Topic: The light bulb conspiracy. Planned obsolescence. (Read 3545 times)

The original adopters will slowly get edged out as the big money comes in.
At least, they will profit substantially.

I think those who embrace bitcoin because of its concept and not its get-rich-quick potentials would inherently have anti-establishment tendencies, which is why bitcoin is so appealing to them. Bitcoin is essentially anti-establishment. Those who  approach bitcoin as a commodity hopeful of getting rich quick would regard bitcoin as just that, a commodity, which they secretly hope it will die off so they can move on to the next get-rich-quick commodity. There really is only two types of people in this world - those who understand Bitcoin, and those who don't.

This is exactly why this is not a huge deal. At least IMO.

They make LED lightbulbs if thats what you want

Planned obsolence is very real. Everything is a scam.

High labour costs tend to make repairing an expensive proposition, especially for low-value items.

Many things cost more to repair then they are worth. New things often are cheaper then their previous equivalent and contain new features.

Lightbulbs would be too expensive to make if they were designed in ways so they last a lot longer then they do. You need to take into consideration that lightbulbs often break because of external forces (lamps fall for example) so spending money to make them last longer would not necessarily be more economical for the user.

Hmm fair enough herz but I was pointing to existing companies not theoretical ones that could come in the future.
Although if you have any examples of this working in practice I would appreciate them

The closest ones I know of are in the mobile market but do not involving leasing products but owning them at a fair price one example is in Republic Wireless and there are a couple money saving strategies MMM mentions.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/05/13/moto-x-vs-moto-g/

Or I guess mintspare and similar ideas
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/havelock-mintspare-ms-bitcoin-electronic-trade-in-service-official-thread-401481

MintSpare provides its customers with a unique and comprehensive electronic purchasing and trade-in service in return for the digital crypto-currency Bitcoin. Motivation for our product comes from the fact that consumers purchase millions of electronic devices such as smart phones, tablets, laptops, and DSLR cameras to either replace their obsolete equipment or simply because they desire to have the latest versions. MintSpare provides an avenue for these consumers to receive Bitcoins for their dated equipment at a fair market value. To use MintSpare, customers simply provide basic information about their electronic devices and are provided with a Bitcoin compensation amount and a shipping label. MintSpare promptly processes all devices received and does required repairs before selling them via various online marketplaces. Besides providing a trade-in process that offers customers a fast and profitable way to earn Bitcoin for their unwanted electronic devices, MintSpare also has a complementary and environmentally friendly recycling service for customers’ electronic devices. MintSpare’s offices and shipping/receiving center are located in Miami, FL, USA and serves customers within the United States and plans to serve international customers in the near future.

Notme has a good point about vendor selections with Apple and IBM making an unholy alliance to kill Blackberry in a sense the restrict supply side of mobile phones in the business market.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186372-apple-and-ibm-team-up-to-conquer-the-enterprise-market-and-crush-microsoft-blackberry-and-android

Every now and then, the universe likes to throw a curve ball, just to see if you’re actually paying attention. Today’s surprise announcement of a wide-ranging Apple-IBM alliance is likely to put a frown on the faces of many tech execs. As of today, IBM and Apple have signed a broad agreement to put iPads and iPhones in the hands of many of IBMs clients and customers, while Apple has pledged support for the enterprise firm’s software tools and products.

IBM is promising a whole suite of business intelligence applications, cloud services, security and analytics, and device management tools, all to be written for iOS from the ground up and with enterprise customers firmly in mind. Apple, in turn, will offer AppleCare to enterprise customers, including what looks like an enterprise-style agreement to provide on-site repair and replacement services.

This deal, assuming both sides deliver on their respective software solutions, is potentially huge. It expands IBM’s business into touchscreens and tablets, it gives businesses a guaranteed and respected solution for software and hardware, and it gives Apple enormous amounts of enterprise street cred.

This announcement is a clear threat to the few markets where Blackberry still plays, Microsoft’s corporate cash cows, and the BYOD Android trend that Samsung and other vendors have been pushing. Unfortunately, identifying it as a threat is all we can do for now — we need to see more details before we can say more. If Apple and IBM cast their nets narrowly and mostly appeal to IBM’s existing high-end customers, then the impact might not be substantial.

If, on the other hand, the two companies use this as an excuse to try and reach new customer bases, Android, Blackberry, and Windows could all be in a world of hurt. It’s the latest in a series of moves IBM has made to expand its customer base outwards, from aligning itself with Nvidia on HPC computing initiatives to opening up the Power8 architecture.

Of all these moves, however, this IBM-Apple alliance seems the most likely to change the nature of the enterprise computing game — and to rock pretty much everyone back on their heels in the process.

Unless intellectual property laws are used to restrict supply by only allowing one vendor.

if the leasing model spreads more, and recycling tech as mentioned becomes more sophisticated, competition will drive the fees down.

Correct, successful companies do not engineer their products to fail.  Successful companies engineer their products and then test reliability.  If it is reliable, they only lease it to you with a required service contract.  If it is unreliable, they sell it to you outright so you have to buy a new one or pay them to fix it when it breaks.  Or, in the case of warranties, they are based on mean time to failure.

Already exists its called rent to own
Known as easyhome here there are variants of it
http://www.easyhome.ca/electronics/tv

Lease to own but its more like pay till broke

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-12/new-kmart-rent-to-own-program-turns-300-tv-into-415-buy.html

Kmart is introducing a rent-to-own program charging the equivalent of 100-plus percent annual interest, a move into a business that has drawn criticism for hurting low-income consumers.

The Lease-to-Own program touts instant gratification -- customers without credit take a product home right away, make biweekly payments, then decide whether to buy out or return the product. A typical deal could turn a $300 television into a $415 purchase.

“The rent-to-own industry promises consumers the American dream of ownership,”

Consumer Reports Investigation: Would you pay the equivalent of 311 percent interest to own a big-screen TV?
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/shopping/rentacenter/overview/index.htm

Would you buy a $600 computer knowing that it would cost you nearly $1,900 after less than a year's worth of payments? How about a $1,000 clothes washer/dryer combination at an equivalent interest rate of 100 percent, leaving you $2,700 out of pocket after two and a half years?

Those are the types of deals you could end up with if you get your electronics, furniture, appliances, or other items from a rent-to-own store.


I agree it is tasteless and wasteful part of the problem is that if everyone does it then the prices are far above what they normally would be to repair it.

Take third world countries which try to repair everything vs the West and you see significant price differences on the same repairs to products example a pair of glasses might be $35 dollars there and here in excess of $100 +
Similar things with unlocking mobile phones
Could name a nice list custom clothing etc but there are quite a few things.

(Factoring for purchasing power parity etc.)

it's of course true that people do want the latest things, so why should a company invest in robustness; technology life-cycles become faster and faster too.

the marginal costs of materials are negligible nowadays.

you could say you now rather pay for the service of a company (i.e. engineering, design, management) rather than the single materially manifested product... this is where the costs are, not in the materials.

with software, we get updates too; why can't it be the same with hardware?

i'm almost certain in the near future you will lease stuff; you'll get a new TV every year, or every two years, depending on your contract; the faster you want to stay up-to-date to the latest tech, the higher the fees will be.

and if one day there is proper recycling tech (at the molecular level maybe), then this won't be environmentally problematic anymore, and no more need for child labor for rare earth metals in 3rd world mines.

That's part of why I quit my plans to work with computers. One of my teachers had a little side business, he repaired computers for people. One example he gave was when the damn thing suddenly refused to start one day. In most cases it was simply the battery on the motherboard that ran dry, replacing it took 30 seconds and cost a few bucks, but he took a hundred for it.

It's tasteless and wasteful.

Well its because they charge exorbitantly high fees to repair it
Oh its the bulb in the Plasma tv costs more than the TV to repair best buy a new one
(For my tv it was a plug remove that plug tv runs like new again)
Sorry your hard drive and computer is whacked since it doesn't react when you press the power button best get a new one the cost to repair this is 500 dollars
(Cough dust inside the fan that wouldn't let the PC run activating the auto shut off just they made it such a pain in the ass to open)
The fridge has a broken circuit or a chip in it (but the person doesn't tell you say a 10-20 dollar fix) but is trained to tell you to replace it or pay 150 dollars for the job, or the ice tray is broken and won't run and it costs a few hundred bucks in labor for something you can do if you know how to for 10 bucks.
(Cough dust fridge was like a vacuum needs a good clean now and then, the ice tray just too much ice inside lol)

Information is money to sum it up and what you don't know costs you, it doesn't help that the prices are put at a point where a new thing seems cheaper than repairing it even if the real cost to repair it is miniscule.

People tend to buy new stuff instead of repairing old stuff as well. No wonder personal debt is so high right now.

The documentary makes the classic mistake of blaming a conspiracy for the short lifespan of light bulbs while showing the firehouse light bulb and saying 'they don't build them like this any more'.  We know how to make ultra long life lightbulbs: don't power cycle them, and make them really dim and horribly inefficient.  That's pretty useless to almost all consumers.

In the 1960s it was common that a car that reached 100k miles needed thorough engine overhauls to keep going.  My car has just passed that mark without any engine repairs.  My parents bought a new car in the 1980s that had a 12 month, 20k km warranty.  That was considered standard  Now 5 year 100k km is standard.  They don't build them like they used to: they build them better.

As for the other anecdotes raised on this thread, consider that the old brand name washing machines, fridges and televisions my parents owned still needed regular repairs every few years.  Certainly none lasted decades like people like to claim when contrasting with the equipment sold in stores today.

It's true that there is some real cheap trash being sold today, but consumers need to look at themselves when trying to blame someone.  A manufacturer selling a quality LED light with the best components is almost always going to lose sales to the other guy who is using much cheaper components with dubious quality and shorter lifespan.  Consumers often drive that demand.

Planned obsolescence disguised as people want newer and better things
In reality it's that our old stuff breaks after a while so we need to get new stuff (-_-)

Anyways we are wasting a lot of resources as a society on this so I hope that the mindset starts shifting again
I've had it happen so many times I've lost count however call it luck I have been able to extend their lifespans TV used fixya
Fridge Vacuumed it was a bunch of dust
Computer same problems it's a battle of will.

I had the same experience with a refrigerator - well it was less expensive than a car for sure, but it was a higher quality model (judging by the price). Electronics failed without apparent reason. I was really upset. Called their support line and all they would offer me was buying another fridge from them at a slight discount. No thanks!

I think it's scandalous. Not to mention the waste of resources and harm to the environment.

But that's the issue. Good stuff costs a lot more up front, but less down the road. OK, the fridge is an *extreme* example, but since I found the receipt while cleaning out my friends parents house it serves a point (which is why I posted in here). In 1975 they bought 2 refrigerators. One was a cheap (sub $150) GE the other was a $2600 (car price in 1975) built in SubZero.
The SubZ still works fine almost 40 years in. Don't know how many of the low priced GE / Whirlpool / Kenmore / etc. they went though in the same 40 years but I know it was at least 4. Don't know how much food they lost when the cheap ones died. Don't know how much time & effort they spent shopping for the other ones. But it's still a number. Just paid out a bit at a time over 40 years instead of all at once in the beginning.


-Dave   

I just did a quick check on SubZero's website out of curiosity.  One of their refrigerators costs over $16,000.  You can buy a new car for not much more than that - a 2014 Honda LX Manual costs $18,390.  I can't imagine anyone who isn't a  multimillionaire spending that much money on a refrigerator.

But I do agree with the overall point about stuff being engineered to fail.  It's pretty absurd.  I had a fairly brand new (two month old at most) LED light bulb literally fall apart.  The glass part fell off the shell casing and it obviously stopped working.  I should probably send it back for a warranty replacement, if they're willing to pony up for return shipping.  With something that's supposed to last 15 years failing this quickly, they really ought to pay the return shipping cost.

I have had several cars break down right after the warranty expires. Our most recent purchase was a Chrysler and we joked about setting aside several hundred dollars for the approaching warranty expiration date. About 2 weeks after that date the trans axle failed. 

I never heard of them before but PENTA I assume are this group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penta_Investments

But it is true that there are strong financial groups in every country that aim to well outmarket the market by pushing down prices then killing the competitors readjusting the prices upwards.

But in a world where we can be accurate to the nanograde with lasers it feels like a waste that we build stuff with such low lifespans now kind of reverse engineering and designing for it to fail lol.

Apple has become the master of this.

The issue (with a lot of appliances) is that people don't want to pay.
Want a good fridge, very efficient, reliable, built solid and looks good (IMO). Get a SubZerohttp://www.subzero-wolf.com/ and be ready to pay for it.

Same with dish washers. A good Bosch or Miele is wayyy more money then a base GE. And you will get 30+ years out of it. But you can get 5 base GE models and replace them every 7 years for less money.

-Dave

Yes planned obsolence became standard part of technology. It is not coinsidence, that so many products broke up very soon after they warranty is off.

In my country there is financial group made of billionares called PENTA, they sponsor politicians and own huge pharmaceutical network. They are so rich, that they are able to sell under the value for years. By this, they completly destroy all little guys. They ruin them and then buy them. In year all pharmacies in my town turned from privatly owned by little guys to PENTA owned Dr.MAX.

very sad.

this is an example of the value of open source technology.

I would think that this would violate the contract with the purchaser of the software/hardware

Well all the household appliances my parents bought in the 70s and 80s have gradually been dying.  Each appliance lived a minimum of 25 years.  Some items like our refridgerator we will not replace because even thought the newer ones would use less electricity ultimately buying a new one would harm the environment more since manufacturing a new one uses an insane amount of power and creates a lot of waste byproduct.  If a new fridge used 1/10 of the power it would be a no brainer but for 30% more efficiency I'm not willing to buy something that will break after 3 months.

The Samsung fridge I bought for my house did have a water drain clog and fail at exactly 1 year and 4 days.  This is why I bought the extended warranty.  Which normally I would consider a waste but household appliances at least seemed to be made to self destruct just after the warranty.

It's quite sadly really.  In an age with laser capable of measuring tolerances no human eye could see and capable of catching manufacturing defects that lazy engineering is making such waste.  Th government shouldn't be passing carbon taxes onto the consumer. They should punish companies based on failure rates 

That seems to be worth sharing in my opinion as well and yah if all it takes is resetting a counter to 0 to get a machine working that seems pretty crummy in my opinion.
Well as they say knowledge is power and money if the other person doesn't know

WOW, that is even worse than the printer ink scam that they talk about in the documentary!

wrong, if every company deliberately designs products to be sub-par and they pressure each other to join in on this scheme (which they do), you have no choice, only the illusion of choice.

If Apple sells shit and samsung sells shit, you can choose if you want apple branded shit or samsung branded shit, but in the end you'll still buy shit.


About the bullshit jobs, that's exactly my opinion too. Humanity would be better of with shorter work-weeks (with that i mean people will be free to spend time with family and engage in activities they enjoy, as well as being able to exersize more which is better for their health).

However due to some restrictions (not technological restrictions, but socio-economic restrictions) this is not possible today.

The light bulb is from ~1900.

The FED was introduced 1913. Its monetary policies caused the so-called "Golden 20ies" stock market bubble. The Great Depression was just the burst of the bubble. With the New Deal, government tried to fix the symptoms rather than the causes. Since then, all western economies basically follow the same bail-out and socialism for the rich politics.

Central banks aim at constant inflation of a currency. A money losing value encourages the wasteful consumerism of today. Not only directly, but also indirectly: A money losing value also causes capital flight. Thus we get nice things like food speculation, landgrabbing (making everything more expensive that is produced on over-priced land), and stock market bubbles. Corporations have to please shareholders, they lobby the politics and media for all the "economy must grow" talk, they have to make profit with blood on their hands, hence we get ridiculous business models like selling ring tones to kids, products that break easily, i.e. planned obsolescence, and also bullshit jobs. http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

It matters only if the companies have privileges backed by the violence of the state. Meaning it is the privileges that matters.

If a private company prefers to make subpar products, it is ok, because you don't have to buy them.

I was a software engineer at a company about 20 years ago that had a piece of code in the EPROM that would make a multi-million dollar industrial machine fail on a certain date. I often went out on field calls to simply update these EPROMs with a new "fail date". I wasn't allowed to tell the customer what I was really doing. Horrible boss too.

Planned obsolescence is total reality now!
For example, I have a 40 years old refrigerator still working in my house without a single failure, while modern models break down after 2-5 years of operation.

Watched the video and it does look like Cartels do control the market
By determining fixed lifespans and getting a consensus the market will be forced to adjust to this behavior and change their purchases.

It does make me wonder though if a lightbulb can go 100 to 200 years by changing it's design then wouldn't that also apply to LED and Mercury bulbs or the more efficient lightbulb design.

The strategy works so long as there is no competition from another country.

As soon as people figure out they can buy quality at cheaper price elsewhere, the company selling inferior product will fail and lose market share.

US car companies losing market share worldwide is a good example of selling crap.

Good documentary.

Not quite there are several times when a company engineers something to fail but it still gets significant scale
This is due to decreasing product quality and the need of a consumer to go buy a replacement.

Basically its cheaper in appearance but in reality you pay more than the premium product
As Some have said I'm not rich enough to buy cheap
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2009/02/why_i_cant_affo/

Example: Home Heating Systems made 30 to 40 years ago still work but the newer models don't work as long and tend to require replacement much sooner.
Shavers such as disposable razors where the blades don't last nearly as long as they use to.
Printers: I still have a dot-matrix with the side papers and it works but the video shows that new ones break much faster
http://www.niyaazenterprises.com/dot-matrix-printer-paper.htm

The lightbulb is a good example though since the older systems can stay on longer as long as the filament is not exposed to air but the weakest link the Glue fails long before the lightbulb would break.

I guess I have a soft spot for old school lightbulbs
Incandescent light doesn't do any harm to people and even in minute quantities gaseous mercury seems unappealing.
LED's are fine with me though but they are a bit more expensive than the incandescent

The video looks interesting though but the problem is that people don't repair things as often anymore and just buy new stuff.
So combined with Planned obsolescence the second truth is the inflation of repair costs.

Example repairing your glasses in Canada and the US costs more due to a monopoly they hold.
It was on 60 minutes if anyone wants to look it up.
http://wire.kapitall.com/investment-idea/free-press-60-minutes-exposes-eyewear-monopoly-held-by-lux/

I have seen this a while ago, very sad really.

I think bitcoin may solve this problem as well as a deflationary currency hopefully discourages wasting resources. However I am not sure it will work as I think it will. I have not thought it trough.


Tell that to apple, or the socks industry, battery manufacturers, printer manufacturers, etc.

Did you know printers for businesses are several times more expensive than the exact same model for home use? And the only difference being the model for business either lacks the 'death chip' or has a modified version of it? It's really true, printer manufactures actually design their printers to just lock up after several hundreds of pages printed.

Companies that engineer their products to fail eventually fail themselves. Just take a look at the U.S. auto industry.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with bitcoin.

This is the story of companies who engineered their products to fail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfbbF3oxf-E