"Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell." Studs Terkel
"We live in a disposable, 'cast-off and throw-away' society that has largely lost any real sense of permanence. Ours is a world of expiration dates, limited shelf life, and planned obsolescence. Nothing is absolute."
For centuries, we've had an unquenchable thirst for new products that could make our lives better. But what happens if that thirst gets quenched and the demand dries up? What happens when companies make products that are so good, they can last a lifetime and never be needed again? How can salespeople drive sales when things are working pretty well for everybody?
During the 1920's The Phoebus Cartel emerged to confront this very problem. Light bulbs, which were a fairly new invention, were lasting too long and people weren't buying enough of them. There is one light bulb that has now lasted over 120 years, is still burning, and has its own web camera. So the companies of the time got together in secret and devised a way to cut the lifespan of the average bulb in half. Bulbs that used to last 2000 hours and more were now engineered to burn out after roughly 1000 hours.
It was an ingenious plan. The new bulbs would cost more and need to be replaced more, driving up profits for General Electric, Phillips, Westinghouse and more. And it is credited as the birth of the planned obsolescence movement that we still tolerate today. These schemes don't last forever, as technology and innovation can eventually disrupt them. The LED bulbs of today are much more energy efficient, lasting 25-50,000 hours in most cases. But if sales slow down enough, you can bet things might change.
Planned obsolescence is a defect of modern capitalism that keeps us from having nice things that last as long as we do. I recently had to replace my hot water heater with a new one when it sprung a leak. The new one is energy efficient and has an expected lifespan of about 10 years. When I looked at the installation date of the old one, I couldn't believe my eyes- it was installed nearly 40 years ago! And we had never had any problems with it.
Major appliances and electronics are some of our most costly purchases each year. And they are the ones most likely to be designed to fail. Sure they come with a one or two year warrantee, but good luck getting your new refrigerator to last over a decade. Big screen televisions are a marvel of technology with their clear pictures, but they are only expected to last about 5 to 7 years. Cell phones are a miraculous tiny device that can do multiple things at once, but we are trained to want to turn them in after just a few years to get the newest upgrades. And the fast fashion industry is churning out more and more cheap garments that fall apart with repeated wearing, counting on American's fickle tastes and desires for that next dopamine hit from shopping.
All of this leads to large profits for industry, an unending treadmill of buy and replace for shoppers, and eventually large piles of unwanted trash and hazardous waste in landfills. The main ways that the companies shorten lifespans is by using cheaper parts- usually plastics where older appliances used solid metals. Computer technologies and microchips, while being more powerful, are also much more fragile, and once they break down they become expensive to repair. Often it is just about as expensive to replace something as to repair it.
I wish there was some easy way to counter this trend. I hate that things are so disposable now and probably cling to older things longer than I should. I can see what big business wants me to do and I resist it because it incentivizes them to keep making cheap crap that doesn't last.
If you can afford it, do some research and try to buy things that have a better track record of lasting longer. Don't fall for trends that want you to throw out entire wardrobes because they are boring. Talk to repairmen about which manufacturers are the best- they see it all and know more than the salespeople do. And if enough of us refuse to run the treadmill, industry will have to adjust, even if government has to get involved.
And perhaps the best resource for avoiding the traps of planned obsolescence is Consumer Reports, the one organization that tests cars, appliances, televisions, and many more items before we have to buy them. They even have a handy repair or replace tool that can guide decisions on whether or not to give up and trash something that is broken.
Sales and marketing professionals know more about us than ever before thanks to our social media behaviors. They know how to push our buttons to get us to buy. They know that many of us don't care if something breaks down a year from now because we are so short-term focused. But we still have some sort of agency here, and we can show Wall Street that we won't settle for 1000 hour light bulbs. Quality still matters. We just have to demand it and educate ourselves. You can start by sharing this blog post.
If you want to explore further down this rabbit hole, this excellent documentary covers the Phoebus Cartel and what it has done to our economy since.
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