Planned Obsolescence Presentation
Though long gone, the Phoebus cartel still casts a shadow today. That’s true in part because the lighting industry is now going through its most tumultuous period of technological change since the invention of the incandescent bulb. After more than a century of dominance, these bulbs are now being phased out in favor of compact fluorescent and especially LED bulbs.
Consumers are expected to pay more money for bulbs that are up to 10 times as efficient and that are touted to last a fantastically long time—up to 50,000 hours in the case of LED lights. In normal usage, these lamps will last so long that their owners will probably sell the house they’re in before having to change the bulbs. But there is no denying that these far more technologically sophisticated products offer tempting opportunities for the inclusion of purposefully engineered life-shortening defects. After all, few people will complain, or even notice, if a bulb burns out 9 years after it is installed rather than 14. True, today’s lighting industry is much larger and more diverse than it was in the 1920s and ’30s, and government monitoring of collusive behavior is more vigilant.
In 2007 President Bush passed bipartisan legislation to increase the energy efficiency of light bulbs and eventually ban conventional filament bulbs that put out less than 45 lumens per watt. The ban was phased, with the final deadline to be January 1, 2020, at which time all those specialty bulbs like reflector spots and floods, 3 way bulbs, candelabra bulbs and hipster steampunk coffee shop bulbs were supposed to be replaced.
After Donald Trump was elected President, the big light bulb manufacturers (GE, Signify [formerly known as Philips Lighting], and Sylvania, as represented by their trade association, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association) started lobbying to stop Phase II, so that they could keep selling those specialty incandescents that keep burning out. After all, if they sell you an LED, they only make one sale. With incandescents, you are a customer forever. In February, President Trump's Department of Energy announced that they were going to roll back these rules. Now the DOE has done it, announcing the final rule rolling back the standards. The cost in carbon and energy will be huge.
According to the Alliance to save energy: The department’s action will cost the average American household roughly $100 per year while necessitating the energy generated by 25 coal-fired power plants, equivalent to the combined electrical usage of all households in New Jersey and Pennsylvania combined.
In various forms, from subtle to unsubtle, planned obsolescence still very much exists nowadays. From so-called contrived durability, where brittle parts give out, to having repairs cost more than replacement products, to aesthetic upgrades that frame older product versions as less stylish – goods makers have no shortage of ruses to keep opening customers’ wallets. For a fully modern example, consider smartphones. These handsets often get discarded after a mere couple years’ use. Screens or buttons break, batteries die, or their operating systems, apps, and so on can suddenly no longer be upgraded. Yet a solution is always near at hand: brand new handset models, pumped out every year or so, and touted as “the best ever”. As another example of seemingly blatant planned obsolescence, Slade mentions printer cartridges. Microchips, light sensors or batteries can disable a cartridge well before all its ink is actually used up, forcing owners to go buy entirely new, not-at-all-cheap units. “There’s no real reason for that,” Slade says. “I don’t know why you can’t just go get a bottle of cyan or black [ink] and, you know, squirt it into a reservoir.” Taken this way, planned obsolescence looks wasteful. According to Cartridge World, a company that recycles printer cartridges and offers cheaper replacements, in North America alone, 350 million (not even empty) cartridges end up in landfills annually. Beyond waste, all that extra manufacturing can degrade the environment too.
Though some of these examples of planned obsolescence are egregious, it’s overly simplistic to condemn the practice as wrong. On a macroeconomic scale, the rapid turnover of goods powers growth and creates reams of jobs – just think of the money people earn by manufacturing and selling, for instance, millions of smartphone cases. Furthermore, the continuous introduction of new widgets to earn (or re-earn) new and old customers’ dough alike will tend to promote innovation and improve the quality of products. As a result of this vicious, yet virtuous cycle, industry has made countless goods cheap and thus available to nearly anyone in wealthy Western countries, the Far East, and increasingly so in the developed world. Many of us indulge in creature comforts unimaginable a century ago.
Oftentimes, planned obsolescence isn’t nakedly exploitative, as it benefits both the consumer and the manufacturer. Chevalier points out that companies tailor the durability of their goods per customer’s needs and expectations. For instance: children’s clothing. “Who buys super durable clothes for their kids?” Chevalier asks. Depending on their age, children might grow out of their clothes sometimes in mere months. It’s not so bad, then, that the clothes might relatively easily stain, tear, or go out of style, so long as they’re inexpensive. The same argument can apply to consumer electronics. Relentless innovation and competition for market share means that the underlying technologies in smartphones, for instance, keep surging ahead, with faster processors, better cameras, and so on.
Alternatives:
- Tesla w software
- Google pixels
- Making planned obsolesce obsolete
Consumers are expected to pay more money for bulbs that are up to 10 times as efficient and that are touted to last a fantastically long time—up to 50,000 hours in the case of LED lights. In normal usage, these lamps will last so long that their owners will probably sell the house they’re in before having to change the bulbs. But there is no denying that these far more technologically sophisticated products offer tempting opportunities for the inclusion of purposefully engineered life-shortening defects. After all, few people will complain, or even notice, if a bulb burns out 9 years after it is installed rather than 14. True, today’s lighting industry is much larger and more diverse than it was in the 1920s and ’30s, and government monitoring of collusive behavior is more vigilant.
In 2007 President Bush passed bipartisan legislation to increase the energy efficiency of light bulbs and eventually ban conventional filament bulbs that put out less than 45 lumens per watt. The ban was phased, with the final deadline to be January 1, 2020, at which time all those specialty bulbs like reflector spots and floods, 3 way bulbs, candelabra bulbs and hipster steampunk coffee shop bulbs were supposed to be replaced.
After Donald Trump was elected President, the big light bulb manufacturers (GE, Signify [formerly known as Philips Lighting], and Sylvania, as represented by their trade association, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association) started lobbying to stop Phase II, so that they could keep selling those specialty incandescents that keep burning out. After all, if they sell you an LED, they only make one sale. With incandescents, you are a customer forever. In February, President Trump's Department of Energy announced that they were going to roll back these rules. Now the DOE has done it, announcing the final rule rolling back the standards. The cost in carbon and energy will be huge.
According to the Alliance to save energy: The department’s action will cost the average American household roughly $100 per year while necessitating the energy generated by 25 coal-fired power plants, equivalent to the combined electrical usage of all households in New Jersey and Pennsylvania combined.
In various forms, from subtle to unsubtle, planned obsolescence still very much exists nowadays. From so-called contrived durability, where brittle parts give out, to having repairs cost more than replacement products, to aesthetic upgrades that frame older product versions as less stylish – goods makers have no shortage of ruses to keep opening customers’ wallets. For a fully modern example, consider smartphones. These handsets often get discarded after a mere couple years’ use. Screens or buttons break, batteries die, or their operating systems, apps, and so on can suddenly no longer be upgraded. Yet a solution is always near at hand: brand new handset models, pumped out every year or so, and touted as “the best ever”. As another example of seemingly blatant planned obsolescence, Slade mentions printer cartridges. Microchips, light sensors or batteries can disable a cartridge well before all its ink is actually used up, forcing owners to go buy entirely new, not-at-all-cheap units. “There’s no real reason for that,” Slade says. “I don’t know why you can’t just go get a bottle of cyan or black [ink] and, you know, squirt it into a reservoir.” Taken this way, planned obsolescence looks wasteful. According to Cartridge World, a company that recycles printer cartridges and offers cheaper replacements, in North America alone, 350 million (not even empty) cartridges end up in landfills annually. Beyond waste, all that extra manufacturing can degrade the environment too.
Though some of these examples of planned obsolescence are egregious, it’s overly simplistic to condemn the practice as wrong. On a macroeconomic scale, the rapid turnover of goods powers growth and creates reams of jobs – just think of the money people earn by manufacturing and selling, for instance, millions of smartphone cases. Furthermore, the continuous introduction of new widgets to earn (or re-earn) new and old customers’ dough alike will tend to promote innovation and improve the quality of products. As a result of this vicious, yet virtuous cycle, industry has made countless goods cheap and thus available to nearly anyone in wealthy Western countries, the Far East, and increasingly so in the developed world. Many of us indulge in creature comforts unimaginable a century ago.
Oftentimes, planned obsolescence isn’t nakedly exploitative, as it benefits both the consumer and the manufacturer. Chevalier points out that companies tailor the durability of their goods per customer’s needs and expectations. For instance: children’s clothing. “Who buys super durable clothes for their kids?” Chevalier asks. Depending on their age, children might grow out of their clothes sometimes in mere months. It’s not so bad, then, that the clothes might relatively easily stain, tear, or go out of style, so long as they’re inexpensive. The same argument can apply to consumer electronics. Relentless innovation and competition for market share means that the underlying technologies in smartphones, for instance, keep surging ahead, with faster processors, better cameras, and so on.
Alternatives:
- Tesla w software
- Google pixels
- Making planned obsolesce obsolete
Comments