 6 years, but it stopped centrifuging recently so we got a new one. I still kept the Bosch one as I know I can fix it if I just find the time to, so I can have it wash again once the new one dies.
My house came with a fridge from circa 2000. It's needed some work once or twice but the repairman says we should keep it forever because it was the last quality model made by that manufacturer. He says even if we want to replace it we should put it in the garage or something. I'll keep it forever if I can.
When I was a young man I undertook the task of removing some surface rust off of my '65 Triumph TR-4 and bought a new Black & Decker belt sander to aid the process. 17 seconds into the project the machine completely burned out. I had moved to Seattle a couple years later and found myself in the industrial district (back when Seattle had one of those) poking around the small retail area of a huge wholesale construction supply company. It must've been a slow day (back when Seattle had those days) because the only other person in there was a salesman dressed in "too new" construction clothes trying schmooze a tall muscular guy who was workimg the front office. Grateful for the interruption, the guy asked me if he could help me find something. I can't recall what it was I was looking for but after explaining my need of a particlar tool's adapter/fitting/accessory, he said he didn't think so but pointed to a nearby aisle where I could try looking. On the way over, the salesman asked if I ever considered Black & Decker. From the other side of the aisle, I related my 17 second experience w/ the sander and said how I'd never buy a B&D product again. Wirh a conspiritorial grin towards the guy behind the coumter, he said, "That's because you were using the home owner grade." The company guy just raised an eyebrow at the salesman when I said, "You mean I could expect a contractor grade to last TWICE as long? Sorry, pal, but your company shouldn't have put their name on it." I didn't find my part and exited the store, waving goodbye to an amused company man and a deflated salesman. That was nearly 40 years ago and, to this day, I won't even buy a Black & Decker coffee maker. My point is that what little power we have as consumers must be exerted to its fullest--being nearly psycotically stalwort in our personal boycotts and our "...fool me twice..." convictions.
i do this so much with phones i will NOT buy a phone without a headphone jack and every time i buy USB cables i get the expensive Belkin cables (i have never had one fail on me) i used to get anker cables but they started creating them out of shit so i quit buying them. I truly believe uninformed consumers and willful ignorance will ruin the economy
I bought a B&D corded drill machine and in true form the switch quickly failed. As luck would have it, it failed in reverse mode so you could not say it was still usable. A new switch was almost the price of the drill, so I have been a loyal Makita owner ever since, I have had close to 30 years of reliable use on all my Makita branded power tools with cords (no batteries) and have no desire to ever consider B&D again.
Every product is trash in the end. That is the ultimate problem with consumerism. There is a myth that if we just support the right factory they will make good products that will last forever. It's just another trap, ALL items end up as trash at some point. The only true answer is Minimalism. To use as little as necessary to complete the task.
Yes! It used to piss me off to no end having to buy a new math book instead of just being able to buy a used one! I actually went and yelled at the guy who published the new text book. Told him math hasn't changed at all since last year and that it was crazy that I had to spend $150 on a new book! He shrugged and said, "It has new problems and graphics in it." As if that couldn't be a fuckin' downloadable... I'm getting worked up
In case you are still struggling with that problem, as a physicist, I can guarantee you that the same thing happened to physics and maths textbooks in the late 20th Century. Unless you are looking for top-of-the-line research, pre-1980's books are better. Dover republishes the best and cost around $10, they are more than worth it
Reading an economist's paper on my field of expertise is probably the only thing that came close to convincing me that this statement is not true. Some of them seem to look at reality as a nuisance that has to be bent into a screen on which ideology can be projected. But I think that can happen in any discipline - they are not real, after all.
Not only that but many actually think it's tinfoil hattery. I get looked at like I'm a bit crazy for even bringing the phrase/term up in conversation with some people in my life.
Because most people don't want to live in stasis and want to replace their sh*t because they got bored with them. Buy a Lada and drive it the next 30 years like the soviet did if it bothers you so much.
The upcoming business model does away with the idea altogether. They will have us endlessly subscribing for the use of everything in our homes instead of periodically buying (and owning) a new one.
Just to put some numbers on the obsolescence in (consumer) electronics: Usually you can significantly increase the life of something just by oversizing a few important components in a device. The most important ones here are probably power capacitors. Buying these higher quality components costs usually around 1-10$ in most devices. A price almost every consumer would be willing to pay if you gave them the option. BUT saving 1$ on something you will produce 10mio units of means you make quite a bit of additional profit and usually consumers are also fine with it dying after ‚enough‘ years, so you do that instead. I have no clue how you could stop something like this. The profit incentive directly encourages the worse components and you will never make all consumers attuned and knowledgable enough to detect this and care about it.
will have to come to realizeing "the love of money is root of all evil" = TRUE (christany) but also "stupidity is the root of all evil" also = TRUE (yet is from the satanic)
I think increasing the statuatory warranty for products would be the solution. I always wonder why dont we increase the warranty for things like washing mashines. They used to last for decades, now the last for some years. Because in the EU the warranty for a washing mashine is 2 years. This should be increased to 15, 20 or 30 years.
@@renezirkelthe problem with this is the exact problem with the solar energy industry currently: very long warranties are offered, but the companies shut down about 5-7 years in, and reopen as a new business, voiding any warranty from the original company
@@huberthopscotch1285 Yes this could be a problem, but not for all industries. I dont think already big corps want to go out of business because of warranty issues. The warranty should be increased step by step, so the industries can adjust. In the long run only companies with good warranty should survive (i hope).
My father and his brother did take apart these $1.00 pocket watches and put them together again. As boys, they enjoyed that more than the function of the watch. They grew up on a farm and being able and competent at repairing mechanical things was a must.
I think the most important part of that Technology Connections video isn't just that the bulbs were brighter, they were brighter *per unit of energy*. You could make a 3000 hour lightbulb as bright as a 1000 hour bulb but it used a comically large amount of power in comparison, iirc the 1000 hour bulbs were something crazy like 3 times more efficient than their predecessors. Given the low cost of an incandescent bulb (both in terms of price to consumer and resource cost), the high power consumption of incandescent bulbs, the high cost of power at the time and the fact that power was produced almost entirely from coal... There's no doubt the manufacturers were acting in their own best interest, but in this specific case that interest happened to perfectly align with consumer interests. It must be said that consumers fall into both planned obsolescence and the much more common just not bothering to make it good in the first place because we like paying less up front, and that desire frequently leads to higher costs down the line, particularly when those costs aren't obvious from the outset.
"In this specific case" HA, no - in basically all cases. Apple took the headphone jack and sold you air pods, now I willingly use TWS earbuds on my phone with a headphone jack because Apple ignited the entire TWS market while being incapable of killing the aux jack. That means I got a competitive, effective product for my use case and lost nothing. Valve was in an antagonistic relationship with microsoft so invested heavily into linux gaming as an open alternative that couldn't undermine their market and would reduce their dependency on microsoft. AMD's continued push to make FSR usable on all platforms builds consumer trust and loyalty which keeps a competitive customer base even when nvidia typically has strictly better hardware. Microsoft's steep reqs for W11-12 are alienating users and pushing them to more open platforms. (Again, Valve & Linux) Apple's M-series chips spurred competition which created and is continuing to create better and better chips, including more interest in open standards like RISC-V. (Although admittedly that interest will likely not show consumer facing results for a decade or more) Any given anti-consumer push alienates consumers and creates a prime striking point for competitors. (Unless that seemingly anti consumer push actually creates a better product just in a way thats often hard to define, like light quality instead of just light longevity) At least, when consumers have some god damn agency and dont just whinge about "muh capitalism". If I hear "everyone copies Apple" one more time I am going to fucking lose it; my fucking phone is not remotely like an iPhone, Framework literally built a business off of literally nothing except "we're repairable" and its just LD-50 levels of pure undiluted copium. Take some fucking agency in your purchases for christ's sake. I'm tired of being told I don't own my devices because you can't be bothered to actually purchase yours and instead would rather blindly click the first buy button you see and then complain you didn't get what you want.
All your examples are technology from the internet age which is studied by tech enthusiasts. This doesn't apply to cars and sewing machines, otherwise known as 'normie technology'. Gamers are tough customers, so they can force companies to change. Everyone else? Much less capable.@@felixjohnson3874
@@موسى_7 neat so the issue is most consumers arent "tough" and dont apply market pressure to look after their own interests and buy the optimal product... sorta seems like that's the real issue. Ever heard the phrase "can't soften the world, can only harden the person"? Because ghat damn the fact that you specifically used the word "tough" makes that so easy to apply it ought to be illegal!
putting any control on corporations is considered "communism" by some people here , idk how but looks like alot of corporate propaganda is just implanted into the American psyche to the point that people will make excuses
My father and a buddy used to run an electronics repair shop (circa 1990) It eventually closed, he told me, precisely because it was so much cheaper to just buy a new electronic device than to have it repaired. Even he started to do that with a lot of things, despite his skill set
My brother also notices it declining because of how electronics started using increasingly smaller components, impossible to service/replace by ordinary electronics shops most of the time. He now has an SMD soldering and desoldering station and is currently trying to revive a reasonably old videocamera by replacing transistors, resistors and capacitors on it with these new tools. If he would succeed, he would have spent less than 10 euro's in actual parts, it was just the soldering station/tools that are the costly part, and will serve him in future repairs.
@@Dutch3DMasterI have an old van that needs soldering on one of its computer boards. It’s a 1996 and they don’t make those chips anymore. I’m hoping to fix it for cheap like your brother is doing lol.
Reminds me of when i had a tenant i lived alongside, he also worked on fixing electronics and even helped me resolve problems. I took to him a phone my mom broke in a fit of rage, turns out to buy just a replacement screen cost just as much as the phone itself
I've become an avid vintage audio enthusiast and physical media collector. The quality of products from the 80's and earlier is much better than what is out there now. Sound quality is subjective but I purchased my first amplifier and tuner last Spring. I try to avoid buying anything new because of the low quality. There were other pieces that I wanted to buy but it wouldn't be realistic. The problem is that it's sometimes difficult to find replacement parts and the technicians able to do repairs will be retiring without a new generation to replace them.
The way I overcame this phenomenon is by reducing my needs on things. You don't need fancy features. You only need the ESSENCE features. So you can buy the cheapest goods without burdening yourself financially.
My grandma had a toaster from the 50s and it lasted until about 2020. We got a washing machine in our holiday home in Turkiye which is like 40 years old (my grandparents brought several domestic appliances from Germany to Turkiye because of the amazing quality back then). My grandpa bought a Renault car in the 70s and he used it until he sadly passed away in 2022. RIP grandpa. But he used to repair something in the car everyweek. Tbh I don't exactly know what he was doing but the car functioned perfectly because he cared so much for it.
I was watching Antiques Roadshow with my uncle last night, and they had on not one, but several pieces of furniture made over a century ago that were still beautiful and functional today (and these weren't like, put aside in a museum, these were pieces that were actively in use in people's homes, sometimes for multiple generations). I was just marveling at that, because I've had bookcases and the like that have literally fallen apart after a few years of light use.
I dream of some day to own a antique or super well-made heavy duty bookcase. 🥰 I have a 1970s wine storage unit that I use as a drawer to store my daily clothes and my kimono collection. Still looks new and the drawers still open and close so smooth. Heavy AF! need four men to move that thing around and that is after gutting it... removing the drawers and doors from it. They don't make it like they use to. Meanwhile, my bed with drawers, not even 2 years and the drawers are weird. They are not opening and closing smoothly. Definitely not well made. I would love to have a set of furniture from the 1950s-70s for the whole house. The whole planned obsolesce thing is annoying and so wasteful. The amount of water and gasoline needed, plus human labor and materials used to make the stuff is unnerving and depressing.
Yep, have a 130 year old solid oak claw foot dining table that I inherited from my mom and has been beaten up from myself, pets, and my now toddler... nothing a little TLC won't fix ♥️
Even cheap stuff back then lasted a long time. The cabinet that has been passed down for generations since the 1860s finally broke, and even then it should be easy to repair.
I think a contributing factor for cheap furniture is the cost->instability of housing increasing. Cheap furniture is lighter and much easier to leave behind and/or replace if it gets damaged when moving.
@keeahrahr3311 you know, I think you might be on to something there. Why bother investing the extra cost to get good, lasting furniture when there's no guarantee you'll even be able to fit it in the next place you've got? (Assuming, ofc, that you HAVE that money, which a lot of people don't.)
I’m on disability assistance, I legitimately can not afford to save up for items that would actually last me a long time. It feels beyond bleak, and thrift stores aren’t even an option anymore thanks to resellers
I believe Terry Pratchett(?) explained how it's more expensive to be poor with boots. The rich man can buy a pair of boots that will last a decade, but the poor man has to buy a bad one, that falls apart, every year. And he'll still have wet feet.
@bunnyfrosting1744 Many towns and cities have Facebook pages for "community support" or for free items, that are often very good items that the people spent good money on, but they don't have the time or energy to sell the items, yet they do not want the items to end up in the landfill. Case in point, because I am moving at the end of this month, and where I am moving to is already furnished, I have already given away a few furniture items that were only 2 years old, including a sofa that I paid $600 for. When I was moving long distance from NYC, I put listings for furniture, clothing, housewares and canned food items. Everything went! Lots of free stuff out there, just need to be in an area where it happens and comb Facebook for listings. Good luck!
I still mourn the loss of my first pair of combat boots I got to take from the German Army with me. They were over 10 years old, only the sole got recobbled once, and I lost them to stupidity. Left them outside on the porch were they got wet and mold grew in them ..
People don't even understand why you would now, and with shoes costing less than the labor to repair them it makes sense . But don't make it right, buy quality you can re sole
Don’t get me started on shoe repair. I could honestly cry over having to superglue trainers and boots that I have had for just over 6 months when I used to have footwear that lasted for 3 or 4 years (if not more) todays footwear must be designed for people who drive not people who actually walk! 😠
ive been thinking about old traditions and how there are often said to be spirits inhabiting objects. in japanese folklore for example, you have tsukumogami that inhabit household objects once they become a century old. it feels like such a shame that that sort of tradition could never arise today thanks to all our stuff falling apart within a couple years. also the environment too i guess maybe dont fill the ocean with trash idk
I saw the Simpsons Movie in the theater as a kid, and the scene of Homer dumping the waste into the lake is a Core Memory of mine. That stuck with me more than anything else in that movie, and I still think about it occasionally. It successfully gave me the deepest, yuckiest feeling I had yet experienced from media.
The sad thing is that it's actually pretty true to life. Pig farms have huge lagoons of pig waste and they spray it on fields which gets into the air and affects nearby residents. It can also get into the ground water
@@thewhitefalcon8539 "The contents in the spray and waste drift have been shown to cause mucosal irritation, respiratory ailment, increased stress, decreased quality of life, and higher blood pressure."
@@kpopgrrl okay? I'm sure snorting human waste isn't good for you either. Let's dump it in the lake like Homer, instead of putting it back into the environment where it should be - that's your solution?
Planned obsolence is at the very core of marketing, even when it comes to marketing certifications, you basically need a continuous streams of upgrades and upskills. Very interesting concept, I was applying it to music as well, it is very rare to see career artists nowadays, the whole ecosystem is now fixated with the next big thing which has a pretty short life-span, music has achieved economy of scale since a while now, but the output is not long-lasting and doesn't have much of a societal impact... subbed right away
I just bought a blender seven weeks ago. This morning, I went to make a protein shake and it was dead. I used it once a day, on the undemanding task of blending milk and protein powder, and it didn't even last two months.
For my birthday a few years ago (going on 5) I asked for a vitamix. The darn thing was expensive but stipp going strong, as I had it with having to replace the cheaper ones every six months. Le sigh
I remember watching a documentary about the local decline in number of people able to repair watches. The quiet death of industries and loss of skillsets often goes overlooked.
Social Anthropologist here (and late to the party): I think your venture into anthropology went well. I'm not an expert on the topic of material possessions, but I would still say solid undergrad level. Also, watching this on a computer that is 12 years old by now on a display from 2009. Doing everything to keep them running.
A good example of planned obsolescence: My uncle has a laptop that he uses for web browsing and Microsoft Office work. The laptop is over 7 years old, and while the hardware is still working fine (the battery lasts about 50% of what it used to), but the problem is with the operating system, Microsoft Windows. The laptop can barely run the latest version of Windows 10 (11 is unsupported because no TPM). Just last week, Windows literally destroyed it's own system partition by trying to do a Cumulative Update. I'd like to point out that it's not only hardware that's designed to fail, but sometimes it's all about the software. That laptop will easily last 10 more years with the kind of work he does. He doesn't need portability, he can just remove the battery and run it off an UPS, and all other hardware is going to be powerful enough. But it's the software that will be the problem. Microsoft refuses to get their shit together and make Windows actually functional and stable, but keeps adding more and more garbage (or bloatware) because THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT PROFITS. It's a deliberate attempt to make the customer buy a new laptop just to be able to use their new whatever garbage they launch next. But it's STILL not the end of the world. FOSS still exists, and Linux is still a thing. I myself have been daily driving Linux since the last couple of years, and now I'm gonna setup the perfect and easy to use Linux environment for him. Get fucked, Microsoft. I hope these so called 'innovators' rot away in hell because whatever they're doing with this 'built to fail' approach is just criminal behaviour.
I'm curious, does he have a ssd or hdd? I have a 2008 computer with 4 gigs of ram and a 8600 gt that is put to shame by a 620 from a i3 processor and I had to learn to let the computer process because I was a 20 tabs opening at the same time freq. At some point my cousin gave me an ssd as a present for my birthday, and now I can multi task and I don't have to wait at all.
windows os laptop, a few years ago i had to go into my software settings and turn off the two or three systems that force it to update because their update deletes my audio drivers then throws their incompatible version for my hardware on. i dont recall exactly what but it was the update timer, the check to see if that system is functioning, and the systems authority to "fix" things that the user changes. not to promote staying on windows but thats how to stop it from updating until you replace it with something not designed to break.
I've had to do a fresh install a few times over the years. It's always annoying. More recently windows forced a graphics driver update... that broke the graphics driver and something about a mismatch was stated. This is something that still makes me mad.
The connection with repairs also happens with the act of creation. I don't recall the name of the study, but it was found that people who made a piece of clothing in a class were asked their ownership of it years later, and the majority of people still owned and often wore the piece they made, whereas their fast fashion clothing they often only wore twice at most.
Probably the biggest one I know off the top of my head are manual can openers. The one that my grandmother and mom used is very durable and can open any can. It also feels like it weighs 5 pounds or something. Newer hand crank can openers I'll be lucky if they last longer than a month. Most often they get warped or worn out to where they can barely open a can. Even electric ones, if you go the affordable route, they look like they're made of the lightest more brittle plastic.
This one hit where it hurts 😅 my can opener is almost practically useless but I won't replace it cause I've got sauce in my fridge older than this hunk of junk 🥲
Used to, it wasn't about affordable. You would make a list of things you want, and over time, you would slowly fill it out. Saving for a good can opener was done the way most people do vacations.
What should also be discussed is the crappy LED bulbs that are absolutely designed to fail in a very short time. These companies are greenwashing with producing environmentally friendly LED bulbs that only last somewhere from 6 months to 2 years. We've had troubles with this, and my spouse vows to only look for the more expensive LED bulbs from now on, because it also just sucks to change bulbs when you've expected to not be needing to do that for years. I discussed this with a small shop that sells lights, and the owner said the cheap bulbs are generally made out of bad quality parts. BTW we've so far taken every single crappy bulb back to where we bought them, and they've agreed on replacing them with new ones, since on the package it says they should last X amount of hours. But there the salesperson tried to guilt us by claiming it's our fault, because the bulbs are designed to be shimmable, and we just have ordinary lights. I told this to the small light shop owner, who said it's BS, it's the other way round (aka if we had shimmable lights and were trying to use ordinary bulbs), and the fault is that the bulbs are bad quality. Just felt like I needed to say this. Not all LEDs or environmentally concious products are what they claim.
I feel like modifying things makes you more attached. I too have a google pixel, and I feel a lot more attached to it since I invested the time and energy of installing a privacy focused OS on it. It’s no longer just a phone, it’s my phone, I made it the way it is and I know it doesn’t do anything I don’t want it to. Same but stronger I have with computers, I’ve even felt longing for the old one when switching to a new one. I don’t think I’d get that on Mac or windows where customization boils down to the wallpaper you use, and on what side you dock your task bar
I feel the same way. When I’ve upgraded parts in my computer it feels much more “mine” as I’ve physically and psychically invested in it. I’ve never been an aesthetic ricer but even so, having my own little terminal aliases and keymaps really make my computer feel familiar and particular. I can hardly use a computer without remapping caps lock and escape 😩
I have a secret Wunderwaffe against all that: *refusal of purchase* Also with respect to shoes: in my 1970 childhood, my dad told us how to treat shoes right. Fix little things before they grow big, use a shoe tree, use a shoe horn, open the laces *every* time… And Sunday afternoon often times was shoe and bicycle cleaning day (so that mom could have a few hours off the noisy bunch). Pans: cast iron is all the antistick that I need. Most of it is inherited or from garage sales and flea markets. The only thing you need to know is how to get the patina right, and you'll never again buy a PTFE product again.
It's pretty hard to get attached to objects whose design is steeped with anti-consumer objectives and whose utility is demonstrably worse than alternatives which could be provided as easily and often _more_ easily if anyone were even willing to do so. Over time, one becomes less attached to existing items and more afraid of the _downgrade_ to newer even more hostile and exploitative products.
I dread the day when I may have to buy a new printer. Love my old laser printer from 2004 that doesn't connect to the internet and doesn't refuse to function without the right brand of cartridges.
Every update to Windows creates a worse and worse user experience. I hate it. Especially because a few years ago refusing to update bricked my device, because they decided to make the updated wifi adapter drivers incompatible with the version I was using. So there's literally no choice. Update to an inferior product or lose access to the device I paid good money for.
This reminds me that a few years ago, someone in charge of quality control for raw materials in the military was caught with lying about the quality of the metals. The metals were slightly below said grade and it was going on for almost 3 decades
Retirees tend to hold onto durable goods because they aren't necessarily able to afford replacements. That's why you see them driving beater but reliable cars, wearing cheap old clothing, keeping older furnishings in their homes and such.
Smart thrifty people of all ages do the same. When you understand value for money, and that the newer things are often of inferior quality, why replace something tnat is still serviceable and useful? Chances are it isn't going to be as good as what you're aiming to replace. I believe it all depends upon how one is raised... Many of us regardless of income were taught to make do, make repairs, and do without until a suitable or equivalent replacement was available, or within reach.
When you mentioned governments stimulating the economy through planned obsolescence I immediately thought of the "Abwrackprämie" that germany passed in response to the 2008 crisis. In short, the government would subsidize the sale of your new car if you scrapped your old car. It was the most obvious instance of "saying the quiet part out loud" in terms of meaningless destruction of value I have ever seen.
we have something similiar for fridgers here, but the idea was to remove old fridges and air conditioner with cfc, on the other hand when television became digital they gave digital receptors for free so people wouldn't have to replace their televisions in mass, it would probably cause a crisis to the trash collecting
The accumulation of e-waste over the last 30 years and its exponential growth is enough to worry me. The rest is just added pain. Those stainless pans you posted are almost identical to the ones my family has been using since before I was born. I'm 36 now and I still use them daily. Meanwhile, our non-sticks junked out in 2 years. And then, of course, there's cast iron that will last 10,000 years if done right.
I got a cast iron skillet about 4 years ago. Only having that one item to hand wash and reseason is practical and it'll outlast me if I don't leave it in a sink full of water for days on end.
I feel shitty when I cook at my job, things don't get rotated properly or eaten in time and have to get trashed/composted. I make >$20/hr. I can't imagine how the underage kids in the Congo mining cobalt for less than a dollar a day feel about the West's e-waste.
Unfortunately so. The documentary “The True Cost” covers the challenges many people in third world countries face when producing goods for the West. In this case fast fashion. It’s heartbreaking and raw, but an important watch that shows how unethical outsourced production can be. The movie is free on RUclips and I recommend the watch.
It's kind of crazy how the current model of the economy basically boils down to infinitely buying products that break quickly so we can keep infinitely working to infinitely produce them without ever improving our actual lives. And mainstream economists see no problem with this model simply because it makes red line go up.
@@Blaze6108 thats why i barely do anything and dont buy anything, im not working to death to feed this immoral satanic system, ive got better things to do with my time then enrich evil people that want us all gone
@@ginaherrera3166 greed is incentivized through the system. overconsumption as well - not only does profit need to increase, but the rate of profit. look at entertainment companies -- they increase streaming fees because they have nothing left to sell to increase profits., they have consumer capture. you might have a good boss or landlord. but that's only for now. i would say, it's not money that's inherently problematic, but capital. capital is power. it's what is behind the fundamentally un democratic nature of the economy that needs to change.
Funny that you and SMN bring your videos about planned obsolescance now as I recently bought two "Superfest" drinking glasses from the GDR. They aren't really an example for planned obsolescance and more of "planned durability", as the GDR wanted to waste less ressources on replacing easily breakable glasses used in gastronomy, so they developed Superfest-glass - very thin neigh unbreakable drinking vessels that where distributed to bars and the like. I didn't want to test the unbreakability, but fortunately I accidentaly dropped one of the glasses from a table and lo and behold: Even after 30+ years these East German wonders don't break when dropped :) Unfortunately the company was closed after the annexation of the GDR.
When he said "they only go into what planned obsolescence is" I immediately came down to see if someone mentioned the SMN episode. It did such a good job of detailing how it is intrinsically tied to the eternal growth model of capitalism and is basically a guaranteed necessity of our market. Haven't made it far in, but excited to see what this video has to add!
@@bulletsandbracelets4140I was feeling a little deja vu in the beginning of the video but I didn't know why (I have a bad memory) then I searched and I watched the SMN video 2 days ago.
Unironically, "once again we see the contradictions inherent in capitalism". Planned Obsolescence is one of the tools required to help the real economy at least somewhat keep pace with exponential growth expectations dictated by capitalism. It's a shame this wasn't really touched on.
I'm gonna trust the leftist economist here, there's a good reason it wasn't adress. It's essentially adressed by the part about the depression. The thing is generally, the need for exponential growth as truly necessary for capitalism, at least in the way Marxist model it, is false, there's not really evidence that this needs to go on forever in order for the constituent elements of capitalism (private property and markets) to continue existing. Endless growth is a consequence of capitalism, an expectation, but it is not a requirement.
Learn what "Economic Capital" is. You and the presenter sound dense when you drag it in without realizing products that fall apart is not public demand nor worth what they cost. You and others bashing Capitalism is why planned obsolescence exists.
6:00 I'm pretty sure TechnologyConnections said something about this. Hotter tungsten is brighter and lights up more area per watt, at the cost of it sublimating faster. The incandescent bulbs at the time were really dim, so they got together and made light bulbs brighter while using the same amount of energy, meaning less light bulbs would be needed to light a room, thereby saving energy. The people who made the light bulbs IIRC also ran city power grids, and reducing load saved them money. That light bulbs lasted for less time was a side product.
I feel like I mostly follow "practical conservatism" with my personal things. I don't like replacing things (partly costs) mostly because I like my stuff! I like the memories that all my little trinkets and "junk" evoke. I don't want to replace my stained bath towel because it was with me all through college. I have a t-shirt from a job I don't have anymore, magazines that I don't read that are the same kind my grandpa would read, bent knitting needles that I've since replaced with good quality ones but still keep because I learned how to knit with them. I balk when my boyfriend suggests that we replace something if it is slightly faulty or simply old.
Just be careful... as someone who fucked around and found out, this is a very slippery slide into hoarding. I now have a strict "can't use it, won't display it, it's garbage" mentality...
@@RobinTheBot I know, I'm not anywhere close to the slope yet (and hopefully never will). I just have clutter and a lot of small things due to moving so often these past 7 years. (God it's really been that long since I graduated high school)
A year ago in my senior year of high school, I went through three entire pairs of tennis shoes (for actual tennis) to the point they couldn't be worn on the court anymore. if I hadn't worn each of those shoes for multiple weeks after they got holes in the bottoms of them I would have easily gone through upward of 7 in just one year. I just wore those shoes on the court, just 3-4 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, I could have spent more than 500$ on just shoes.
Ive noticed my LEDs DO NOT last very long, cheap or expensive, I believe we were told 10 years. My curl florescent bulbs although had to warm up and full of mercury (totally safe and made sense to put lots of toxic materials in a fragile glass bottle) but they lasted until i removed them to get LEDs. We went from regular to florescent to LED.
Hook line and sinker. I don't think anyone buying a high end Phlips LED Bulb today is seriously planning on using that bulb until 2037... Which is what they claim would be it's expected lifespan. They draw less watts, yet, my electric bill is about the same to when I used standard bulbs.
@MartinAndrews When it was in the news that incandescent lightbulbs were likely to be discontinued from being manufactured, I went and bought $75 worth of lightbulbs! 💡💡💡💡💡
I was on my condo board when it was proposed to switch to LED's because of the cost savings claims. Some of them have burned out and need replacing. Overall, I'm very sceptical about cost savings.
My favourite item is an old leather messenger bag I bought already well used. The shoulder strap broke after a few years but I didn't want to give it up, so I got a friend of mine who knew leatherworking to help me make a new one. The replacement part looked pretty out of place at first, but over time it has developed a beautiful shiny patina.
The revived popularity of fountain pens and old typewriters makes a lot more sense. As long as you can do basic maintenance, a fountain pen and typewriter will last for life. I sell bookmarks at fairs, and I make them as durable as I can. Every tassel is glued at the knot and each bookmark is laminated. I love bookmarks, but hated every time the tassel fell apart or the design got rubbed off, so I make mine to last.
glass bottle of ink and refillable ink container! LAMY makes a ridiculously high writing quality fountain pen, the safari. Not the prettiest and it is mostly plastic (I think everything except the clip and the nib are plastic 😔) but how it writes is *exemplary* puts pens costing ten times as much to shame! (it is also lefty-friendly 🤗) If only i could find a way to refill the ink bottle without buying a new one, it would be completely zero trash writing ✌
It’s not the longevity and we all know it. Fountain pens are fun and for many of us it’s just more comfortable. A lot of the fountain pen growth recently was backed by hyper consumerism and the desire for the new pretty or for large numbers of inks.
@@GeorgeTsirosBest bang for buck for trying it is probably a Platinum Preppy. Extremely consistent, easy to sue, cheap, available in most pen stores. And definitely see if you have a fountain pen store in your city, you can try them out and see all the inks and whatnot.
The short book "Automation and the Future of Work" by Aaron Benanav offers a really good exploration of the contradiction that overproduction generally leads to lack of access to consumer goods
Yeah. Like today we produce enough food to feed 10 billion people. But 9 million plus people starve to death every year because keeping them alive doesn't enrich the already wealthy.
I’ve taken to making my own clothes and plan to move forward with my skills and branch into making shoes and handbags for this very reason. My clothes cost an arm and a leg and are almost unwearable 6 months from purchase because of how horribly constructed they are. I can’t take it anymore
Have you tried washing your clothes in laundry nets? I have to buy relatively crappy jeans because they are the only ones I know I can stand wearing that also fit my body type. So crapppy in fact that I had two of them break within two months before but since I have started washing them in nets they last a lot longer and I feel like my other clothes do too.
@@unlearningeconomics9021 it wouldn't have completely surprised me if you were... are there "mutuals" on patreon? Two accounts just trading the same 1$ subscription every month? :D
I've just stopped buying tech and clothes. This year I've only bought a new phone, since my previous one from 2018 broke down. It's wild that 5 years for a phone is considered a long lifespan nowadays though. I've bought a couple of thrift store clothes and two belts on amazon, and that's it. As I've hit my early 20's, my clothing consumption has really slowed down as I've found my style and learned to thrift if I need something new. The only thing I'm really buying nowadays is Lego, and even though it's made of plastic, it's made to last and to be passed down from generations and not disposed of. It's surprisingly easy to not buy stuff lol.
I think there's also an intrinsic reason we gravitate toward reliable older things: Our very survival likely relied on efficiency through most of history. When we spend more time or resources on replacing something we owned that broke is less time and resources we can put towards feeding our family. We've only allowed this because we've been living in the richest age in history. We could afford to lose things without starving... But that age is gone and we're in the collapse of the global economy so I can understand people being more concerned about these systems/products that are so inefficient. As a side-note: copyright and patent laws need to be adjusted to allow more people to make and repair their own things. The unfair laws are a big reason why there isn't more competition for off-label products including prescription medicines.
My partner bought replacement parts for our Kitchenaid stand mixer because there’s one very important part inside made of plastic. Fortunately the replacement is cheap and only needs to be changed once a decade or so, but you could easily think the whole thing needs replacement.
Don't forget that Apple actually applied a software update that slowed down the OS on old versions of their phone to make people think they need the new version of the phone.
@@erkinalp They underclocked older iPhones in order to extend battery life and health, but that's still bad nonethelss. It should be optional setting and transparent at the very least. I prefer somewhat owning my products and not being locked into one ecosystem and what I can or can't do with my own device. Once Apple deems your older phone obsolete, you can't do much about it, and you can't deny updates because eventually apps stop working on older iOS versions. Most Android apps still support Android 5 and forward, there are mirrors where you can download older app versions if newer doesn't work, and you can install custom ROMs or GSIs to further extend life of your Android phone. It's not as hard as people think it is.
This, like the claim in the video, is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of reasonably basic technology. Apple underclocked processors on phones whose batteries could no longer consistently supply the necessary voltage to run them at their maximum highest clock speeds. Google did *not* do this and it resulted in the Nexus 6P (for example) constantly rebooting at like 40% battery after you'd had it for about a year.
I remember back in 2008 it was impossible to criticise Apple about anything before being attacked by legions of Apple zealots. By 2012 attitudes had started to shift and people realised that perhaps the multi billion dollar company Apple wasn't as perfect as they wanted to believe.
I have a US $20 hiking bag I bought in 2014. It is still my main carry bag and been with me all over the place. It has some natural surface wear / colour fading but it structurally is absolutely fine and robust. No broken seams, no ripped pockets or buckles etc…. And there were times where I didn’t treat it well in rough conditions either or I massively overpacked it and it still held up. a lot of the older may have been better, but they were also more expensive factoring in inflation and also it’s survivorship bias.
Mine dates from the mid 80s. Karrimor, before they got bought by Sports Direct. Came with a lifetime warranty and they meant it. I still have the warranty card too, though I'm sure it wouldn't be honoured, the company is long gone and only a brand remains.
I have a winter jacket I bought when I was 16, I still have and wear it now at 33 but it’s started to show it’s age with frayed sleeves and a little hole here and there. I’ve been looking for someone who can repair it because I just can’t fathom throwing it away, it’s been with me through so much of life.
Only times ive gotten new vehicles was after being hit and insurance decided to total the old ones. Damage wasnt even that bad but turns out they wont give you much money for a truck with 250,000 miles on it.
I wear the same converse everyday. I bought a used pair for five bucks three years ago and wore them every. day. They didn't just have holes, like the canvas was tearing apart. Over the years i went on many a visit to the local cobbler. Converse may be good quality compared to others (i genuinely wouldn't know im not kidding these are ALL i wear) but they aren't like industrial quality. Its still great to support a local repair shop, and the feeling you get from repairing something for like $10 truly doesn't compare. Eventually last summer I bought a new pair, cant wait to see how far they go. ALSO, while in the military (90s) he bought a plastic Nalgene water bottle (in the first few minutes of the video it literally shows a picture of the same water bottle in the buy once subreddit). Nalgene isn't even a waterbottle company, they make lab equipment. but anyway, my dad literally used only this water bottle since the nineties. Imagine a plastic waterbottle that has been used for 30 years everyday (through the military and raising kids). This summer the cap broke, he caved and bought a new one, same brand and model, bo fancy features, just a reliable product. Meanwhile at the exact same time this summer, the cap to my 6 month old hydroflask (a brand praised for its quality) broke and had to be replaced. I have a mechanical pencil I used everyday from 8th grade now into college. Really good example of the "take it apart and fix" gratification and philosophy. Its metal and plastic, triangular, nice to spin. Can't find it anywhere online now though. I loooovvvvveeeeee having things. Not getting things (my dopamine says i love it but it fades the next day). No i love having things that last. That have been with me. That are dependable
Big fan of the channel here, loved the video! One bit of feedback for future videos, it would be awesome if you could include you're sources on screen, including page numbers for books when you cite specific facts, events, quotes? It would make it easier to look further into stuff we find particularly interesting. I also thinks it's good practice to spread amongst video essays, particular those that get into politics, economics and science. I trust this channel but I've been burned recently with channels not citing particular sources per claim and just including some books in the description and then turning out to be misleading. BadEmpanda did a great video on the topic "History RUclipsrs Are a Complete Joke" though be warned he is pretty brutal about it. Again, love your stuff, thanks for all the hard work! 😁
The joy of having "one" thing for each job is amazing. Having something that you have not only grown up using but can take with you to give to grand children.
You've got the light bulb thing partially correct, but you missed an important factor. You can make light bulbs last longer by reducing the amount of light they put out. That's how they lasted 2.5k hours. The 1k hour bulbs sat at a sweet spot between longevity and light output, and became the most popular. The RUclips channel Technology Connections has a great video about this called "Longer Lasting Light Bulbs: It Was Complicated." Highly recommended.
I’m surprised that I had to scroll down this far to see a comment about this. A big component of this is the watts per lumen. While a household might be able to fill itself with lots of dim lightbulbs that last a long time to achieve the same brightness, their power usage would be much higher for the same net brightness. Is the total number of increased joules per unit life worth the reduced waste of already-highly recyclable components?
@@TheFerruccio Not to mention it was common for those same companies, as they often also were the ones selling electricity directly or indirectly, to give out their lightbulbs for free to customers. It was quite literally to save themselves money by giving people more efficient and less durable lightbulbs. It wasn't some super secret grand scheme so people would buy more lightbulbs, because they were literally given away but rather to give consumers lower electricity bills and tax their own network less. It was quiet frankly a win/win for both consumers and electricity producers. The claim it was some grand consumer screwing conspiracy is exactly the sentiment the cartel tried avoiding by trying to make sure that consumers didn't fell for the whole "but it lasts longer thus it must be cheaper" shtick.
@@relo999 "as they often also were the ones selling electricity directly or indirectly, to give out their lightbulbs for free to customers. It was quite literally to save themselves money by giving people more efficient and less durable lightbulbs" have i missed some sort of fundamental aspect of power companies?
I was told once that to due to competition in the market energy companies will sell you energy at only a slight profit and make most of their money from standing charges. It seems its a game of serving as many customers as possible rather than getting the most from a few.
I'm only 14 minutes in atm but I really hope the appliances of the modern world get addressed at some point washing machines, dryers, refrigerators and dishwashers
Love your attitude to wireless headphones ! My first smart phone was the best phone I owned. It had a user replaceable battery and used it for 8 years. I would still be using it if 2G was not phased out. Perhaps if the transceiver was easily replaced I would still be using it.
I feel you. It is very discouraging seeing the way device manufacturers have gone in the last decade plus. However, there is a solution out there. Modular phones and computers are the way to subvert planned obsolescence. Companies designing and making these modular devices are definitely swimming upriver and have had a hard time getting traction. The reality is though that this is the way devices should be made if we're being at all cognizant about our environment. Companies like the Fairphone, and Framework (laptop) have sprouted up in the last few years and they're making compelling products.
LEDs are actually incredibly brighter than old lightbulbs and amazingly power-efficient even though there hasn't been significant advancement made in like 10 years. They were just such a better product it was impossible for them not to become a thing.
There are advances in LED every year. It is simply not true that there haven't been advances in 10 years. They get more and more efficient with each generation. Currently roughly 20% per year/generation. You can compare modern LED develoment to the advances that were made year on year in computing power of CPUs maybe ten years ago. It's technologically one of the most dynamically evolving tech.
Slightly reminded of the way the eu banned standard lightbulbs but instead of backing existing superior LED technology, they went all in for slow, often emitting ugly light, mercury-containing CFL lamps. But oh well, LED did come out on top on the end.
I work in energy efficiency, testing and modeling new homes. I can say that LEDs are one of the most amazing market transformations and are quite the opposite of the planned obsolescence discussed here: they last soooo long! Also, the lighting (both fixtures and installation) designers are loving the whole thing, being able to do things they never could before.
@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 the easiest way for me personally is figuring out which SKUs come from which factory and then look for the ones from the newest-built/updated factory of the brand i want. Most led lights today are coming out of factories set up in the 90s with the owners just trying to milk it until they have to shut down for a while (read: months or years) to update the factory to the most recent standard.
Planned obsolescence is the sad reality of building a successful business, growing it and realizing you've run out of customers, factory workers need something to do and to get paid somehow. So you either invent new skews of the same product or make the product break just in time for the warranty to have run out. Many businesses start with the promise of delivering a product you'll never need to replace, but inevitably they'd have to completely pivot to find a new customer base, lest they end up endlessly stockpiling good product that they can't afford to keep hoarding.
Sure you can feel nostalgic about things you have no memory of. Those items have soul, and you can tell. My dad brought me a nightstand from a secondhand store today. It’s solid wood with fitted drawers that have a smooth, even weight to them. It’s no doubt several decades old and it’s so pretty. It’ll be replacing my current plain white ikea nightstand that feels like cardboard and rattles when you touch it. There’s joy and comfort in using something that someone else has used before you, and someone else will be able to use after you. There’s love to be found in things that were made not to be forgotten, but cherished.
@@angrydragonslayer No, and I don't know how you got that impression, but people like that are stealing my past and my lived experience and authoritatively saying it's something it never was. I'm not saying this particular person is guilty of that, but there are people all over the internet who do it, e.g. some 21 year old acting like they knew exactly what was going on in "the 90's" as if it's one homogeneous era that didn't change until midnight on New Year's Day in 2000 or 2001, depending on how you count it.
I absolutely love it when I can hold onto something for ages. I would have done it with my car, except that the insurance company demanded OEM parts for the repair, which nearly doubled the estimate and totaled the car. It wasn't even a new or expensive care, just a 2005 Hyundai.
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somethings disposable are good espcially in hte hospital somethings probably shouldnt be reused, would you want to use resuable depends that another adult used yestereday?
One correction 25:38 (I believe) that apple reduced performance to maintain battery, not the other way around
@unlearningeconomics9021 Veritasium has a LOT of oil propaganda and climate denial, please don't advertise them?
Can i get a source for "the average printer prints for only about 5 hours during its lifetime"? I am not able to find that claim anywhere else but it's a really interesting claim
Frédéric Bastiat, a french economist of the 19th century, wrote against stimulating the economy through destruction, on his Broken Window Parable. If some kid broke a window, it would generate profit for the glassmaker, he would spend it and so money circulates creating wealth for everyone! The child was a hero! The man with the broken windows then said: "But I was going to buy a new pair of shoes! I would have my window and my shoes, now I will have only my shoes, I'm poorer! And even if not, I would save my money and have it for an emergency, with would make me safer, or I would invest it in my bussiness, creating more wealth!".
The same applies for planned obsolescence. Note that not every economist used to be so much in favor of capitalism. Some saw capitalism as a way to create distortions on the culture and the economy to favor the elites at the expense of everyone else. Georgists, mutualists, left libertarians and many others see capitalism as much as problem as a powerful government. You even have free market anti-capitalists, if you need to research on youtube. I would recomend The Low Overhead Manifesto, by Kelvin Carson (a modern day Mutualist), were he says that we don't just need an economic reform, but a cultural one, not at ballot, but essentially at grassroots level, were people take the matters at their own hands through DIY, 3D manufacturing, permaculture, resiliency, etc. It's a really nice read, it changed my worldview.
I lost my mom to cancer a few years ago. She had bought me a pots and pans set years prior. The pans were nonstick and starting to peel, so they were unsafe to keep using. When we mix disposability with sentiment, the result is heartbreaking. My identical replacement pan set sat for months as I built up the courage to throw away the old set. It still hurts to think about.
That's unfortunate. PTFE is a coating that's really hard to remove chemically, but if it's already peeling, maybe you can remove it mechanically by abrading it off.
Might make you feel better to know the pans cause cancer?
Non stick is a fraud. All you need in a pan to inhibit food sticking is fat, either butter, olive oil or lard. It worked for hundreds of years
here is an idea if you want to: turn them into decorations, glue some stuffs that is related to her cooking to it then just hang em for display. Maybe fake food or dried spices.
I also lost my mom a few year ago to lung cancer and i treasure each items as they remind me of her. 😢
I've just switched my 2010 sewing machine, which had become very unreliable, for a 1957 Singer machine with no plastic parts that I can service myself and which works as well now as the day it was made. It's a joy to know that, if I continue to take care of it, I've bought my last sewing machine
Profits, profits, profits. Your 1957 Singer machine would've been disregarded as unprofitable by the 70s and 80s
@toyotaprius79 this is true, singer used to have a trade in program to convince people to "upgrade" to newer models and to get the older more durable models off the market (they were usually destroyed)
I absolutely love old sewing machines, I've gotten into the habit of finding beat up ones (usually for ridiculously low prices) and fixing them up so they can find a new home, it's very satisfying
My mom’s got an old Singer (not sure what year) that’s probably 3 times my age and it runs flawlessly.
Pah! 1957? I won't have any of that modern rubbish! 😉My sewing machine is a 1920s model.
Seriously, that's an excellent choice. I love my old Singer sewing machine. It cost a fraction of a new machine, it's basic but works perfectly for what I need. And I have it out on display because it looks so beautiful.
As an engineer, planned obsolescence is rarely a conscious choice on first design... on first design. Then the "stakeholders" come in and that's when planned obsolescence is shoehorned in. But it's funky, it's never put that way, it's cost savings and resource availability.
What's funny is I worked for a large military contractor for nearly 20 years of my career and trust me, the stuff we made for the military was expensive and over-engineered to the hilt, certainly no "planned obsolescence" (other than obviously in a few decades technology would be better). But, yes, it's the old idea of "reliable or cheap, pick one".
This!
I have always struggled with these accusations of planned obsolescence. As an engineer myself, never have I ever been tasked with designing or architecting anything with a target obsolescence timeline . It’s always been the stakeholders that come in and pull the rug out from under you by reducing resources or mandating a target price that lead to this.
@@bhanner95 That leads to what? You revising your design choices with a target? Engineers without budget, manufacturing and time constraints can of course design things that are very over spec.
As a child i disassembled everything, with reassembling i mostly failed, but that has changed now.
I hate planned obsolescence and whenever something breaks i get excited, because i can repair and "fight" planned obsolescence. Its so satisfying. I have seen so many bullshit constructions.
I dont believe anyone, when they say, it is to make products cheaper. They could let it costs 1-5% more and it would take at least twice as long to break.
electric toothbrush - just a drop of locktight on a screw for a 120€ product - 5c? - thanks philips
babyphone - just 1-2g more plastic behind the usb charging plug - 2c? - thanks philips
Washing Mashine - a door with plastic frame which takes all the doors weight on the hinge? seriously? metal frame 5€?
could go on...
its ridiculous,
the rental instead of buying principle is nice, so they build to last in their own interest
but this has still to come...
I replaced a batch of capacitors on a pair of active speakers the other day…the manufacturer chose cheap ones that are know to fail, the ones I put in were 4x the price, at £4.50 each, but I won’t have to replace those in my life now.
I own an appliance repair company and I’ve noticed over the last couple years the manufacturers have done things on purpose, to make it very difficult to take them apart and fix them. Like bolting the lids on from the bottom side. so you have to have special extension tools and it takes an additional hour just to get the lid off
This is why I discourage buying Apple devices, they are specifically designed to be as anti-repair as possible
Or glass backs. You can't tell me that they are only an aesthetic design choice. They make phones even more vulnerable to falls than before. Or when I needed a new electric stove last year it was pretty difficult to find one with a frame and the shop assistant themselves said that the frameless stove tops break more easily in their experience.
well there's like out of your way maliciousness from Apple I don't have the experience that you do obviously but from what I've seen my tinkering it's just choosing what's the cheapest most half-assed way of doing it and let's do that. big blobs of hot glue usually hard the result
@@kenon6968 I feel like they go out of their way to make it difficult or destructive for you to try to repair something
Exactly.
"Ok fine, you can repair our stuff🙄 we're just gonna make it either next to impossible to take apart or make it so you must buy OUR proprietary tool to fix it"
There's also some poverty shaming going on with that, since poorer people are generally more likely to buy cheaper, "less sustainable" products. I romanticised buying more expensive but endlessly durable items for years when I was poor. Imagine my frustration when I finally got to the financial situation to buy more expensive "durable" winter boots - and they lasted for all of two seasons before the heal broke off. Brought it to a shoemaker and he told me repairing it would make it last for maybe two more weeks, since this was a planned structural failure that could not be repaired to last. Capitalism as it is truly is the largest scam there is.
Such a good point! This is the thing that pisses me off about market fundamentalist retorts of "if the consumer wanted more durable goods, they would buy them". Try it!!
Your boots are such a good example
A "market oriented" regulation that I would support wholeheartedly on fashion would be state-enforced labelling on durability of goods in certain categories, with a regulator to test them. Even anti-socialist types could go along with that, surely. Fine, let the customer decide! But arm them with the information to do so: every t-shirt, every pair of jeans, every pair of boots, carries a label clearly marking its durability (maybe a traffic lights system? Or just bands for expected lifespan). Even the most neoliberal market-oriented intervention such as this could make such a big difference!
Because at the moment, you can easily pay 5x the price to buy the "quality" product only to still find it falls apart in a couple of years! With clothes it's particularly bad, this is a problem that nebulous "market forces" alone, undirected, simply won't solve
Capitalists assume perfect information. However, a famous quote from the internet is the best counter to capitalism: 'Two things are endless: the universe and human stupidity. I'm not sure about the former.'@@Muzikman127 It isn't just consumers who are stupid, but even businesspeople are often stupid.
@@Muzikman127 We have the government testing the energy-efficiency and the safety of many propucts, so reliablityi is very good idea.
@@Muzikman127 i do want to mention that there is already a product category with a quasi durability label: foodstuffs, with best by dates. i mention this because most problems with best by dates easily paralell those a durability label would have.
Possibly the most comprehensive Simpsons review ever made.
actually no I think viedo gaems' Simpsons retrospective is a little better, sorry
@@spcln8000marginal
President sunday viewer 🤨
I was shocked it actually took him a full 15 minutes to get to the first reference
@@spcln8000 sorey eh
"Right to repair" really is about the actual RIGHT - cause Apple started going the legal route by intentionally making it impossible to repair their devices and SUEING people that sold replacement parts (even those that were clearly marked and advertised to not be apple products). And Apple and others also started restricting functionalities, disabling features or even entirely bricking devices if repaired by anybody else than the original manufacturers (John Deer comes to mind - for example with mandatory software-updates they are constantly checking for new 3rd party hardware like GPS-receivers and if detected not only reject any communication with that hardware but also completely disable GPS-navigation even if the way overpriced, more error-prone and less accurate JohnDeer module is then installed).
Damn really? I never knew I was obligated to buy from Apple or John Deer so their choices limit my rights!
Wait... *_shit_* who has a few k for a tractor and a mac!? I gotta get these shipped before anyone finds out I dont already have them!
Fuck if only I had bought a Mac instead of a Framework I wouldn't be in this mess!
@@felixjohnson3874 "Damn really? I never knew I was obligated to buy from Apple or John Deer so their choices limit my rights!"
And we found the bootlicker.
@@ABaumstumpf cope, I use arch with a degoogled android and a custom built PC.
I value my rights, you value laziness and screeching that your rights are being violated because you cant be bothered to take accountability for your purchases. I practice what I preach, you don't practice and instead screech.
@@felixjohnson3874 yes we all know that you have to constantly cope.
"I value my rights" You ahave already shown the only thing you are is acting the bootlicker.
Doesn't John Deere functionally have a monopoly on farming equipment?
Don't worry, everyone, we're moving from planned obsolence to subscription services.
Get ready to pay 2$ a month for your brand new boots!
they're wi-fi connected and if you stop paying they won't walk around anymore
People already do that with credit cards
4$ if you want shoelaces
@@marianadias2826😂
@@marianadias2826Great take! That's the only logical reason for the push for the Internet of Things, which is a totally superfluous tech otherwise.
Worked at a scrapyard and a repair guy would buy washers and dryers then fix them up and sell em, we’d only set aside the old crappy looking ones because the new ones were more difficult to fix and maintain. He’d call it ‘systematic failure’ and that was the first time I became familiar with the concept.
"The environment never forgets" I really like that statement.
neither do those of us who get to use this absolute useless garbage everyday.
Стань веганом прямо сейчас
Fortunately it doesnt ever remember anything
The environment isn't conscious are you an animist or something
@@Happyduderawr Saying the environment never forgets isn't about assigning consciousness to nature or dipping into animism. It's actually more about emphasising the long-term impacts our actions have on the environment, something more than often overlooked in our capitalist system.
The fact that we rely on planned obsolescence, boom and bust cycles, and an endlessly growing economy are pretty clear examples of why our current system doesn’t work or, at least, wont work forever
As Richard Wolf put it, if you had a roommate as unstable as capitalism, you’d have moved out long ago.
It is a death cult really.
Well all ya have to do is look at light bulbs to see how the other end also fails. In the early 1900s light bulbs lasted for 100 years plus some. The problem being when they sold all their bulbs, no one was buying any new ones. So once their customer bases bought all they needed... they went bankrupt fast, so fast that the remaining companies had to get together to make light bulbs shorter lasting in order to make any money to handle overhead.
Meaning the sales they were getting when things lasted, wasn't viable enough to keep the lights running (sorry for the pun). That is the problem we have to fix before going back to long lasting products.
Well that just shows how Capitalism is not sustainable.@@AllyMonsters
No you were right with the first one. We are at the dying point. Heaven forbid you could keep a phone for more than 2 years, or use a power source that didn’t kill the entire planet. Gotta make green baby
I bought a slightly dim but lovely Edison bulb about 8 years ago for my bedroom, just to be fancy. I was going through a steampunk kick. The funny thing is that as I was buying it, I was already thinking about which shape I would buy next once it broke. I didn't realise it would end up being the longest lasting bulb I've ever owned. 😂 I'm happy about the unexpected surprise. It's interesting how we just accept as normal items having a short a life.
Right to repair was also huge for farmers trying to repair their own tractors and equipment as well
And yet those same farmers are adamantly against any kind of regulation so in the end they settled for John Deere making an empty promise that theyd do better.
IS and *remains* huge for them.
@@FeebleAntelopearguably more important now that tractors have computers and GPS control in them
I was truly shocked at the idea of a farming equipment manufacturer stopping farmers from repairing their own equipment. Of all professions, farming has to be one of the most self-sufficient ones out there.
@@SupposedlyShinybruh goy detectors
Regarding the "planned obsolescence" of buildings, my wife was a primary school teacher in a old northern mill town. Her school was a red brick building built in 1902 and was situated in the midst of mill worker terraced housing. Around 2010, it was suddenly "discovered" that the school was built on "dangerous" brown field railway waste and would need to be demolished. A new glass and steel school was built in the local park a number of years later. During the consultancy process with staff, my wife asked the architect what the life expectancy of the building was. She was told, "25 years." Within a few years of moving in, staff were having to place buckets under the leaking flat roofs.
Reminds me of the place where I work. A combination of poor initial construction and negligence have made the building almost unworkable. I would fix it myself, if that's what I was hired to do.
That's not planned obsolescence, that's stupidity. As a (former) architect, most people are just stupid who design those. They aren't intentional
The teachers at my high school (the newest school in the county at least) always said they built the building as cheap as humanly possible. They closed the old high school but since the town people were distraught about it, another company bought the building and its partly a gym and sports field outside, and like police training building
Horrific! European countries are an amazing example of using old buildings, and they are still going strong
That's not planned obsolescence, it's subcontracting.
I had never heard of the concept of planned obsolescence being linked to questioning whether you really own a thing at all, but it is such a revelation to me. Generally, our concept of ownership is linked to control. If I buy a chair, I control that chair. If it's a badly made chair, I can make it better, or just repair it every time it breaks. If I buy a phone, and the company I bought it from decides in 4 years time to make my phone unusable, and can do that remotely and without my control or legitimate informed and un-pressured consent, it is not me who has control over the phone, it is the company. Though I have payed for the phone and am called 'owner', in reality ownership has not been transferred, as all the power remains in the hands of the company. Now I am not saying that the only value in life comes through ownership, the idea of ownership is a whole other conundrum, but I do think it this power relation which we can call ownership, though it might be better to have a secondary term for it, has a large amount to do with our sentimental object connection.
It feels kinda like renting an object that was a object you bought to own. I think the saying goes like this: You will pay for everything, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.
The sad thing is that Fairphone tried to make phones more repairable but, due to their engagement with third parties who carried out the manufacture, the outcome was phones that were repairable... so long as spares were available.
Spares for some of their models were available for an abysmally short period of time (18 months?) so those people who did not damage or wear out their phones within that period got no advantage from the improved repairability.
Compare this with the British GPO which ran the state phone network for many decades. In the late 50s it commissioned a 'modern telephone', manufactured by private industry to GPO specification. The 'modern telephone' (700-series) was rolled out very slowly over a number of years, initially as a premium service. As subscribers rented their phones from the company, most subscribers were renting 300-series phones produced between the 30s and the 60s, and for many years after the late 1950s, a new subscriber would be rented a reconditioned, used, 300-series telephone and not a 'modern telephone'. After that, new subscribers were rented the modern telephones, but often given refurbished ones, not new. The GPO even had its own repair factory.
The GPO had a great interest in keeping the phones running for many decades as it rented them out. They were both expensive to purchase from new, and extremely well-built. While mostly kept as curiosities, some are still in use and usually function after very little overhaul. Of course the GPO also had a virtual monopoly on phone purchasing in the UK and could call the shots. In fact, if you had a GPO line, the GPO would decide what phone you could wire to that line (no plug and socket in them days) so the subscriber simply had no option except the options the GPO offered him (her).
I suspect the issue is that, adjusted for inflation, I am told a new 'modern telephone' would have cost around £350 IIRC, but that was with mass-production and the GPO itself was large enough to ensure spares would be available for many years. Clearly Fairphone could never have the purchasing power that the GPO did.
Essentially, then, by making so many different models, it means consumers do not have the power to force spares availability, and, as such, while the manufacturers could make your phone stop working remotely, essentially all electronic goods will only work until one cheap stupid component goes and then if you can't get the part, it's all so much scrap metal (plastic).
That's games.consoles, electric cars and anything that needs the Internet to work.
A phone is a difficult one as people really don’t understand that processing power has to scale with data advancements and changes in software.
Is it planned obsolescence, or is it that processing requirements are being scaled higher than what your 4-5 year old device is capable of efficiently running.
You gotta remember 4-5 years in the tech world is ancient history
If we’re talking about stuff like battery life being purposefully reduced though then that’s a different thing, but your phone becoming slower with time is quite normal. Look at advancements in processing tech between 90-2009 for a great example of this. Every year massive breakthroughs in computer tech were happening which pretty much turned your new system into a dinosaur over night, these huge yearly and bi-yearly advancements in performance only started to slow down around 2009 for CPUs (when the core I series launched) and for graphics cards it was closer to 2015 (when gtx 10xx cards launched)
We went from 45nm transistors in 2009 to 22nm by 2012 with modern transistors now being 5nm in size. To put that in perspective in the span of 3 years transistor count went from 731 million to 2.1b
Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without.
- Learned from my grandmother, who lived in the Great Depression. I have no idea where she got it. But it's something I use as a kind of mantra-of-reuse.
Also: focus on buying recycled stuff. Recyclable is good, even great. But if we buy stuff that's actually recycled, we create a demand that industry will pay attention to.
We really need to go back to the “waste not, want not” mindset. It may have been born from hard times in the past, but it’s solid advice.
Thrift Store stuff is actually better quality than new things these days. A trend I have noticed in the last 10 years.
Remember, though, that there's no ethical consumption in capitalism.
I think this concept meshes pretty well with the idea of enshitification. If a company runs out of potential customers to expand to, the solution is to find new ways to monetize the existing customers, even at the expense of the quality of your product. Planned obscelesence is just one type of enshitification, but a particularly effective one.
I feel like.... the fact that everything is switching to being subscription based is the natural next step to that. Really annoying, and I wish we could just divorce capitalism already.
You especially see this in the airtravel market with tons of junk fees being added to just about everything.
@@BackstabberDDAgreed. It is guaranteed that all subscription models will cost more per month than the cost to buy a product and replace it at some point in the future when you need a new or updated version. Computer programs are a great example of that; since people only use a few of the features of any program, we’re usually happy to keep on using it years past when the makers think we should upgrade.
I think it's the other way around - enshitification is a type of planned obsolescence
@@BackstabberDDthe problem is not capitalism, unfortunately. The problem is monopolisation and globalisation, as well as consumer attitudes. The benefit of capitalism is we have the commodity of choice, something not available in any alternative system. There are good products being made, they are just harder to come by.
I've been on a repair kick recently. My steam deck (games console) stopped working and I opened it up and had all the internal electronics right there. I worked out the issue and fixed it. I felt so proud of myself and now everyone I turn on the console I have a warm little feeling of pride.
That’s amazing
That's amazing. I was SO afraid it would turn bad and I'd have to change one of the things I want to buy but you sold me more on it!!
Same! And what's cool is steam directly links you to repair tutorials by ifixit which is just a very different mentality than other consoles have. I assume it's because steam is for PC gamers and the steamdeck developed from that culture.
For me it was one of the thumbsticks getting out of alignment.
As far as corpos go, I do like how Valve often has a much more consumer friendly approach to both their digital services and hardware.
Solder on, soldier
The "lifetime warranty" is another scam, where it costs almost as much to ship an item back than it costs to buy a new one.
rather like that whole thing with the Yankee watches, isn't it. Interesting...
I used to do tech support for a phone company. Even when a problem was fully covered by warranty, almost nobody was willing to ship their phone back to Asia for multiple weeks to *maybe* resolve the issue.
@@johnharvey5412l
Eh it depends, I have a lifetime warranty on my racelands coilovers, they cost around $1000 Canadian after duties and taxes. About a year after owning them one of the front struts failed, I contacted them, and they covered the shipping without issue. Cut to 5 years later, one of the rear shocks cracked, once again they covered it without any cost to me again.
They also sent the replacement before I even sent off the old part too so I could have my car back on the road
It really depends on the company you’re dealing with
@@Omgazombie2k; How convenient for you. Of course, it goes without saying that high-end items are almost invariably the exception.
I think another good example of planned obsolescence is your common home printer. I bought a Cannon printer a few years ago. When the machine was not working any longer, I realized it needed ink. I went to my local big box and found out the ink cartridges cost more than a new Cannon printer. I bought the new printer.
There are printers you can buy to get around this, both from Canon and other brands. They’re known as “tank” printers… each brand has a slightly different name for it… but they utilize a tank of ink instead of a cartridge, and you fill the tanks from a bottle. The bottles are really cheap and hold more ink than a cartridge does. The printers themselves cost more, but you eventually make up for it if you print enough… and it cuts down on wasteful production of more cheap printers that people buy instead of new cartridges. 😉
Or refill tank from bottle.
My HP printer died before the first ink cartridge ran out I'll never buy another one so much for their planned obsolescence business plan all it did was lose them a customer
I bought and repaired a used HP Laserjet p4015 because I didn't want to give HP money. It only has 80k prints on it and should last years with home use. 🥰
Planned obsolescence is where the old saying "They don't make them like they used to" comes from
I think there is a bit of an ideological battle happening with this phenomenon as my mom told me that growing up, her dad would tell her, "They make those better now", it seems like for a while we were on course for reliability and reusuability being a product standard but capitalism seems to love to ruin everything...
@@kibbles5724 Yeah I get that Capatalism says "If it brakes then they will buy a new one". I would much rather Capatalism says "Make this product to solve this problem forever then move onto the next product and solve the next problem"
@@jamessharpe1717 The thing is that some companies were approaching a model of "always improve". The kaizen principle of Japanese companies like Toyota is just that. Never deviate from the original product purpose and always work to improve it, not upsell it. One could argue its the glimmer of hope within capitalism but I'd be selling you too much if I said that.
@@jamessharpe1717 There intuition is not to design early replaceable products, rather products that all classes will purchase. Like what they did with the simple sliced bread toaster. A cheap piece of shit for the workers below living wage and an over elaborate 10 times expensive for the wealthy non working class. They are simply following Reaganomics elimination of a middle class. There is no longer a market for a decent middle product. The service repairmen are disappearing because there is no longer a middle class that can afford their services. The wealthy class is simply too small to keep them in business. You might argue then, the Reganites fucked themselves.
Deep thoughts.
Been thinking about this a lot the last few years. Products that lose their usefulness quickly are not just inconvenient and cause us to spend far more money than we should need to, thus forcing us to keep working harder and longer hours, but it also results in appalling levels of trash that has to go somewhere.
That was my thoughts too! How are you going to force people to go electric and switch this and that to go green, but planned obsolescence isn't on their radar at all. The same people yelling at their neighbors to go green are also the biggest spenders on junk
Planned obsolescence, particularly in automobiles, is why I just cannot take the environmentalism agenda seriously. An automobile is designed to last 7 years but I'm not allowed to have a plastic bag to carry home my purchased consumer items which are, themselves, wrapped up in plastic for the convenience of the manufacturers. So, "save the planet" as long as corporations can make their profits first.
Depends on the product, they can cost a lot less even replacements included, takes a lot of $5 jerseys to make up to the $200 quality one, same with shoes
@@38dragoon38Yep and electric cars have shorter life spans due to batteries failing and costing more than even a not very old electric car to replace.
No more plastic straws in paper
Just paper straws wrapped in plastic, congratulations
2:19 I think a good reason why people are intuitively offended by planned obsolescence is the fact that it goes against what most people are taught about capitalism and the free market. When we‘re still in our school years, we‘re taught (in a simplified way) that capitalism incentivizes companies to make the best products possible (which naturally one assume would also mean long lasting, durable products). If they didn’t, then customers would naturally buy elsewhere. Yet not only is this not the case, but some of the most valuable companies in the world (I.E. Apple valued at over $1 trillion) have planned obsolescence as their big business model. Planned obsolescence is the name of the game for much of the global market, to the point where it can be difficult to find a company which sells quality product without having it in their business model. This is not to even mention the fact that a lot of these companies also make it a pain to repair the products yourself. This is not driving innovation or making the best products possible, it’s just misery for the consumers.
My mother's had a Nokia mobile phone for over the past 25 years. It's been dropped on the pavement multiple times and still working. The one time it needed a minor fix-up the staff in the mobile phone shop gathered around like it was some mythical artefact Xd
The thing is, it *does* inspire innovation. Innovations in making money. From a profit perspective, planned obsolescence was an absolutely genius innovation that the market massively rewarded, just as capitalism intends. The drawback? The buyers and the planet. But that doesn't matter in this system.
I was a musician in school, and the instrument I played was the bassoon. Bassoons are incredibly expensive because of the level of skill and specialty an instrument maker has to have as they are not exactly popular instruments and are very complex. because of this I have only played on cheap school rental instruments. I've played on 2, and they were both clearly older than I am. They were cheap, probably only worth $4,000, but i loved them. the second one was worse off than the first (had the first in middle school, and the second in high school)), even though it was clearly newer, It was plastic and had cheaper metal for the keys. I learned Instrument repair to keep this instrument together, to keep playing it. by the time I had to say goodbye, it was missing its whisper key, which I didn't even know how to use, staying in tune solely because I had shut closed a key with masking tape, and had made several repairs. once a week I would check that all the screws were tight with my fingernails. I loved that instrument, but I was never able to sound 100% with it. The part of the video where the repair shop guy talks about what its like for someone to do their first repair and the kind of sentiment you get for the object resonated deeply with me and this aspect of my life. I didn't realize how good I had become at woodwind instrument repair until I completely brought back life into a flute deemed unusable and unrepairable that had been designated to the spare parts bin. I played a scale on it! granted it was airy and not great but at least half of that had to do with my lack of skill playing the flute...
Repair is a genuine skill that I believe is very human and is much like the feeling of creation, rebirthing something, breathing new life into an object. companies like this, shortening the lives of our material items and making it either not worth it to repair or just not possible is creating a very shallow materialism. I don't, in general, think wanting to have a lot of things is very bad (with nuance of course), but not being able to have things that will last our lifetimes is creating a sense of insecurity in our home environment. you never know when an appliance will break or when you will need a new dresser because the old one broke in the night. I have quite a few family heirlooms and at the moment I dont really think I have much from my life that I really want to pass on to the next generation.
tl;dr
repairing things is as human as creation and restricting that is crappy and makes everyone a little less satisfied with life.
Right, yeah I’m finishing my degree in oboe performance this spring and many oboes are made out of grenadilla wood which isn’t endangered yet but is on track to be if trade isn’t closely monitored.
I’m grateful and privileged to be at a music school like IU Jacobs where one of our oboe professors played oboe in the Met Opera and is guest faculty at Juilliard. I mention this because, well it’s mandatory now for all of our oboists to learn what each screw does on our own oboes, at least the 15 main ones, learn all their primary and secondary keys for each screw, so we can do basic repairs on our oboes ourselves.
I’m not sure many other oboe studios in the U.S. do this, maybe at Juilliard/Curtis/Eastman, but even then it’s been invaluable to get to know my instrument on that level, because so many professional oboists rely on busy repair workers for simple repairs.
I don’t play bassoon but we do have double reeds and reed making in common, which is a whole other can of worms. I mean, cane is so expensive, a never ending money pit, for what? So 300 oboists with graduate degrees from top music institutions with the nicest instruments can audition for one spot in the Indianapolis Symphony? Being an oboist and classical musician is so unsustainable, and as someone that grew up on food stamps and played on a $200 oboe with mold on the keys who didn’t own an oboe until after I was accepted into IU Jacobs having played the oboe for a decade at that point, I can’t help but acknowledge the lack of sustainability.
It sort of drives me mad honestly, I’m grateful to have a full ride to IU since I grew up in the lowest income bracket in Indiana, but I see all my colleagues and their families dropping 10s of thousands of dollars on tuition and costs for music school or especially for double reeds, buying cane. Plus for bassoon like I know professional bassoons like Heckel Bassoons cost $30,000-$40,000 with a 8-10 YEARS on the waitlist. Like… what? Not to mention every key on the bassoon, at least for nice ones, cost hundreds and thousands of dollars themselves to get them replaced.
At this point I’m just venting but as much as I love music and the oboe I’m so sick and tired of this draconian self-centered and self-entitled b.s. that comes with being an oboist. Like single reeds like saxophones and clarinets can buy Vandoren reeds at a store but store bought reeds for oboes are a joke and even a beginner can barely play one because Jones/Emerald (the most popular oboe store bought reed brands) start leaking in a couple hours of use, it’s pathetic.
That’s part of why I’m going into STEM, specifically combining my background of music with quantum computing. It sounds strange since sound is inherently a classical phenomena, but just as classical computers in the 1960s were developing alongside music the whole time, I believe in the next 10-15+ years we will start to see more creative applications of quantum computation. My research was the sonification of data from quantum computers, specifically a fancy phenomena called quantum decoherence which is the process of a quantum state decaying or falling apart in the time of microseconds which I mapped to hertz so you can sonify a.k.a. physically hear a unique representation of this data that’s usually in the time domain which gets mapped to frequency.
All this rambling to say, I treat my brain and mind as a gift (from God or whatever you believe) and I want to use that gift to help better optimize and help the world around me, or at least, not feed into the endangerment of grenadilla wood, or buy and buy and buy cane for the rest of my existence, but rather grow and prosper in the beautiful intersection of art + science, that might lead to more impactful applications for humanity in the future (at least with quantum computing applications probably in health or biology).
@@alexalani10110 The unsustainability of the classical music world and all that comes with it is the exact reason I didn't pursue a degree in music. I just wasn't able to see myself being good enough to beat out everyone else for the good symphony spots. Your comment on jones really got to me because I never learned how to make my own reeds. I was really out here struggling to get even the barest of instruction from my band teacher, who really didn't know much about bassoons, so most of what I know is entirely self taught.
Quantum computers are super fascinating though. I can't wait to see what kind of applications we can use them for! I really enjoyed the ramblings.
You perfectly articulated my own thoughts
My ex has a grandmother who still has an old Soviet era refrigerator. Works like new, looks cool and unique and doesn't need to be replaced anytime soon. Planned obsolescence is such a joke I hate that people just accept it at face value
refrigerators are a bit of a bad example because the newer ones are genuinely a lot more energy efficient
@@TheRyulordyes, more energy efficient, but imagine if they were energy efficient AND lasted a long time?!
@@TheRyulordif it was energy from clran sources woukd it mattet?
@@bluester7177 Nope. Though I'm not sure what the point of the hypothetical is when we're so far from that point.
@@kiwikemist Yeah, that would be best. I just meant to contrast the comment against others where going out and buying the old version of something actually makes more sense than buying the new version. Another commenter mentioned getting an old sewing machine that worked just as well and was more durable than modern sewing machines for example.
My dad often complains about the lack of possibility of servicing his own car. In the last 25 years they have had 4 different cars because they got cheaper to buy than to send them to be repaired, and he could not repair them himself because of computerized parts that was not possible to repair, simply because the diagnostics kit costed several hundred thousand dollars.
But he still has his motorcycle he bought in the 70s and it is still working fine because he likes to tinker with it and makes adjustments constantly.
This is why I simply won’t buy a ‘new’ car. 2003 Honda civic for the win! That car is so easy to service yourself, parts are cheap as dirt, they’re reliable as all get out, don’t have parts that are electronically serialised to the engine (as far as I’m aware), and if it breaks down past repair they’re fairly cheap to replace.
I love my car, even if people think it’s a piece of 💩 on the outside. I love how repairable it is when things break on it, and how cheap it is.
What place diagnostic's consoles cost over $100K? I might not knoew all of them (like tyre and like tyre- and climate-control diagnostics and etc.)..
Anyway, in Eastern Europe simplest few-brand diagnostics tablet goes for few hundred € or top shock-resistant universal one can be under €2000. Don't know what's needed for US cars.
I remember back in 08 or 09 a friend's Honda wouldn't start because it needed a software update.
@@albertobarbossa2590 I feel that now that we’re in the age of teslas that’s gonna get a LOT more common. Those cars are essentially just iPads or computers that drive with all the ‘smart’ shit they’ve got crammed in them.
Plus cars now have so many more serialised parts, especially electric vehicles like teslas. You can’t even change your car battery on some gas powered cars yourself because you need to get it serialised to the computers in it. It’s frickin ridiculous, almost like apple overtook the car companies 🙄
The thing is, if it's a gas car, it works on the exact same principles as a model T. You can repair them. You just have to learn some new systems.
Funnily enough, the manufacturers in the USSR distributed everything (specially electronics) with complete schematics and it was generally encouraged to maintain and modify stuff as you will.
One of the things they got right
@@MitsyWuzHeretheir food is a hell of a lot healthier too.
The USSR also had a mostly circular economy
No more warranty😢 with plates
Right. We still have a working vacuum cleaner from that time. Nothing to compare with the modern shit electronics.
I had a 1997 Mustang GT for about 5 years. It was my favorite car ever. And I personally did most of the work to it and had a lot of restoration done. I had always swore I would never get rid of it. Even if I one day got a newer car and kept it for weekends and etc. It was hit by a drunk driver and totaled. That's when it really settled to me how much the car meant. It wasn't just my old car.
It was my car that had gone through so much with me and always gave back what I put into it. I was heartbroken for months over it and still am in a way. Even after getting another one. Cause even though my 2001 mustang GT is very similar. It's not the one I had and worked on all that time.
I still have it's window sticker frames on my wall. And even though it was "just a car". It taught me a lot. And I'll always miss "that car"
My grandmother's washing machine is at least 60 years old now, she's never had any other in her adult life. Everytime it needs to be repaired (it's not that often), the man who does it reminds her to never dispose of that machine. Meanwhile, my TV decided it would stop working after 2 years 💩
My washer/dryer came with the house (probably vintage late 1970s), I bought in 1991 - the one repair I've had to do so far was the drain pump on the washer seized (bearings)... Besides the hassle of having to drain the basket first it was literally a $40 replacement pump, pull back a bit and lean the washer back against the wall to get underneath, and maybe 30 minutes to get the old one out and new one in.
@@captainz9 I also have an old Bosch washer that I got with the house. It lasted for 6 years, but it stopped centrifuging recently so we got a new one. I still kept the Bosch one as I know I can fix it if I just find the time to, so I can have it wash again once the new one dies.
My house came with a fridge from circa 2000. It's needed some work once or twice but the repairman says we should keep it forever because it was the last quality model made by that manufacturer. He says even if we want to replace it we should put it in the garage or something. I'll keep it forever if I can.
Indeed😊
Don't feel bad about the video growing from 20 minutes to just over an hour. This is the thorough analysis that I've always appreciated in your work.
When I was a
young man I undertook the task of removing some surface rust off of my '65 Triumph TR-4 and bought a new Black & Decker belt sander to aid the process. 17 seconds into the project the machine completely burned out.
I had moved to Seattle a couple years later and found myself in the industrial district (back when Seattle had one of those) poking around the small retail area of a huge wholesale construction supply company. It must've been a slow day (back when Seattle had those days) because the only other person in there was a salesman dressed in "too new" construction clothes trying schmooze a tall muscular guy who was workimg the front office. Grateful for the interruption, the guy asked me if he could help me find something. I can't recall what it was I was looking for but after explaining my need of a particlar tool's adapter/fitting/accessory, he said he didn't think so but pointed to a nearby aisle where I could try looking. On the way over, the salesman asked if I ever considered Black & Decker. From the other side of the aisle, I related my 17 second experience w/ the sander and said how I'd never buy a B&D product again. Wirh a conspiritorial grin towards the guy behind the coumter, he said, "That's because you were using the home owner grade."
The company guy just raised an eyebrow at the salesman when I said, "You mean I could expect a contractor grade to last TWICE as long? Sorry, pal, but your company shouldn't have put their name on it."
I didn't find my part and exited the store, waving goodbye to an amused company man and a deflated salesman. That was nearly 40 years ago and, to this day, I won't even buy a Black & Decker coffee maker.
My point is that what little power we have as consumers must be exerted to its fullest--being nearly psycotically stalwort in our personal boycotts and our "...fool me twice..." convictions.
i do this so much with phones i will NOT buy a phone without a headphone jack and every time i buy USB cables i get the expensive Belkin cables (i have never had one fail on me) i used to get anker cables but they started creating them out of shit so i quit buying them. I truly believe uninformed consumers and willful ignorance will ruin the economy
@@braydoncoate9583 I'd never heard of Belkin and after some reading, I'm a convert. Thank you!
I bought a B&D corded drill machine and in true form the switch quickly failed. As luck would have it, it failed in reverse mode so you could not say it was still usable. A new switch was almost the price of the drill, so I have been a loyal Makita owner ever since, I have had close to 30 years of reliable use on all my Makita branded power tools with cords (no batteries) and have no desire to ever consider B&D again.
Every product is trash in the end. That is the ultimate problem with consumerism. There is a myth that if we just support the right factory they will make good products that will last forever.
It's just another trap, ALL items end up as trash at some point. The only true answer is Minimalism. To use as little as necessary to complete the task.
Yes! It used to piss me off to no end having to buy a new math book instead of just being able to buy a used one! I actually went and yelled at the guy who published the new text book. Told him math hasn't changed at all since last year and that it was crazy that I had to spend $150 on a new book! He shrugged and said, "It has new problems and graphics in it." As if that couldn't be a fuckin' downloadable... I'm getting worked up
Annas archive bro
you think just like me
In case you are still struggling with that problem, as a physicist, I can guarantee you that the same thing happened to physics and maths textbooks in the late 20th Century. Unless you are looking for top-of-the-line research, pre-1980's books are better. Dover republishes the best and cost around $10, they are more than worth it
"Disciplinary boundaries aren't real," is the most economist thing ever said on this economics channel.
Economists deserve all the shade you can throw at em
Reading an economist's paper on my field of expertise is probably the only thing that came close to convincing me that this statement is not true.
Some of them seem to look at reality as a nuisance that has to be bent into a screen on which ideology can be projected. But I think that can happen in any discipline - they are not real, after all.
The really sad thing about planned obsolescence is that not many people care about it
thats what make it profitable
cute happy lamb on lamb steak packaging
everyone is happy! even saturated fat arteries remover surgeon and butchers !
At least as an individual who knows about it, you can research products that last longer.
Not only that but many actually think it's tinfoil hattery. I get looked at like I'm a bit crazy for even bringing the phrase/term up in conversation with some people in my life.
Because most people don't want to live in stasis and want to replace their sh*t because they got bored with them. Buy a Lada and drive it the next 30 years like the soviet did if it bothers you so much.
The upcoming business model does away with the idea altogether. They will have us endlessly subscribing for the use of everything in our homes instead of periodically buying (and owning) a new one.
Just to put some numbers on the obsolescence in (consumer) electronics:
Usually you can significantly increase the life of something just by oversizing a few important components in a device. The most important ones here are probably power capacitors.
Buying these higher quality components costs usually around 1-10$ in most devices. A price almost every consumer would be willing to pay if you gave them the option.
BUT saving 1$ on something you will produce 10mio units of means you make quite a bit of additional profit and usually consumers are also fine with it dying after ‚enough‘ years, so you do that instead.
I have no clue how you could stop something like this. The profit incentive directly encourages the worse components and you will never make all consumers attuned and knowledgable enough to detect this and care about it.
kill capitalism
will have to come to realizeing "the love of money is root of all evil" = TRUE (christany) but also "stupidity is the root of all evil" also = TRUE (yet is from the satanic)
I think increasing the statuatory warranty for products would be the solution. I always wonder why dont we increase the warranty for things like washing mashines. They used to last for decades, now the last for some years. Because in the EU the warranty for a washing mashine is 2 years. This should be increased to 15, 20 or 30 years.
@@renezirkelthe problem with this is the exact problem with the solar energy industry currently: very long warranties are offered, but the companies shut down about 5-7 years in, and reopen as a new business, voiding any warranty from the original company
@@huberthopscotch1285 Yes this could be a problem, but not for all industries. I dont think already big corps want to go out of business because of warranty issues. The warranty should be increased step by step, so the industries can adjust. In the long run only companies with good warranty should survive (i hope).
My father and his brother did take apart these $1.00 pocket watches and put them together again. As boys, they enjoyed that more than the function of the watch. They grew up on a farm and being able and competent at repairing mechanical things was a must.
I think the most important part of that Technology Connections video isn't just that the bulbs were brighter, they were brighter *per unit of energy*. You could make a 3000 hour lightbulb as bright as a 1000 hour bulb but it used a comically large amount of power in comparison, iirc the 1000 hour bulbs were something crazy like 3 times more efficient than their predecessors. Given the low cost of an incandescent bulb (both in terms of price to consumer and resource cost), the high power consumption of incandescent bulbs, the high cost of power at the time and the fact that power was produced almost entirely from coal...
There's no doubt the manufacturers were acting in their own best interest, but in this specific case that interest happened to perfectly align with consumer interests. It must be said that consumers fall into both planned obsolescence and the much more common just not bothering to make it good in the first place because we like paying less up front, and that desire frequently leads to higher costs down the line, particularly when those costs aren't obvious from the outset.
I really like how this is worded, especially the last paragraph :)
"In this specific case"
HA, no - in basically all cases.
Apple took the headphone jack and sold you air pods, now I willingly use TWS earbuds on my phone with a headphone jack because Apple ignited the entire TWS market while being incapable of killing the aux jack. That means I got a competitive, effective product for my use case and lost nothing.
Valve was in an antagonistic relationship with microsoft so invested heavily into linux gaming as an open alternative that couldn't undermine their market and would reduce their dependency on microsoft.
AMD's continued push to make FSR usable on all platforms builds consumer trust and loyalty which keeps a competitive customer base even when nvidia typically has strictly better hardware.
Microsoft's steep reqs for W11-12 are alienating users and pushing them to more open platforms. (Again, Valve & Linux)
Apple's M-series chips spurred competition which created and is continuing to create better and better chips, including more interest in open standards like RISC-V. (Although admittedly that interest will likely not show consumer facing results for a decade or more)
Any given anti-consumer push alienates consumers and creates a prime striking point for competitors. (Unless that seemingly anti consumer push actually creates a better product just in a way thats often hard to define, like light quality instead of just light longevity) At least, when consumers have some god damn agency and dont just whinge about "muh capitalism". If I hear "everyone copies Apple" one more time I am going to fucking lose it; my fucking phone is not remotely like an iPhone, Framework literally built a business off of literally nothing except "we're repairable" and its just LD-50 levels of pure undiluted copium. Take some fucking agency in your purchases for christ's sake. I'm tired of being told I don't own my devices because you can't be bothered to actually purchase yours and instead would rather blindly click the first buy button you see and then complain you didn't get what you want.
All your examples are technology from the internet age which is studied by tech enthusiasts. This doesn't apply to cars and sewing machines, otherwise known as 'normie technology'. Gamers are tough customers, so they can force companies to change. Everyone else? Much less capable.@@felixjohnson3874
To quote Justin from WTYPP, "The kind of corruption that gets things done." (Context was actual government corruption, but this is similar enough)
@@موسى_7 neat so the issue is most consumers arent "tough" and dont apply market pressure to look after their own interests and buy the optimal product... sorta seems like that's the real issue.
Ever heard the phrase "can't soften the world, can only harden the person"? Because ghat damn the fact that you specifically used the word "tough" makes that so easy to apply it ought to be illegal!
Obviously our society is worse off when profit is worth more than life. Our entire system of motivation is inherently toxic and quite evil.
Humans are inherently toxic and quite evil
Especially in intake, let alone when of animals?
putting any control on corporations is considered "communism" by some people here , idk how but looks like alot of corporate propaganda is just implanted into the American psyche to the point that people will make excuses
This is the root of the problem for sure
It's okay, you can say the C-Word.
My father and a buddy used to run an electronics repair shop (circa 1990) It eventually closed, he told me, precisely because it was so much cheaper to just buy a new electronic device than to have it repaired. Even he started to do that with a lot of things, despite his skill set
My brother also notices it declining because of how electronics started using increasingly smaller components, impossible to service/replace by ordinary electronics shops most of the time.
He now has an SMD soldering and desoldering station and is currently trying to revive a reasonably old videocamera by replacing transistors, resistors and capacitors on it with these new tools.
If he would succeed, he would have spent less than 10 euro's in actual parts, it was just the soldering station/tools that are the costly part, and will serve him in future repairs.
@@Dutch3DMasterintegrated circuits, ie "chips" failing is also hard as re soldering them is a prick and hardly with it unless its expensive
@@Dutch3DMasterI have an old van that needs soldering on one of its computer boards. It’s a 1996 and they don’t make those chips anymore. I’m hoping to fix it for cheap like your brother is doing lol.
Reminds me of when i had a tenant i lived alongside, he also worked on fixing electronics and even helped me resolve problems. I took to him a phone my mom broke in a fit of rage, turns out to buy just a replacement screen cost just as much as the phone itself
I've become an avid vintage audio enthusiast and physical media collector. The quality of products from the 80's and earlier is much better than what is out there now. Sound quality is subjective but I purchased my first amplifier and tuner last Spring. I try to avoid buying anything new because of the low quality. There were other pieces that I wanted to buy but it wouldn't be realistic. The problem is that it's sometimes difficult to find replacement parts and the technicians able to do repairs will be retiring without a new generation to replace them.
The way I overcame this phenomenon is by reducing my needs on things.
You don't need fancy features. You only need the ESSENCE features.
So you can buy the cheapest goods without burdening yourself financially.
My grandma had a toaster from the 50s and it lasted until about 2020. We got a washing machine in our holiday home in Turkiye which is like 40 years old (my grandparents brought several domestic appliances from Germany to Turkiye because of the amazing quality back then). My grandpa bought a Renault car in the 70s and he used it until he sadly passed away in 2022. RIP grandpa. But he used to repair something in the car everyweek. Tbh I don't exactly know what he was doing but the car functioned perfectly because he cared so much for it.
I once heard a lot of features windows users take for granted originated as user-benefiting side effects of bugs
@@lyokianhitchhikerindeed😊
I was watching Antiques Roadshow with my uncle last night, and they had on not one, but several pieces of furniture made over a century ago that were still beautiful and functional today (and these weren't like, put aside in a museum, these were pieces that were actively in use in people's homes, sometimes for multiple generations). I was just marveling at that, because I've had bookcases and the like that have literally fallen apart after a few years of light use.
I dream of some day to own a antique or super well-made heavy duty bookcase. 🥰 I have a 1970s wine storage unit that I use as a drawer to store my daily clothes and my kimono collection. Still looks new and the drawers still open and close so smooth. Heavy AF! need four men to move that thing around and that is after gutting it... removing the drawers and doors from it. They don't make it like they use to.
Meanwhile, my bed with drawers, not even 2 years and the drawers are weird. They are not opening and closing smoothly. Definitely not well made.
I would love to have a set of furniture from the 1950s-70s for the whole house. The whole planned obsolesce thing is annoying and so wasteful. The amount of water and gasoline needed, plus human labor and materials used to make the stuff is unnerving and depressing.
Yep, have a 130 year old solid oak claw foot dining table that I inherited from my mom and has been beaten up from myself, pets, and my now toddler... nothing a little TLC won't fix ♥️
Even cheap stuff back then lasted a long time. The cabinet that has been passed down for generations since the 1860s finally broke, and even then it should be easy to repair.
I think a contributing factor for cheap furniture is the cost->instability of housing increasing. Cheap furniture is lighter and much easier to leave behind and/or replace if it gets damaged when moving.
@keeahrahr3311 you know, I think you might be on to something there. Why bother investing the extra cost to get good, lasting furniture when there's no guarantee you'll even be able to fit it in the next place you've got? (Assuming, ofc, that you HAVE that money, which a lot of people don't.)
I’m on disability assistance, I legitimately can not afford to save up for items that would actually last me a long time. It feels beyond bleak, and thrift stores aren’t even an option anymore thanks to resellers
I believe Terry Pratchett(?) explained how it's more expensive to be poor with boots. The rich man can buy a pair of boots that will last a decade, but the poor man has to buy a bad one, that falls apart, every year. And he'll still have wet feet.
FB marketplace
Yes it's a massive problem, not just in planned obsolescence but in financing as well: there's nothing as expensive as being poor.
@@krkngd-wn6xj 'The reason that the rich were so rich ... was because they managed to spend less money.'
@bunnyfrosting1744 Many towns and cities have Facebook pages for "community support" or for free items, that are often very good items that the people spent good money on, but they don't have the time or energy to sell the items, yet they do not want the items to end up in the landfill. Case in point, because I am moving at the end of this month, and where I am moving to is already furnished, I have already given away a few furniture items that were only 2 years old, including a sofa that I paid $600 for. When I was moving long distance from NYC, I put listings for furniture, clothing, housewares and canned food items. Everything went! Lots of free stuff out there, just need to be in an area where it happens and comb Facebook for listings. Good luck!
I still mourn the loss of my first pair of combat boots I got to take from the German Army with me.
They were over 10 years old, only the sole got recobbled once, and I lost them to stupidity. Left them outside on the porch were they got wet and mold grew in them ..
They used to say one of the first indicators of an economic recession was shoe repair shops doing well.
People don't even understand why you would now, and with shoes costing less than the labor to repair them it makes sense .
But don't make it right, buy quality you can re sole
Don’t get me started on shoe repair. I could honestly cry over having to superglue trainers and boots that I have had for just over 6 months when I used to have footwear that lasted for 3 or 4 years (if not more) todays footwear must be designed for people who drive not people who actually walk! 😠
Yeeeh🎉
@@MsDamosmumindeed😊
ive been thinking about old traditions and how there are often said to be spirits inhabiting objects. in japanese folklore for example, you have tsukumogami that inhabit household objects once they become a century old.
it feels like such a shame that that sort of tradition could never arise today thanks to all our stuff falling apart within a couple years.
also the environment too i guess maybe dont fill the ocean with trash idk
I saw the Simpsons Movie in the theater as a kid, and the scene of Homer dumping the waste into the lake is a Core Memory of mine. That stuck with me more than anything else in that movie, and I still think about it occasionally. It successfully gave me the deepest, yuckiest feeling I had yet experienced from media.
Lol the "Pig Crap" silo
The sad thing is that it's actually pretty true to life. Pig farms have huge lagoons of pig waste and they spray it on fields which gets into the air and affects nearby residents. It can also get into the ground water
@@kpopgrrl Spraying it on fields is recycling and should be encouraged.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 "The contents in the spray and waste drift have been shown to cause mucosal irritation, respiratory ailment, increased stress, decreased quality of life, and higher blood pressure."
@@kpopgrrl okay? I'm sure snorting human waste isn't good for you either. Let's dump it in the lake like Homer, instead of putting it back into the environment where it should be - that's your solution?
Planned obsolence is at the very core of marketing, even when it comes to marketing certifications, you basically need a continuous streams of upgrades and upskills. Very interesting concept, I was applying it to music as well, it is very rare to see career artists nowadays, the whole ecosystem is now fixated with the next big thing which has a pretty short life-span, music has achieved economy of scale since a while now, but the output is not long-lasting and doesn't have much of a societal impact... subbed right away
planned obsolescence without a matching recycling system is like when you keep drinking protein shakes but stop working out
I might steal the "drinking protein shakes without working out" metaphor to describe greenwashing in general honestly thank you
I just bought a blender seven weeks ago. This morning, I went to make a protein shake and it was dead. I used it once a day, on the undemanding task of blending milk and protein powder, and it didn't even last two months.
For my birthday a few years ago (going on 5) I asked for a vitamix. The darn thing was expensive but stipp going strong, as I had it with having to replace the cheaper ones every six months. Le sigh
I remember watching a documentary about the local decline in number of people able to repair watches.
The quiet death of industries and loss of skillsets often goes overlooked.
Social Anthropologist here (and late to the party): I think your venture into anthropology went well. I'm not an expert on the topic of material possessions, but I would still say solid undergrad level.
Also, watching this on a computer that is 12 years old by now on a display from 2009. Doing everything to keep them running.
A good example of planned obsolescence: My uncle has a laptop that he uses for web browsing and Microsoft Office work. The laptop is over 7 years old, and while the hardware is still working fine (the battery lasts about 50% of what it used to), but the problem is with the operating system, Microsoft Windows. The laptop can barely run the latest version of Windows 10 (11 is unsupported because no TPM). Just last week, Windows literally destroyed it's own system partition by trying to do a Cumulative Update.
I'd like to point out that it's not only hardware that's designed to fail, but sometimes it's all about the software. That laptop will easily last 10 more years with the kind of work he does. He doesn't need portability, he can just remove the battery and run it off an UPS, and all other hardware is going to be powerful enough. But it's the software that will be the problem.
Microsoft refuses to get their shit together and make Windows actually functional and stable, but keeps adding more and more garbage (or bloatware) because THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT PROFITS. It's a deliberate attempt to make the customer buy a new laptop just to be able to use their new whatever garbage they launch next.
But it's STILL not the end of the world. FOSS still exists, and Linux is still a thing. I myself have been daily driving Linux since the last couple of years, and now I'm gonna setup the perfect and easy to use Linux environment for him. Get fucked, Microsoft. I hope these so called 'innovators' rot away in hell because whatever they're doing with this 'built to fail' approach is just criminal behaviour.
Linux time
I'm curious, does he have a ssd or hdd?
I have a 2008 computer with 4 gigs of ram and a 8600 gt that is put to shame by a 620 from a i3 processor and I had to learn to let the computer process because I was a 20 tabs opening at the same time freq. At some point my cousin gave me an ssd as a present for my birthday, and now I can multi task and I don't have to wait at all.
windows os laptop, a few years ago i had to go into my software settings and turn off the two or three systems that force it to update because their update deletes my audio drivers then throws their incompatible version for my hardware on. i dont recall exactly what but it was the update timer, the check to see if that system is functioning, and the systems authority to "fix" things that the user changes. not to promote staying on windows but thats how to stop it from updating until you replace it with something not designed to break.
why are linux users fat ugly and nerdy? how do i get linux without looking like that
I've had to do a fresh install a few times over the years. It's always annoying.
More recently windows forced a graphics driver update... that broke the graphics driver and something about a mismatch was stated.
This is something that still makes me mad.
The connection with repairs also happens with the act of creation. I don't recall the name of the study, but it was found that people who made a piece of clothing in a class were asked their ownership of it years later, and the majority of people still owned and often wore the piece they made, whereas their fast fashion clothing they often only wore twice at most.
Probably the biggest one I know off the top of my head are manual can openers. The one that my grandmother and mom used is very durable and can open any can. It also feels like it weighs 5 pounds or something. Newer hand crank can openers I'll be lucky if they last longer than a month. Most often they get warped or worn out to where they can barely open a can. Even electric ones, if you go the affordable route, they look like they're made of the lightest more brittle plastic.
I remember my neighbor having a counter top mounted can opener and man that thing was a amazing much better than the newer commercial ones I've used.
This one hit where it hurts 😅 my can opener is almost practically useless but I won't replace it cause I've got sauce in my fridge older than this hunk of junk 🥲
Used to, it wasn't about affordable. You would make a list of things you want, and over time, you would slowly fill it out. Saving for a good can opener was done the way most people do vacations.
It's all about materials
What should also be discussed is the crappy LED bulbs that are absolutely designed to fail in a very short time. These companies are greenwashing with producing environmentally friendly LED bulbs that only last somewhere from 6 months to 2 years.
We've had troubles with this, and my spouse vows to only look for the more expensive LED bulbs from now on, because it also just sucks to change bulbs when you've expected to not be needing to do that for years. I discussed this with a small shop that sells lights, and the owner said the cheap bulbs are generally made out of bad quality parts.
BTW we've so far taken every single crappy bulb back to where we bought them, and they've agreed on replacing them with new ones, since on the package it says they should last X amount of hours. But there the salesperson tried to guilt us by claiming it's our fault, because the bulbs are designed to be shimmable, and we just have ordinary lights. I told this to the small light shop owner, who said it's BS, it's the other way round (aka if we had shimmable lights and were trying to use ordinary bulbs), and the fault is that the bulbs are bad quality.
Just felt like I needed to say this. Not all LEDs or environmentally concious products are what they claim.
If you can, use a constant-current driver for your LED strips rather than constant-voltage.
I feel like modifying things makes you more attached. I too have a google pixel, and I feel a lot more attached to it since I invested the time and energy of installing a privacy focused OS on it. It’s no longer just a phone, it’s my phone, I made it the way it is and I know it doesn’t do anything I don’t want it to.
Same but stronger I have with computers, I’ve even felt longing for the old one when switching to a new one. I don’t think I’d get that on Mac or windows where customization boils down to the wallpaper you use, and on what side you dock your task bar
I feel the same way. When I’ve upgraded parts in my computer it feels much more “mine” as I’ve physically and psychically invested in it. I’ve never been an aesthetic ricer but even so, having my own little terminal aliases and keymaps really make my computer feel familiar and particular. I can hardly use a computer without remapping caps lock and escape 😩
I have a secret Wunderwaffe against all that: *refusal of purchase*
Also with respect to shoes: in my 1970 childhood, my dad told us how to treat shoes right. Fix little things before they grow big, use a shoe tree, use a shoe horn, open the laces *every* time…
And Sunday afternoon often times was shoe and bicycle cleaning day (so that mom could have a few hours off the noisy bunch).
Pans: cast iron is all the antistick that I need. Most of it is inherited or from garage sales and flea markets. The only thing you need to know is how to get the patina right, and you'll never again buy a PTFE product again.
It's pretty hard to get attached to objects whose design is steeped with anti-consumer objectives and whose utility is demonstrably worse than alternatives which could be provided as easily and often _more_ easily if anyone were even willing to do so. Over time, one becomes less attached to existing items and more afraid of the _downgrade_ to newer even more hostile and exploitative products.
I dread the day when I may have to buy a new printer. Love my old laser printer from 2004 that doesn't connect to the internet and doesn't refuse to function without the right brand of cartridges.
Pretty much how I feel about iPhones. I have A 6S, and I absolutely need the headphone jack.
Every update to Windows creates a worse and worse user experience. I hate it. Especially because a few years ago refusing to update bricked my device, because they decided to make the updated wifi adapter drivers incompatible with the version I was using. So there's literally no choice. Update to an inferior product or lose access to the device I paid good money for.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I'm seriously considering Linux as an option once they force the update to Windows 11.
This reminds me that a few years ago, someone in charge of quality control for raw materials in the military was caught with lying about the quality of the metals. The metals were slightly below said grade and it was going on for almost 3 decades
Retirees tend to hold onto durable goods because they aren't necessarily able to afford replacements. That's why you see them driving beater but reliable cars, wearing cheap old clothing, keeping older furnishings in their homes and such.
Smart thrifty people of all ages do the same. When you understand value for money, and that the newer things are often of inferior quality, why replace something tnat is still serviceable and useful? Chances are it isn't going to be as good as what you're aiming to replace. I believe it all depends upon how one is raised... Many of us regardless of income were taught to make do, make repairs, and do without until a suitable or equivalent replacement was available, or within reach.
Cheap clothing doesn't last long enough to become old.
@@JellyFlavoredGerman You can extend the life of your clothes by hanging up to dry instead of running through the dryer.
@@JellyFlavoredGermanindeed😊
@@albionicamerican8806good info
One of the worse is particle "wood" walmart furniture. When it degrades, the formaldehyde can be exposed to air.
I have walmart furniture but I move alot and it's not worth taking furniture with when I can buy new Walmart ones that I can get rid of easily
When you mentioned governments stimulating the economy through planned obsolescence I immediately thought of the "Abwrackprämie" that germany passed in response to the 2008 crisis. In short, the government would subsidize the sale of your new car if you scrapped your old car. It was the most obvious instance of "saying the quiet part out loud" in terms of meaningless destruction of value I have ever seen.
Similar thing happened in the US, "cash for clunkers". Basically just messed up the used car market for a while.
And yet various groups (not always pro business ones either!) promote similar programmes as something they want to happen again soon. Sigh.
@@jcsscalemodels
A while? Try forever.
Cash for clunkers essentially destroyed the used parts markets in many areas
we have something similiar for fridgers here, but the idea was to remove old fridges and air conditioner with cfc, on the other hand when television became digital they gave digital receptors for free so people wouldn't have to replace their televisions in mass, it would probably cause a crisis to the trash collecting
The accumulation of e-waste over the last 30 years and its exponential growth is enough to worry me. The rest is just added pain. Those stainless pans you posted are almost identical to the ones my family has been using since before I was born. I'm 36 now and I still use them daily. Meanwhile, our non-sticks junked out in 2 years. And then, of course, there's cast iron that will last 10,000 years if done right.
I got a cast iron skillet about 4 years ago. Only having that one item to hand wash and reseason is practical and it'll outlast me if I don't leave it in a sink full of water for days on end.
My grandparents bought Steelco pots and pans when they got married in the 1940s. My uncle now has them and still uses them, good as new!
I feel shitty when I cook at my job, things don't get rotated properly or eaten in time and have to get trashed/composted. I make >$20/hr. I can't imagine how the underage kids in the Congo mining cobalt for less than a dollar a day feel about the West's e-waste.
@@jaspern.7702 They probably have much more immediate worries... like hunger and thirst. 😥
Unfortunately so. The documentary “The True Cost” covers the challenges many people in third world countries face when producing goods for the West. In this case fast fashion. It’s heartbreaking and raw, but an important watch that shows how unethical outsourced production can be. The movie is free on RUclips and I recommend the watch.
All workers have been ripped off to an extent beyond human comprehension, you just learn every day how much worse it actually is.
Yes. People are the problem. The only comfort is that once everything is destroyed, humans will be gone but the planet will regenerate without us
It's kind of crazy how the current model of the economy basically boils down to infinitely buying products that break quickly so we can keep infinitely working to infinitely produce them without ever improving our actual lives. And mainstream economists see no problem with this model simply because it makes red line go up.
@@Blaze6108 thats why i barely do anything and dont buy anything, im not working to death to feed this immoral satanic system, ive got better things to do with my time then enrich evil people that want us all gone
@@ginaherrera3166 people worship materialism and cant justify why anything is right or wrong, its a worldview problem and always will be
@@ginaherrera3166 greed is incentivized through the system. overconsumption as well - not only does profit need to increase, but the rate of profit. look at entertainment companies -- they increase streaming fees because they have nothing left to sell to increase profits., they have consumer capture. you might have a good boss or landlord. but that's only for now. i would say, it's not money that's inherently problematic, but capital. capital is power. it's what is behind the fundamentally un democratic nature of the economy that needs to change.
Funny that you and SMN bring your videos about planned obsolescance now as I recently bought two "Superfest" drinking glasses from the GDR. They aren't really an example for planned obsolescance and more of "planned durability", as the GDR wanted to waste less ressources on replacing easily breakable glasses used in gastronomy, so they developed Superfest-glass - very thin neigh unbreakable drinking vessels that where distributed to bars and the like. I didn't want to test the unbreakability, but fortunately I accidentaly dropped one of the glasses from a table and lo and behold: Even after 30+ years these East German wonders don't break when dropped :)
Unfortunately the company was closed after the annexation of the GDR.
When he said "they only go into what planned obsolescence is" I immediately came down to see if someone mentioned the SMN episode. It did such a good job of detailing how it is intrinsically tied to the eternal growth model of capitalism and is basically a guaranteed necessity of our market. Haven't made it far in, but excited to see what this video has to add!
@@bulletsandbracelets4140I was feeling a little deja vu in the beginning of the video but I didn't know why (I have a bad memory) then I searched and I watched the SMN video 2 days ago.
I love those glasses. A reminder capitalism prefers worse products to sell people.
Unironically, "once again we see the contradictions inherent in capitalism". Planned Obsolescence is one of the tools required to help the real economy at least somewhat keep pace with exponential growth expectations dictated by capitalism. It's a shame this wasn't really touched on.
I'm gonna trust the leftist economist here, there's a good reason it wasn't adress. It's essentially adressed by the part about the depression. The thing is generally, the need for exponential growth as truly necessary for capitalism, at least in the way Marxist model it, is false, there's not really evidence that this needs to go on forever in order for the constituent elements of capitalism (private property and markets) to continue existing. Endless growth is a consequence of capitalism, an expectation, but it is not a requirement.
Learn what "Economic Capital" is. You and the presenter sound dense when you drag it in without realizing products that fall apart is not public demand nor worth what they cost. You and others bashing Capitalism is why planned obsolescence exists.
@@coreym162 OK, I really want to hear this. How is "bashing Capitalism" the cause of planned obsolescence?
@@coreym162while we're at it, can you give us a primer about what "Economic Capital" is?
@@emperorarima3225 I think it's kind of like "culinary food", "past history", or "unexpected surprises"
6:00 I'm pretty sure TechnologyConnections said something about this. Hotter tungsten is brighter and lights up more area per watt, at the cost of it sublimating faster. The incandescent bulbs at the time were really dim, so they got together and made light bulbs brighter while using the same amount of energy, meaning less light bulbs would be needed to light a room, thereby saving energy. The people who made the light bulbs IIRC also ran city power grids, and reducing load saved them money. That light bulbs lasted for less time was a side product.
I feel like I mostly follow "practical conservatism" with my personal things. I don't like replacing things (partly costs) mostly because I like my stuff! I like the memories that all my little trinkets and "junk" evoke. I don't want to replace my stained bath towel because it was with me all through college. I have a t-shirt from a job I don't have anymore, magazines that I don't read that are the same kind my grandpa would read, bent knitting needles that I've since replaced with good quality ones but still keep because I learned how to knit with them. I balk when my boyfriend suggests that we replace something if it is slightly faulty or simply old.
Just be careful... as someone who fucked around and found out, this is a very slippery slide into hoarding. I now have a strict "can't use it, won't display it, it's garbage" mentality...
@@RobinTheBot I know, I'm not anywhere close to the slope yet (and hopefully never will). I just have clutter and a lot of small things due to moving so often these past 7 years. (God it's really been that long since I graduated high school)
Can you hammer those knitting needles back to somewhat straight with a bench vice with an attached anvil?
@@Ensensu2 They are pretty thin, and long, so they still bend even if I force them straight
I mean it sounds like you replaced some of that stuff already (like the knitting needles) and are just not ready to throw the old stuff out
Planned obsolescence always reminds me of Kohei Saito, a UTokyo Philosopher (a Marxist) pretty famous here in Japan who advocates for "degrowth."
A year ago in my senior year of high school, I went through three entire pairs of tennis shoes (for actual tennis) to the point they couldn't be worn on the court anymore. if I hadn't worn each of those shoes for multiple weeks after they got holes in the bottoms of them I would have easily gone through upward of 7 in just one year. I just wore those shoes on the court, just 3-4 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, I could have spent more than 500$ on just shoes.
Ive noticed my LEDs DO NOT last very long, cheap or expensive, I believe we were told 10 years. My curl florescent bulbs although had to warm up and full of mercury (totally safe and made sense to put lots of toxic materials in a fragile glass bottle) but they lasted until i removed them to get LEDs. We went from regular to florescent to LED.
Hook line and sinker. I don't think anyone buying a high end Phlips LED Bulb today is seriously planning on using that bulb until 2037... Which is what they claim would be it's expected lifespan. They draw less watts, yet, my electric bill is about the same to when I used standard bulbs.
@MartinAndrews When it was in the news that incandescent lightbulbs were likely to be discontinued from being manufactured, I went and bought $75 worth of lightbulbs! 💡💡💡💡💡
I was on my condo board when it was proposed to switch to LED's because of the cost savings claims. Some of them have burned out and need replacing. Overall, I'm very sceptical about cost savings.
My favourite item is an old leather messenger bag I bought already well used. The shoulder strap broke after a few years but I didn't want to give it up, so I got a friend of mine who knew leatherworking to help me make a new one. The replacement part looked pretty out of place at first, but over time it has developed a beautiful shiny patina.
The revived popularity of fountain pens and old typewriters makes a lot more sense. As long as you can do basic maintenance, a fountain pen and typewriter will last for life.
I sell bookmarks at fairs, and I make them as durable as I can. Every tassel is glued at the knot and each bookmark is laminated. I love bookmarks, but hated every time the tassel fell apart or the design got rubbed off, so I make mine to last.
glass bottle of ink and refillable ink container!
LAMY makes a ridiculously high writing quality fountain pen, the safari. Not the prettiest and it is mostly plastic (I think everything except the clip and the nib are plastic 😔) but how it writes is *exemplary* puts pens costing ten times as much to shame! (it is also lefty-friendly 🤗)
If only i could find a way to refill the ink bottle without buying a new one, it would be completely zero trash writing ✌
@@GeorgeTsirosI prefer my twsbis. They’re also prettier.
It’s not the longevity and we all know it. Fountain pens are fun and for many of us it’s just more comfortable. A lot of the fountain pen growth recently was backed by hyper consumerism and the desire for the new pretty or for large numbers of inks.
I like the idea that nothing needs replacement, nothing needs to be thrown away. I will check out the twsbis.
@@GeorgeTsirosBest bang for buck for trying it is probably a Platinum Preppy. Extremely consistent, easy to sue, cheap, available in most pen stores. And definitely see if you have a fountain pen store in your city, you can try them out and see all the inks and whatnot.
The short book "Automation and the Future of Work" by Aaron Benanav offers a really good exploration of the contradiction that overproduction generally leads to lack of access to consumer goods
I was just thinking about how similar overproduction and automation sounded! Ill check it out.
Yeah. Like today we produce enough food to feed 10 billion people. But 9 million plus people starve to death every year because keeping them alive doesn't enrich the already wealthy.
@@caad5258 automation makes overproduction dangerously easy!
I’ve taken to making my own clothes and plan to move forward with my skills and branch into making shoes and handbags for this very reason. My clothes cost an arm and a leg and are almost unwearable 6 months from purchase because of how horribly constructed they are. I can’t take it anymore
Have you tried washing your clothes in laundry nets? I have to buy relatively crappy jeans because they are the only ones I know I can stand wearing that also fit my body type. So crapppy in fact that I had two of them break within two months before but since I have started washing them in nets they last a lot longer and I feel like my other clothes do too.
Very nice of The Simpsons writers to plan for their shows obsolescence so that other animated comedies could take its place.
Had they not done so we might never have had the pleasure of South Park & Rick and Morty...
Is it a coincidence that you release a video on planned obsolescence the same week some more news released one on the same topic? :D
Yes, unless they are a patron as I released a draft there a couple of weeks ago.
@@unlearningeconomics9021 it wouldn't have completely surprised me if you were... are there "mutuals" on patreon? Two accounts just trading the same 1$ subscription every month? :D
@Schraupe that's a huge waste of money. 5% fee to Patreon + tax liability
Some more news did a video on this, yeah. But then Veritasium did one last year.
great minds
I've just stopped buying tech and clothes. This year I've only bought a new phone, since my previous one from 2018 broke down. It's wild that 5 years for a phone is considered a long lifespan nowadays though. I've bought a couple of thrift store clothes and two belts on amazon, and that's it. As I've hit my early 20's, my clothing consumption has really slowed down as I've found my style and learned to thrift if I need something new. The only thing I'm really buying nowadays is Lego, and even though it's made of plastic, it's made to last and to be passed down from generations and not disposed of.
It's surprisingly easy to not buy stuff lol.
I think there's also an intrinsic reason we gravitate toward reliable older things:
Our very survival likely relied on efficiency through most of history.
When we spend more time or resources on replacing something we owned that broke is less time and resources we can put towards feeding our family. We've only allowed this because we've been living in the richest age in history. We could afford to lose things without starving...
But that age is gone and we're in the collapse of the global economy so I can understand people being more concerned about these systems/products that are so inefficient.
As a side-note: copyright and patent laws need to be adjusted to allow more people to make and repair their own things. The unfair laws are a big reason why there isn't more competition for off-label products including prescription medicines.
My partner bought replacement parts for our Kitchenaid stand mixer because there’s one very important part inside made of plastic. Fortunately the replacement is cheap and only needs to be changed once a decade or so, but you could easily think the whole thing needs replacement.
Don't forget that Apple actually applied a software update that slowed down the OS on old versions of their phone to make people think they need the new version of the phone.
It actually made those old phones last longer though. Evil, but not evil enough for customers to notice.
@@erkinalp They underclocked older iPhones in order to extend battery life and health, but that's still bad nonethelss.
It should be optional setting and transparent at the very least.
I prefer somewhat owning my products and not being locked into one ecosystem and what I can or can't do with my own device. Once Apple deems your older phone obsolete, you can't do much about it, and you can't deny updates because eventually apps stop working on older iOS versions.
Most Android apps still support Android 5 and forward, there are mirrors where you can download older app versions if newer doesn't work, and you can install custom ROMs or GSIs to further extend life of your Android phone. It's not as hard as people think it is.
This, like the claim in the video, is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of reasonably basic technology. Apple underclocked processors on phones whose batteries could no longer consistently supply the necessary voltage to run them at their maximum highest clock speeds. Google did *not* do this and it resulted in the Nexus 6P (for example) constantly rebooting at like 40% battery after you'd had it for about a year.
@@r_bear That's not how it works.
I remember back in 2008 it was impossible to criticise Apple about anything before being attacked by legions of Apple zealots. By 2012 attitudes had started to shift and people realised that perhaps the multi billion dollar company Apple wasn't as perfect as they wanted to believe.
I have a US $20 hiking bag I bought in 2014. It is still my main carry bag and been with me all over the place. It has some natural surface wear / colour fading but it structurally is absolutely fine and robust. No broken seams, no ripped pockets or buckles etc….
And there were times where I didn’t treat it well in rough conditions either or I massively overpacked it and it still held up.
a lot of the older may have been better, but they were also more expensive factoring in inflation and also it’s survivorship bias.
Same here. Backpack from 2017. Using daily.
Mine dates from the mid 80s. Karrimor, before they got bought by Sports Direct. Came with a lifetime warranty and they meant it. I still have the warranty card too, though I'm sure it wouldn't be honoured, the company is long gone and only a brand remains.
I have a winter jacket I bought when I was 16, I still have and wear it now at 33 but it’s started to show it’s age with frayed sleeves and a little hole here and there. I’ve been looking for someone who can repair it because I just can’t fathom throwing it away, it’s been with me through so much of life.
Ehh, you're finally discussing planned obselence you love to see it.
What are you talking about? This is a simpsons review??
Only times ive gotten new vehicles was after being hit and insurance decided to total the old ones. Damage wasnt even that bad but turns out they wont give you much money for a truck with 250,000 miles on it.
I wear the same converse everyday. I bought a used pair for five bucks three years ago and wore them every. day. They didn't just have holes, like the canvas was tearing apart. Over the years i went on many a visit to the local cobbler. Converse may be good quality compared to others (i genuinely wouldn't know im not kidding these are ALL i wear) but they aren't like industrial quality. Its still great to support a local repair shop, and the feeling you get from repairing something for like $10 truly doesn't compare. Eventually last summer I bought a new pair, cant wait to see how far they go.
ALSO, while in the military (90s) he bought a plastic Nalgene water bottle (in the first few minutes of the video it literally shows a picture of the same water bottle in the buy once subreddit). Nalgene isn't even a waterbottle company, they make lab equipment. but anyway, my dad literally used only this water bottle since the nineties. Imagine a plastic waterbottle that has been used for 30 years everyday (through the military and raising kids). This summer the cap broke, he caved and bought a new one, same brand and model, bo fancy features, just a reliable product. Meanwhile at the exact same time this summer, the cap to my 6 month old hydroflask (a brand praised for its quality) broke and had to be replaced.
I have a mechanical pencil I used everyday from 8th grade now into college. Really good example of the "take it apart and fix" gratification and philosophy. Its metal and plastic, triangular, nice to spin. Can't find it anywhere online now though.
I loooovvvvveeeeee having things. Not getting things (my dopamine says i love it but it fades the next day). No i love having things that last. That have been with me. That are dependable
Big fan of the channel here, loved the video! One bit of feedback for future videos, it would be awesome if you could include you're sources on screen, including page numbers for books when you cite specific facts, events, quotes? It would make it easier to look further into stuff we find particularly interesting.
I also thinks it's good practice to spread amongst video essays, particular those that get into politics, economics and science. I trust this channel but I've been burned recently with channels not citing particular sources per claim and just including some books in the description and then turning out to be misleading.
BadEmpanda did a great video on the topic "History RUclipsrs Are a Complete Joke" though be warned he is pretty brutal about it.
Again, love your stuff, thanks for all the hard work! 😁
The joy of having "one" thing for each job is amazing. Having something that you have not only grown up using but can take with you to give to grand children.
Thanks for giving us a video that will never become obsolete. Or, are you planning to release a new and improved version?
😂
You've got the light bulb thing partially correct, but you missed an important factor. You can make light bulbs last longer by reducing the amount of light they put out. That's how they lasted 2.5k hours. The 1k hour bulbs sat at a sweet spot between longevity and light output, and became the most popular. The RUclips channel Technology Connections has a great video about this called "Longer Lasting Light Bulbs: It Was Complicated." Highly recommended.
I’m surprised that I had to scroll down this far to see a comment about this. A big component of this is the watts per lumen. While a household might be able to fill itself with lots of dim lightbulbs that last a long time to achieve the same brightness, their power usage would be much higher for the same net brightness. Is the total number of increased joules per unit life worth the reduced waste of already-highly recyclable components?
@@TheFerruccio Not to mention it was common for those same companies, as they often also were the ones selling electricity directly or indirectly, to give out their lightbulbs for free to customers. It was quite literally to save themselves money by giving people more efficient and less durable lightbulbs. It wasn't some super secret grand scheme so people would buy more lightbulbs, because they were literally given away but rather to give consumers lower electricity bills and tax their own network less. It was quiet frankly a win/win for both consumers and electricity producers.
The claim it was some grand consumer screwing conspiracy is exactly the sentiment the cartel tried avoiding by trying to make sure that consumers didn't fell for the whole "but it lasts longer thus it must be cheaper" shtick.
@@relo999 "as they often also were the ones selling electricity directly or indirectly, to give out their lightbulbs for free to customers. It was quite literally to save themselves money by giving people more efficient and less durable lightbulbs"
have i missed some sort of fundamental aspect of power companies?
I was told once that to due to competition in the market energy companies will sell you energy at only a slight profit and make most of their money from standing charges. It seems its a game of serving as many customers as possible rather than getting the most from a few.
I'm guessing you commented before getting the video authors own recommendation of the same video
I'm only 14 minutes in atm but I really hope the appliances of the modern world get addressed at some point washing machines, dryers, refrigerators and dishwashers
Love your attitude to wireless headphones ! My first smart phone was the best phone I owned. It had a user replaceable battery and used it for 8 years. I would still be using it if 2G was not phased out. Perhaps if the transceiver was easily replaced I would still be using it.
I feel you. It is very discouraging seeing the way device manufacturers have gone in the last decade plus. However, there is a solution out there. Modular phones and computers are the way to subvert planned obsolescence. Companies designing and making these modular devices are definitely swimming upriver and have had a hard time getting traction. The reality is though that this is the way devices should be made if we're being at all cognizant about our environment. Companies like the Fairphone, and Framework (laptop) have sprouted up in the last few years and they're making compelling products.
LEDs are actually incredibly brighter than old lightbulbs and amazingly power-efficient even though there hasn't been significant advancement made in like 10 years. They were just such a better product it was impossible for them not to become a thing.
There are advances in LED every year. It is simply not true that there haven't been advances in 10 years. They get more and more efficient with each generation. Currently roughly 20% per year/generation. You can compare modern LED develoment to the advances that were made year on year in computing power of CPUs maybe ten years ago. It's technologically one of the most dynamically evolving tech.
Slightly reminded of the way the eu banned standard lightbulbs but instead of backing existing superior LED technology, they went all in for slow, often emitting ugly light, mercury-containing CFL lamps. But oh well, LED did come out on top on the end.
I work in energy efficiency, testing and modeling new homes. I can say that LEDs are one of the most amazing market transformations and are quite the opposite of the planned obsolescence discussed here: they last soooo long! Also, the lighting (both fixtures and installation) designers are loving the whole thing, being able to do things they never could before.
@@Gormilein yet finding LED lights with good quality light output still isn't trivial.
@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 the easiest way for me personally is figuring out which SKUs come from which factory and then look for the ones from the newest-built/updated factory of the brand i want.
Most led lights today are coming out of factories set up in the 90s with the owners just trying to milk it until they have to shut down for a while (read: months or years) to update the factory to the most recent standard.
Thank you for shouting hour Technology connections ! It’s a great video that sheds light on the situation
Planned obsolescence is the sad reality of building a successful business, growing it and realizing you've run out of customers, factory workers need something to do and to get paid somehow. So you either invent new skews of the same product or make the product break just in time for the warranty to have run out. Many businesses start with the promise of delivering a product you'll never need to replace, but inevitably they'd have to completely pivot to find a new customer base, lest they end up endlessly stockpiling good product that they can't afford to keep hoarding.
Sure you can feel nostalgic about things you have no memory of. Those items have soul, and you can tell. My dad brought me a nightstand from a secondhand store today. It’s solid wood with fitted drawers that have a smooth, even weight to them. It’s no doubt several decades old and it’s so pretty. It’ll be replacing my current plain white ikea nightstand that feels like cardboard and rattles when you touch it. There’s joy and comfort in using something that someone else has used before you, and someone else will be able to use after you. There’s love to be found in things that were made not to be forgotten, but cherished.
No, you can't feel nostalgia for things you have no memory of. That's called romanticism.
@@briancrawford8751 are you questioning their lived experience?
@@angrydragonslayer No, and I don't know how you got that impression, but people like that are stealing my past and my lived experience and authoritatively saying it's something it never was. I'm not saying this particular person is guilty of that, but there are people all over the internet who do it, e.g. some 21 year old acting like they knew exactly what was going on in "the 90's" as if it's one homogeneous era that didn't change until midnight on New Year's Day in 2000 or 2001, depending on how you count it.
@@briancrawford8751 you are questioning their lived experience.....
@@angrydragonslayerwhat? He's simply informing them of the correct work for what there feeling
"Planned Obsolescence Will Kill Us All" - what I hear: "It's time to invest into the funeral industry."
Makes sure your caskets fail within 5 years.
a true capitalist i see
@@CarrotConsumer best comment award.
Death is the original planned obsolescence
should did that back in 2019 before relase of cvid vaccas.
I absolutely love it when I can hold onto something for ages. I would have done it with my car, except that the insurance company demanded OEM parts for the repair, which nearly doubled the estimate and totaled the car. It wasn't even a new or expensive care, just a 2005 Hyundai.