This is why we can't have nice things
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- Опубліковано 25 бер 2021
- This video is about stuff: light bulbs, printers, phones and why they aren't better. Go to NordVPN.com/veritasium and use code VERITASIUM to get a 2-year plan plus 1 additional month with a huge discount. It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!
References:
The Man in the White Suit - ve42.co/Suit
London, B. (1932). Ending the depression through planned obsolescence. - ve42.co/London32
Slade, G. (2009). Made to break: Technology and obsolescence in America. Harvard University Press - ve42.co/madetobreak
Krajewski, M. (2014). The great lightbulb conspiracy. IEEE spectrum, 51(10), 56-61. - ve42.co/Phoebus
Planet Money, The Phoebus Cartel - ve42.co/PMobs
The Light Bulb Conspiracy - • The Light Bulb Conspiracy
Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Mac Malkawi, Oleksii Leonov, Michael Schneider, Jim Osmun, Tyson McDowell, Ludovic Robillard, jim buckmaster, fanime96, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Lyvann Ferrusca, Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Joar Wandborg, Clayton Greenwell, Pindex, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal
Written by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
Animation by Ivy Tello
Filmed by Derek Muller and Raquel Nuno
Edited by Derek Muller
Video supplied by Getty Images
Music by Jonny Hyman and from epidemicsound.com"Aquatic Planet", "Rhythm of Dreams", "Tread Lightly", "Unexpected Visitors", "Curved Mirrors" "Drunken Lullaby" "Fluorescent Lights"
Thumbnail by Raquel Nuno and Karri Denise
8.5 million people watch you, and you planted a seed today in their mind about right to repair. Thank you.
🖖🏽
Yooo the og
I expected you here
LOUIS!
I knew you’d like this
When I was a young boy and my Grandfather complained "They keep making this junk cheaper so you have to keep buying it"... he must have said that a hundred times to me over the years... turns out Grandpa knew what the hell he was talking about.
Grandpa doesn't have all those years for no reason. The greatest tragedy is that us young people tend to ignore their wisdom.
All us young people turn up our noses at the 'boomers' for their often seemingly backwards ways of thinking, but they have wisdom on things that we're clueless about.
@@AnotherAvaibleName YOU SAID IT
This is true even in most of our lifetimes. Mobile phones used to be virtually indestructible (with normal use). And the screen was made from plastic, which scratched like a MF, but didn't crack.
It's literally killing -two- -three- four birds with one stone for the manufacturers - while charging the same amount of money, using less material/lower rating components costs them less, and at the same time they last a shorter amount of time. This also allows a smaller enclosure, that is more appealing to customers, and that in turn helps further reduce lifespan by making the product heat up inside more, and making it less mechanically durable. Just look at every device with more than 1 transistor in it made in the last decade and a half - the trend is to make them thin and "pretty" and try to shove that into people's brains as "fashion", and use brittle and easily scratched materials, while cheaping out on everything inside.
A JD tractor my grandfather owned back in the 40’s is to this day running strong. It’s a beast that has outlasted three tractors I have bought since the late 90’s.
We had a fridge from the early 50s. It was still working in the early 2000s, when my parents threw it out (it was at the country home). For no reason. It just ticked me off. They have already replaced the one they replaced it with. SMDH
I work for an unnamed software company X. When a new extremely fast solution was found to one of the algorithms, sold to customers, management decided to put sleep() function in some places to throttle the perofmance, so it matches the old algorithm. They said: "we will remove some throttles each quarter release and charge for the speedup we're doing".
You work for X?
Right. That's it. I'm the CEO of X and my new lawyers will be in touch with you tomorrow (I sent the old ones to landfill).
@@jonatanrullman he meant x as in a randomly generated letter because he doesn’t want to say where he works, not x the elon musk company
How can you live with your guilt?
@@LeZyloxhe's a lich
A GM engineer once told me, "it's easy to make a car last forever, getting one to break down in 7 years is the trick"
I aways thought it was getting one to break down the day after your warranty expires is the trick. 😁
An example of why I will never buy a GM product. Hondas and Toyotas are more durable.
@@robertromero8692 Nissan and Volvo are my preferences
Ohh my gosh. That explains alot
But as Toyota has shown us,a lasting car,equals more sales.
The thing I hate most about planned obsolescence is that it assumes we have endless resources. It's terrible for our planet.
@Sidemen AFTV Clips & More ehh, 3d printing still uses "resources."
Its the same with fashion, cloths used to last much longer, now its more profitable to sell seasonal wear that has to be replaced every 3 months
Completely agree and the exact same applies to capitalism
@Sidemen AFTV Clips & More I didn't know you could 3d print all the elements in electronics like gold colbalt and phosphorous lmao.
True and how often do we can upgrade our electronics? So much, e-waste is created..
We bought our house in 1999, and it came with an old brown electric stove, built by American Motors Corporation sometime in the 1970's or so. It has outlasted all the other appliances we bought when we moved in.
my house was built in the 60’s. the same oven has been running, and even the broiler still works
@@james__anna_burns4885 My family's country home has a wood / propane Moffat stove from the 40s, still in working order.
My parents bought a house in 1963 that was built in 1928 from the original owners. The front entrance had an unusually shaped light bulb. It must have been the original bulb from when the home was built. It was only turned on occasionally. When my Mom sold the house, we unscrewed that bulb and it’s installed in a closet at my sister’s home. It still works. It’s not continuously on of course. But that makes it even more special because turning it on and off weakens the tungsten more than keeping it on! I think the tungsten filament must be quite strong and thick. Yep, they don’t make things like they used to sure applies to this light bulb. 💡
I instantly thought of that lightbulb that you took when mom moved, haha!
As an electrical engineer, I can assure you... We are literally educated in school about how to design for the desired failure timeframe. It seems criminal
Any more info on this? So you remember the textbook or course code? I'd love to do some more reading on this
@@ToroMoto I would like to read more on this too.
Guess I'm lucky my teachers were vividly against this.
@@ToroMoto @miguelonas
Start with the phrase 'Mean Time to Failure' or MTTF and go from there. IMO, the concept itself isn't nefarious but it can be used that way.
It is unmoral and seed of corrupt. Humans don't deserve anything less than an a asteroid wipe.
My aunt moved into her family home in 1919 at age 14 and had a 1913 Edison light bulb on her second story stair well. She lived in the house untill her death in 2002. She replaced that bulb a year before her death and she gave it to me and I have kept it right up to writing this comment and the other day plugged it in to see if it's still works. Bright as ever! Going on 108 years old.
wow
Nobody else like the comment it’s at exactly 108 likes
@@netshaek I was going to do it until i read ur comment hahahahah
Someone already ruined it so +1 like for every extra year?
That happened
I went full LED early about 10 years ago, and as you said, didn't expect to ever have to change them. But I have had to change some bulbs out twice already. And some of these were name brands (Philips, CREE), and other cheap brands performed about equally well. I suspect there's some planned obsolescence in LED bulbs, too.
Regardless, their low power consumption and cooler temps make them great, but I wish they lasted longer.
Most LED bulbs are designed to cook themselves pretty quickly
I was going to say the same thing. We're sold on them lasting for 25+ years....but they realistically only last 1/5th of that.
I'm looking forward to a class action lawsuit regarding all the LED lights that claim they last like a decade. I'll probably be awarded at least a few dollars.
LED lights are also bad for you. 😮
By cooler temps, do you mean they produce less heat or do you mean color temperature?
My grandparents have a lightbulb in a sealed housing in their shower. They bought the house in 1965 and it was bult in 1946. They have never changed the bulb and it still works. Use it every time they use the shower.
The saddest example is that of school textbooks, each new edition has the most negligible changes in content.
@@yeager6882 Definitely. In one year Sue goes to buy 20 apples for $5, in another year it could be Joe, buying 25 apples for $10. It's hard to keep up.
@@simarpreetsinghmamik These are straight-up factual statements.. it's best to use second-hand books.
@@elmo4672 that's the point - You can't, because schools often require You to have a latest edition.
Also the newest editions have less pirated copies, so it's less likely for the answer key to be available for students to use as reference
In my country for primary and secondary schools there's a program to borrow the books from the students last year. The students last year give their books to the school and the newer students have these books handed to them. If you lose or destroy your book you do have to pay to replace them.
My parents recently got a new microwave and gave me their old one they got for their wedding - I'm 25 and warming up my leftovers in the same microwave my baby food was warmed in... pretty amazing. I would love if everything lasted forever. Planned obsolescence feels like such a waste of resources.
but but, infinite growth! :)
It’s just a conspiracy, it’s impossible to hold cartels that court control so much today, the strategy does exist, apple has done it,
@@-hiro-5995 Steve Jobs did it. Apple has sold its soul since then.
A waste of time, ambition, and effort. But I wonder if it's a character of a downturn of civilizational spirit, when it occurs writ large.
yeah , i had to replace the 20yo microwave only bcs we got new power breakers that couldn't handle the peak load when turning on the MW. It didn't have a soft start...
When i was a young boy my grandfather said to me " Son you'll grow up, grow old and die"...he was a very wise man. Miss you gramps.
My grandfather always told me, you could wake up dead tomorrow. So live every day and take nothing for granted
@@iamnotjesuschrist He said, "One day you'll leave this world behind
So live a life you will remember"
My father told me when I was just a child
As a service technician I can agree with planned obsolescence.
Late 1990s and early 2000s vehicles were built with durability in mind where as vehicles from 2005 on up seem to have lesser quality components in them. Iirc I believe I read somewhere that dealerships would expect the average consumer to trade in around 100k miles for a new vehicle.
I wish all engineering courses required students to train as service technicians for some type of machine or industry. People who think AI will do our jobs for us are short-sighted and downright lazy. Engineers who are okay with making products that are poorly designed should be ashamed of themselves. I plan to learn some mechanic-ing this year, as an engineering student I hope I will one day meet other engineers who give a damn and maybe follow my childhood dream of making cool things...
I will say this though: for some classic sports cars, Nissan and Mazda seem to be making new OEM components for owners to keep their cars running. I hope that becomes a thing as it's getting harder to find critical components for some of these cars.
@@MidnightGreen4649 I couldn't agree with you more. I can't say how many times I've seen a well designed part install or perform poorly. Some things seem like a good idea but in practicality it doesn't work as well.
While technology has proved beneficial in many ways over the years it doesn't or will not replace genuine intuition or a deeper understanding of something.
Computers only see inputs and outputs at its most simplest form.
Having more people with a mindset like yours will make the automotive industry better if the corporate aspect rolls with it. Many things come into mind when making a part and mass cost is one of them.
@@-Just_Justin- I think your reply has inspired me to talk to the engineering faculty at my college so that there can be more education and discussion about designing with an emphasis on the right to repair and from the perspective of not just the end user but also understanding technicians.
We had several lectures by various engineering professors in my introductory courses. I don't see why we shouldn't also learn from mechanics, machinists, and repairmen. Having the students complete training as technicians might be a bit much, but I think it's possible to make it work. The goal, after all, is to shift the philosophy of engineering and product design to what it once was.
@@MidnightGreen4649 that would be a monumental step into a more productive direction. If the technician doing the repair can understand the same concept as the engineers and vice versa, operations would become more uniform in a sense. Most of these things are now so divided that one department doesn't talk to another but one relies on another. Having a more direct form of communication during the development phase could ultimately save time and money.
@@-Just_Justin- Indeed. as cheesy as it sounds, I just have a genuine love for the art.
I studied Latin in high school, and there is a passage, in the Satyricon, in which Caesar is presented by a material that seems glass, as it is transparent, but when the artisan that presented it throws it on the ground and it does not break, instead he picks it up and works it back in the original shape, like it was plastic. In the story, Caesar asks the guy if someone else knows that secret, when he says no one does, Caesar has the man killed and the object destroyed in fear that gold would lose value.
Guess the Man in the White Suit wasn’t the first story like this!
Yess, in the dinner of Trimalchio ( Trimalchione)
Name checks out
I heard that it was with emperor tiberius.
No idea if this is true but it sounds horrible.
Moreso than his personm from the little i know about Caesar the one thing that always amazed me was always his forces, and especially the engineering feats of his forces. Like, people did this 2000 years ago, wtf?
But considering your reply I guess he's the original "The Man", to be hated and scorned.
interesting story. (small correction it seems it was Tiberius Caesar.) most claims are that it is fictitious. The Satyricon is fiction but who knows, once you've had everyone killed.....
>makes a bulb that lasts forever
>sell it to everyone in the world
>no one needs any bulb anymore
>leaves
We need a hero
@@dienosorpo we had one. He was named Nikola Tesla. He intended to give everyone free and wireless electricity forever. He had the technology, the science behind it but not the money. He was starved to death and chased down by bankers and other scientists with more capitalist intentions (Thomas Edison) aaaand he died mysteriously in a hotel room and all of his discoveries were “stolen” and well-kept under rocks to this day
@@juanitome1327 he tried helping humanity while everyone helped themselves
>Cover yourself in oil
@@juanitome1327 it is actually proven that wireless transfer of electricity is incredibly inefficient and it is very difficult to make something completely free.
Planned obsolescence is quite depressing, but always good to keep in mind.
Thanks a lot for this video ! 🙏
Sorry I have so recently learned of your channel. This topic will continue to be of interest. Asked Subaru of America to help pay for a repair to a ten year old Crosstrek, I had purchased July,14,2023. Dealership said this oil leak was bad, and that it was leaking on to the catalytic converter, a potential to start a fire. They recommend contacting Subaru of America for help, since I had no resources after the purchase to pay the $2353.00 repair to fix the dangerous leak.
Subaru of America basically said, "Cars ware out, sorry you bought a used Subaru." I will have to save up for this repair. Dealership I purchased it from was so kind to refund $500.00 toward this repair.
Sorry it’s wear out
A dealership doing the right thing? Do you live in bizarro world?
Nice try , and sorry about your repair cost , cars are a bitch
My mum had an oven that lasted 30 years, fully functioning right till the end. Then when she got a replacement, the technician told her that the company who manufactured them went broke because their ovens very rarely broke down.
It's sad that we've gone from one extreme of excellent durability and reliability to planned obsolescence.
Because we cant find or change an economic solution to this as a species
Which company?
how long have you had your car? I am driving a 25 y.o. car with 200k miles on it. Impossible 40 years ago (without a complete rebuild at least once)
@@DavidMishchenko It was a company named St. George, here in Australia, which is now defunct.
You will see a bank and rugby league team bearing the same name, but they're completely unrelated.
@@gizzyguzzi My original comment relates to an old oven that lasted up to Jan 2020. However, my car is 7 years' old to date so too early to tell how long it'll last.
My 93yr old great Aunt just told me that her first refrigerator from late 1960's finally stopped working.
Is it still under warranty? Haw haw.
My husband's friend bought my grandma's fridge from the 50s after she died. It just needed new seals around the door.
I think that newer fridges don't last as long not purely out of planned obsolence. Companies are forced by law to make the devices more and more efficient and this comes at a cost.
Probably she just need to replace the thermostat or something. I bet the compressor motor is still good.
Refurb the compressor or whatever is broken, PLEASE do not let her throw out the old fridge. It may just be a fridge, but it's a relic, too. A relic of a better time for the reliability of household appliances.
I have one of those lightbulbs, I've had it since I was about 10 years old...my grandfather gave it to me and told me it would never fail.
That was more than 40 years ago.
It was old when he acquired it.
Yes, I definitely remember this from economic class back in high school...planned obsolescence. Thus, I take apart all my electronics if something was wrong and my engineering background helps.
As an industrial designer I can honestly say that’s one of the most frustrating aspects of the industry. One always wants to design a product with the best characteristics.
I'm sure it is. In your occupation you can identify and fix flaws in many designs that lead to reduced lifespan. It's really too bad most companies are no longer interested in selling a product designed with longevity in mind. But, I wonder how much of this is due to so many consumers basing their purchasing decisions mainly on cost? Our grandparent's generations were much different. They were willing to pay much higher prices for products that not only functioned better, but lasted longer.
@@sparkeyjones6261 The disposable income has gone down, it's not a mindset. It's not having the money to make big purchases.
@@sparkeyjones6261 that is also true. New and shiny for most consumers is more important than functional and long lasting. Even if the design is great. Look at the old Mercedes Benz from before the 90's. Great machines that with proper maintenance will outlast you. Can't say the same for newer cars. People used to keep they cars, washing machines, refrigerators for decades.
And it's worse than turning your back on identifying flaws, it's actually designing something and then figuring out how to make it go bad. It's basically destroying your design.
People are suckers. They'll eat up marketing and use it as brand loyalty instead of just relying on data and companies know this.
I'm also an industrial designer and I honestly haven't come across any projects that I would consider to have planned obsolescence. All components, especially small components, have a cycle life, nothing lasts forever. You can make things last longer but it usually comes at some other cost like money or size or performance, etc.; and at a certain point, the product no longer meets it's requirements and lasts far longer than it would become technologically obsolete. Generally speaking my clients would prefer the last impression of their product NOT to be it crapping out.
Imagine the trillions of tons of unnecessary garbage planned obsolescence has caused our planet, the poisoning of our rivers and air and soil... It's so backward and disgusting.
😞
Welcome to capitalism!
All for the love of money
Imagin the trillions of dollars lanned obsolescence has caused our planet
ah but you can make money moving the garbage around, so it's a trade off. that's why capitalism is so beloved and will def not lead to the death of the planet in one way or another
@@dextrodemon just moving it around... not getting rid of it or recycling it. recycling isnt profitable so thats why they dont actually do it. its a scam, only a few materials or plastics can be recycled to make profit, otherwise it doesnt happen.
I enjoyed your video. I used to believe a lot of things not the least of which is that products keep progressing both in technology and longevity. As a young man in the late seventies I began to doubt a lot of things not the least of which is that my very respected government told me a tale about Lee Harvey Oswald being a lone assassin. I noticed cars were not as durable in many ways and ever more difficult to actually repair. Same for appliances in the home. About light bulbs...I noticed the first iteration of CFL lightbulbs never lasted as claimed. Later, same with early LED bulbs. As for phones, I never had a replaceable battery model past the Samsung Galaxy 3 and as a result often dealt with battery issues making my mind up to replace before I wanted to actually do so. Now, at 64-years old I see that what you're video is about isn't conspiracy hearsay. It's part of the actual product specs we all buy. In my little corner of an industry, footwear retail, I've seen the continuous cheapening of products to allow higher GPMs because purchasers have to replace footwear quite often due to both decreased durability and fashion pressures. One segment that held on to durability a bit longer within footwear was the work segment of boots. Outside of small companies building niche boots all of the major makers "dumbed down" durability to a point it couldn't be missed. This continues. During the pandemic the longest lasting mass maker of American maker of US made work boots shut down their 2 plants in Carthage Missouri never to re-open those plants. It's probably not the maker you're thinking of and I won't mention names, but those boots lasted an average of five to seven years with one or two heel replacements and no full-sole replacement needed. And this is in the toughest environments. Small dealers around the country expressed horror, but because the latest corporate imagining of how to sell these products no longer wants to depend on independent small dealers it hardly made a ripple. After three years of not being able to get any of these boots to sell I found out they were going to reintroduce them (some with same look and stock numbers) as made in Cambodia models. I've yet to be able to get any of these to sell, but I know it won't be the same. The leather uppers will not be tanned to the same high standards. The heart of the boot, which is the sole. was made by the best US sole maker in NY ,the new ones, while retaining the look, will not be made of the same very tweaked PU raw material and exacting standards of the US made one. I predict these boots will last a third, at best, of the old ones which fits in with what your video reveals. And, the wholesale price is almost as much as the last ones this brand made in the Missouri plants insuring maximum gross profit margins unattainable, so the brand claims, if they continued to make the boots here. Footwear companies do not answer to their consumer and are ran by accountants. They answer to Wall Street and pure greed. I've been around long enough to remember when this wasn't the rule of the day. This makes me glad to be in the twilight of my career. Things are not being made better, smaller retailers are being kicked to the curb, the climate of both product and distribution has changed . I'm being marginalized before I can be wholly cancelled. I've made a decent life for my family as the third generation of a shoe business over one-hundred years old. But, you will see less and less of my kind every year...and, you'll pay more for footwear that lasts less and less. How is this good?
I got training on cell phone/laptop/flat tv repair. I have an eye to see parts designed to fail. It's an excellent business to get into. People will literally give you broken items before they go buy new 1's.
Planned obsolescence joke
A woman wrote to a refrigerator manufacturer, thanking them for a fridge that had lasted twenty years without fail.
The company offered to send one of their design engineers to inspect it and the lady agreed. When he got there, she asked, "you want to make sure all your products are made to this higher standard?"
He said, "No! They want me to make sure we never make one that lasts this long ever again, or else no one would ever need buy a new one!"
That was an old joke when I heard it forty years ago!
This joke is too resilient and is cutting into joke manufacturers' profits. They should make jokes with more dated references and slang that make them age worse.
@@Facistznik brilliant. Now comedians will make billions.
you just wanted to say you were born in 1935
My grandmother has a GE frige that still works fine, that's over 50 years old.
Can we stop pretending VPN services are "more secure"?
Rare are the websites that are not encrypted with TLS certificates.
Encrypting it again is not meaningfully more secure.
VPN hides your IP and makes you harder to track. That great to circunvent geo locked content and reduce geo targeted content, but has little to do with your security.
If anything if makes it harder for your online banking plateform from recognizing your regular connexion pattern, which I would argue makes your ban account LESS secure to use if you connect to it using a VPN.
When I first started learning/working as a mechanic I asked my boss, after getting very frustrated trying to remove rusted brake lines, why the car manufacturers wouldn't just use metals that were stronger and wouldn't rust and corrode so easily. He goes " do you like having a job?" And even knowing he had a point, it still really annoyed me that things are basically designed to fail. especially when you consider how ridiculously expensive cars are nowadays. If I'm spending 30, 40 or 50 grand on something.....it should damn well be built to last me the rest of my life.
you would be damn well lucky if it outlasts the payments
@@johnpresler7537 so sad, isn't it?
@@richiemandina5305 actually it isn't. It is the way our world works for now. I do agree it should be changed, but it can't be changed overnight. Plus as stated earlier, the cost of the upgrade would be extremely high. This needs to be addressed and slowly upgraded. Imagine if we went to self driving semi's by next year. Over 3 million would be out of work with no real skill set to switch to another job bringing in the same income. But of course, we can't even talk about it because it means your either a leftist or a rightist. Then the name calling starts and boom, nothing gets talked about. Capitalism did bring more people out of extreme poverty than any other system previous to it, but it's time is coming to and end. It has been distorted and manipulated to serve the few. It was the first system that allowed almost anyone to climb the social ladder to wealth. Yes much harder for some, but still happened. Here is the problem as I see it. You can't have equality of outcome. People won't stand for it, and others will take advantage of it. Maybe a universal income with basic needs met to live a meager life, but health and physical needs are met. Who knows.
@@wesrogers7630 Yes capitalism does have it's flaws. But I disagree that it's time has come to an end. What I think would be ideal is somehow (nearly impossible, I know) establishing a government that doesn't allow the corruption of politicians helping out their buddies in big business, a system that ACTUALLY keeps things fair.
And no, you won't ever have equality of outcome because it isn't possible, unless at some point in the future everyone that is born is cloned to be an exact replica of everyone else. Some people are more ambitious, some people are far more superior or inferior in athletic ability, some people would rather just sit around and have society support them. It'll never be perfect for everyone. I think the best you can plan to achieve is equal opportunity. If we can get that right I think civilization can be a beautiful thing, generally speaking. But I think it's pretty obvious, based on history, that anybody in a position of power claiming they're going to make it all better via outcome equality is only trying to increase their own wealth and power at the expense of our wealth and freedom.
not to worry, he is so wrong but people love to hear it. The LED he used as an example has its life not limited by the germanium LED but by the electrolytic capacitor and some are terrible. For his light example, you would have to wire your house for constant voltage 5V DC to get a longer life and that would be determined by the operation amplifier component but what builder would ever installs such a system
The Model T was available in 5 colours right from the start. It only went to black only 5 years later, when they standardised production to reduce the price.
We mostly have bayonet fittings on our light fixtures in the UK, we do use screw bulbs but they're not the standard.
At recording studio where I worked in my 30s, the chief engineer who was in his 60s told me that when he was a kid, his mother told him never throw away a burned out light bulb. When asked why, he said his mother told him they could take it back to Edison and get a replacement one for free. They were never supposed to burn out and a burned out light bulb was considered defective.
That’s awesome!
That’s quite interesting. When I was a kid, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s I remember that indeed we could take burnt out light bulbs back to “Edison” for free replacement, too. In my case, “Edison” meant the Detroit Edison Company… which was the electricity utility company. However, I was told a different reason… that since Edison was selling the electricity to you, giving out free light bulbs encouraged people to install more lights, I.e. more Kilowatts used per customer. My grandfather was an engineer at Detroit Edison, but unfortunately I don’t know if that rationale came from him or if it was just something my parents surmised.. but it definitely was true, I remember where the local Edison office was in our town, and I remember taking bulbs there for free replacements.
In Michigan Detroit Edison had a policy where you could save your burnt out lightbulbs and return them for free replacement. At one point to due to legal rangling they had to move the place where you returned them out of state to Toledo Ohio.
It was in the interest of the Utilities that the light bulbs lasted as long as possible and they required the bulb manufacturers, GE, Westinghouse, Sylvania and Phillip's to meet higher standards and supply them with bulbs that lasted longer.
Then a party store owner sued Detroit Edison to stop this practice alleging that it was effecting his lightbulb sales. There was an out roar towards this party store owner, who later admitted a lawyer put him up to suing!
Btw I still have many of these replacement bulbs. They last 5 to 10 years as compared to 10 to 24 months!
@@tedcole9936 Good story.
Wow! Thats awesome
engineer: we made it last up to 25.000 hours
business person: great now make it last 1.000 hours
engineers: ಠ_ಠ
engineer: but why that's stupid !
business person: shut up if you wanna keep that salary
engineer: okay
@@tmpEngine my experience as a corporate engineer. kept my job 1 week. left with big balls and an empty wallet.
So basically people will only have good lasting things in paradise when all dishonest people are gone. I guess this world is currently catering the rich and greedy. Sad.
Make 25 lamps from materials out of one
@@juniorsir9521 or when the engineers and workers have more say in the operations and practices of industry. A democratization of the workplace, if you will. Less power to CEOs and shareholders and more power to the backbone: the producers and laborers.
As my prof used to say "only an engineer can build a bridge that just barely holds up"
That's actually a tongue-in-cheek saying praising the ability to do a good job *cost effectively* (being responsible with public funds).
Planned obsolescence is quite depressing, but always good to keep in mind.
Thanks a lot for this video !
Planned obsolence has also a huge environmental impact. It is not sustainable to buy every year a new phone or a new car. Therefore I think that companies have a huge responsibility not to use planned obsolence but to offer more repair and upgrade services to customers.
Europe addresses this by forcing the companies to take back end-of-life products and recycle them. Now, there is an incentive to not get them back thereby providing a reason to extend their life. It is always about changing motivations and incentives.
Why are we set up so the survival of our species is reliant on companies being responsible and moral?
A responsible and moral company is a company either out of business or bought by a bigger one and shut down.
No, they don’t have a responsibility to “save the planet!” And we don’t have a right to most goods and services. Just be grateful and quit whining.
@@juniorvonclaire3576 Why are you defending people literally selling you bad products? How are you that brainwashed? Do you not know how to stand up for what’s right?
totally agree consumerism and obsolete design are the worse thing that has happened to society and environment.
All of this neglects one of the worst parts of planned obsolescence: the overwhelming waste. We don’t have infinite resources, and even when we recycle the old models and items, we still produce emissions and non-recyclable components. Planned obsolescence only further exaggerates resource depletion and pollution
thas just how boomers do it back in the day
@@cringe5393 Most items built in the boomer generation were built to last. Consumers of that era bought items they thought would last a lifetime, & almost always repaired them rather than replace them. Large scale consumerism really began in the 80s, & rapidly accelerated into the modern era. You could hardly get a boomer to buy something they would replace the very next year. However, Gen X, millennials, & Gen Z all look forward to replacing still new items with even newer versions. Owning the latest & greatest thing became the new goal, rather than actual usefulness. Even the thought that an item would be "collectible" didn't begin until the late 80s. It's why stuff from the 80s onward isn't worth hardly anything, while items from the 40s had value as antiques during the 80s. People back then didn't "collect" things, they actually used them.
@@k-ozdragon Did you not watch the video?
@@This_is_my_spout I did. So lightbulbs were made to be less effective, which ended in the 30s. When did ipod & most consumer goods begin to widely make their stuff so it couldn't be repaired? Did people in the era from 1900-1985 buy things just because they were collectible?
@@tobytoxd People didn't sell their cars just to buy a new model because the color changed. Not like consumers today would buy a the same exact phone that they already own because the "newer" one is pink. Automotive paint just gained a competitive edge over the other makers to sell more cars. Henry Ford painted cars black because it was the only paint at the time that didn't change color over time & dried quickly. Car makers literally painted cars with paint made from fish scale pigment. Something the average person couldn't afford. It has zero to do with planned obsolescence.
As far as fashion goes, when has that ever not changed? Clothing always evolved since it was invented. The only difference is more people can afford clothing. Find an era in history where those who could afford clothing weren't looking for something new & unique to wear. Good luck.
Both of these things are market forces involved in every purchase ever made in history by consumers. If GM made a car that would break on purpose, & was constructed so the consumer couldn't repair it, you might have a point. The light bulb is a glaring example of that. However, the practice of replacing things that don't need replacing, buying purely to say that you own the latest version, or designing things with the intention of them breaking, is a far more modern phenomenon.
In 2008 for Christmas I bought two 8gb iPod nano 3rd gen (fat iPod). For some reason both still work just fine, in spite of dents and scratches and both hold about 12-15 hours of play.
I love history and origins, pretty much the beginning of things and why. I knew nothing about your channel except that the title, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, was clever. Actual Conspiracies didn't sway me, not because I don't believe in conspiracies but I didn't know if it were true or just the rantings of a nutter. I clicked and I'm glad I did. I also subscribed because you backed up all your arguments with real facts. Good video.
it took me a while to realize that this video is LITERALLY EXPLAINING WHY WE CANT HAVE NICE THINGS
Yes we can and we have. Every time when I look at some new phone I ask myself if my current one can do 95% of the new one. If it can, then why spend the money? Same with computers or any gadget. I use galaxy s8 and I'm happy with it, It can play music, take pictures, play games, run apps, and even can fit into pocket. Why should I buy a new one?
Same with a computer. Have a macbook from about the same time I bought my s8. Great screen, fast enough for work, editing pictures, playing movies, browsing web. What else can a new laptop do that one from 4 or 5 years ago can't?
There was a time when computers was so slow that every two years it was worth the upgrade, but now you can do basically anything on any computer. Only if you are a professional that needs power for a specific software, like 3d rendering, only then you might get a value from an upgrade.
I like how companies tries to brainwash you that their new product is 10% faster, even though practically it makes no difference. No one should care if you can render your 20 minutes video 2 minutes faster. No one sits and looks and the screen while it's rendering something.
tldr; don't be a brainless sheep and think about what you actually need and not about what you want and you will realize that the nice things are all around you.
Same happened to me haha
@@codehardr1209 i understand that but you get what i was saying
"Blame China! ...yep, that should do it"
@im300kmh but today's light bulbs are pretty resistent.
Slightly different than obsolescence, but when I was 13 or so, my neighbor (who lived about a mile away since I grew up on a farm) hired me to help him cut and load some old, dead oak trees to sell the wood. For those who don't know, wood is usually sold by the cord when dealing with large sales, which is a measure of volume (around 1,000 gallons, I think). So I started loading this wood into a trailer, and on the second day I was helping him, he stopped me and told me that I was loading it too well. I was being too efficient, packing the wood into the trailer too tightly and thus reducing his profit from the sale of the wood, since there was more wood per cord. He made me stop and instead load it loosely and less efficiently. A few days after that, I came up with a way to use his tractor to load the wood faster than either of us could by hand, and he fired me once he realized how well it worked. Really taught me a lot about the world.
I don’t blame him for releasing unneeded laborers. I might blame him for shorting the customer. I don’t blame him, if he had just wanted you manual load times to be faster but used the packing efficiency argument to show his concern, without directly calling you slow.
I mean you kinda did that to yourself if he was paying you to help and you showed him he could just use the tractor without needing you at all.
You optimized yourself out. Welcome to the world. Happens when you automate your job too much, your employer finds that you are not needed any more, sadly that employer is short sighted, cause he can use you to automate more stuff instead.
ha :D
Never seen wood measured in gallons. Thanks for the laugh :D
Great video! A great follow up would be companies who have grown beyond integrated obsolescence and rent out products as services (like the carpet tile company Interface). The old way of designing products for landfill needs to be over.
Can we get some examples of circular economy businesses?
Congratulations on your excellent work on this channel!
this is one of my favorite videos of all time. not one of my favorite veritasium videos but one of my favorite videos ever.
It seems like planned obsolescence also snuffs out innovation. Like, we could be reaching the end of the road on certain technologies and ask "ok, what's next?" But instead we're keeping ourselves in limbo.
Exactly what’s happening with cars, homes, machinery. Just because of JoBs
You've just described the entire oil industry
Thats because most people dont want to adapt and change themselves. They will vote against change. Literally happening right now with the transistion to EVs.
@@romansenger2322 In many ways, I feel as though EV's aren't going to really improve anything in terms of how much resources we're using up. I feel like we need to figure out how to live our lives without having to need cars. Japan does this well.
@@stockloc of course they do. Just look up "EV vs ICE what pollutes more" here on youtube to get an idea how bad ICEs are. But I get your point. Mobility will never be good for the environment. Its always about the question how to make it less damaging for the environment.
On the other hand, UA-cam is filled with lots of unplanned obsolescence
Haha yep
@@DyslexicMitochondria OMG Hi! I watch your channeI. Absolutely love your videos bro. U made me fall in love with science haha
Lol
Yeah! I love your videos too
Literally everything now is filled with lots of unplanned obsolescence
This has been popping up in my recommended for 2 years and they finally got me. I guess i have to watch it now
Pretty knowledgeable and significant video it is! Thank you Veritasium 💜❤️
people thought: "in a hundred years, we'll have flying cars." what really happens in a hundred years is, "we'll focus on making tires break in a safe way."
Flying cars are helicopters
Wouldnt it be weird if your flying car would suddenly fall out the sky because it reached 18 months?
@@sannewijn8695 maintenance
@@LawsOnJoystick wooosh
Capitalism.....money over people every single time...
The phrase “They don’t make’m like they used to” exists for a reason.
And that reason is selective memory bias. People simply tend to remember good things.
@@johnysmrz there can be many reasons/causes for a single event, you're both right
@@johnysmrz that's why we write and record history, because our minds will forget most bad things
why should they? they want more money and people want more jobs
@ᴄᴏᴠᴏɪᴅ • Actually, it is related to the topic, we tend to remember the good things from our past but forget about the bad ones (being the good things in this case, more durable products)
LED bulbs in my house break between 2 and 3 years after I start using them. It's exactly the case of planned obsolescence, not the everlasting light bulb you mention. And it's way easier achievable with all this electronics inside, then it was with ordinary bulbs.
LED bulbs are
Can last 50x longer than incandescent ones but due to planned obsolescence they last way less than incandescent ones
The fact that this video opened up with a Harbor Freight ad is the most beautiful irony available on the planet
"Good products are bad for the economy" is something I never thought I would hear.
Neither did I, although I knew it ;-) Economy is about psychology, not technology.
Just another way to say that broken windows are good for the economy. That's Paul krugman levels of stupid.
They’re great for the economy. They’re bad for profits
I would put it differently: "The western capitalist post industrial revolution paradigm is bad for good products" And no, I am not sugesting what ever would be better than that. I wish I knew.
That's why the system must change
You completely glossed over the biggest problem with this obsolescence: resources. The planet isn't infinite. If we keep producing cheap produces and replace them every two year we will run out of material at some point. Nevermind the amount of single-use plastic in the oceans.
Depends how good our ability to recycle is; it's not like the resources are deleted from existence
I imagine some generations from now, there'll be well established practices collecting those resources out of the oceans
Broadly speaking though, I do agree. Since deliberate obsolescence expedites resource drain faster than necessary, making a large portion of the resource inaccessible without new recycling or refurbishing practices
@@TheGaboom Ditto. There are more and more companies figuring out how to profit from recycling traditionally "unrecyclable" objects. The future is in efficient recycling, high quality products, powerfully efficient clean energy sources like fusion, and alternate materials such as in asteroids, to name a few.
On the other hand, you completely gloss over the bigest problem with predictions of resource scarcity: historically resources overwhelmingly become less scarce and less expensive rather than more scarce -as use increases. Salt, food, coal, aluminum, and books are reasonably substantial examples. It's been a very long time since we've had a salt shortage.
Unless you think we've hit peak-human-ingenuity already, I expect that trend will continue rather than reverse.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 I agree - human ingenuity is supreme really and even facing such hurdles as overpopulation, energy needs, food shortages, rare metal shortages, etc, I believe we are already working on solutions and will overcome.
yes and people can talk about recycling all day but most of it will go into a landfill . its completely wasteful
Thank you for bringing this to peoples attention. The poor are a huge victim of this greed.
TBH several years after this video I feel like it’s always worth coming back to. We as a society need to figure out a way to design and build things which not only last for as long as possible, but also to make companies who dedicate themselves to making these products sustainable. I think one of the biggest things is stopping the requirement of the pursuit of infinite growth by shareholders.
Capitalism is just fundamentally incompatible with responsible use of resources, because it pursues short term goals. I don't think capitalism is all bad but as a society we need accept that we can't have our cake and eat it.
In my engineering college, I had some professors who told the story of the old Bridgeport milling machines. They were built so sturdy and reliable that many still work perfectly today almost 80 years later. The machine never broke down or needed to be replaced, so the company started running out of paying customers.
The intended takeaway from this story was to emphasize supposed importance of planned obsolescence, but that conclusion always bothered me. I saw a triumph of engineering and yet it was framed as a failure because someone couldn't make more money off of it.
planned obsolesce is just a crutch for a bad business model. It is never a good thing when a competitor can offer your product that lasts on top of a differing business model that extends profits.
Completely agree
@מחמד חנזיר automation will change this dynamic though, otherwise I too support planned obsolescence
@מחמד חנזיר by abandoning capitalism in favor of a system that isn't as ludicrously shortsighted.
This is how people should think
"There was a secret meeting between the world's top executives from the world's leading lightbulb companies" Never thought I'd hear that sentence is my life.
Yeah similar story with the sugar cane industry. And they managed to get weed illegal up to this point because of their scheming
Now imagine what the oil, beef, and defence contractors get up to
@@scarlace weed was banned in large part to enforce apartheid, but also to protect the petrochemical industry, as hemp can reproduce the lions share of their products
@@uncannyvalley2350 agriculture gets more than all of those, grains and cheap crops has always, and will always be slave food
W H a t s a p p
+1 6 8 9 2 0 2 8 1 9 7
Formally electronics engineer here, worked on redox probes in pools treatment industry and I tell you we designed those probes to last just as much before replacement (few months). The CEO explicitly told me it was to make profit.
It’s a very interesting problem, is growing a company a bad thing, what happens if we make things last forever, will you be able to pay for your next meal or pay for the roof over your head? I believe greed is fundamentally wired into us. It’s such a hot topic and I can’t even begin to think how we can combat it because at the end of the day everyone wants to be successful and wants to build up their company and who has the right to tell them that they should run there company into the ground because it’s morally right when they worked there ass off to get there. Who knows maybe where looking at this in the wrong way. I have no data on this and it’s purely my opinion.
This is probably tne best video I've seen ever since UA-cam was created.
watch technology connections video on the same topic buster. he doesn't mention the fact the bulb in the firehouse isn't even a functioning light, yeah its got a warm glow but good luck even seeing your dick if that was the only light source you had in your house
My most recent experience with planned obsolescence:
Most laptops typically can be unscrewed at the bottom and opened up. It is necessary to do this every few months to blow the dust and hair out of your computer fan with some compressed air- especially if you have pets. If you don't ever clean that dust and hair out, the fan slowly gets clogged up, ceases to work properly, and your computer can become dangerously hot. A lot of people are unaware that this maintenance needs to be done at all- which is a win for the company that sold the computer when it overheats and breaks.
However, apparently some computer manufacturers don't even want those who know they need to clean their laptops to clean them. A relative of mine recently noticed that her laptop was overheating and that the fan is clogged. So she turned it over to unscrew it and clean it out. There were no screw holes. She called the professionals, and the professionals told her that model of laptop could not be cleaned. It was *glued* together rather than screwed. From now on anytime my family goes laptop shopping, we will be checking the bottom for screws!
Haven't seen a fan clog in a decade+ but the modern version is poor quality thermal paste (often under cpu "lid" itself) or fan bearings and capacitors failing in the 3-10 year mark. If enterprise-use computers are an option they're better for this due to higher standards and longer customer memories.
@@EdgarC701 yea man. I have a dell laptop from 10 years ago. And i have just recently open it up and there weren't much dust. And i really hate the conpanies who solders everything on the motherboard. It is just so expensive to replace
*cough* Apple *cough*
Smart Phones is a better example. FairPhone is trying to combat that, but im not sure how honest their are or if its just another marketing tactic.
The name of the problem is called Capitalism.
I'm not sure why not more people can understand this...
@@gumfrogCH * Lenin gets up from his grave *
Somewhere, Louis Rossmann got an extra 20 minutes of sleep because of the release of this video.
HAHAHAHA
Literally
Louis is going on vacation. Not a joke, in his last video he said he's taking a break and going away.
The poor guy needs it. Have you seen the bags under his eyes!?
Lol, you bet.
I have 9 LED bulbs on my kitchen ceiling that I replaced with LED when I moved in few years ago. Roughly every 2-3 years (according to amazon order date), they all die almost simultaniously (or get really dimmed) one after the other and have to replace them all. On the box they're rated for 1500 On-Off cycles.... on-off ~2 times a day, ~700 cycles per year... If there's no counter within the bulb, that's pretty impressive to be that accurate !
They did the same to LED bulbs as they did to incandescent in 2015, if you got an early one, it' still works, after that, they put a component in it as a countdown timer. - Sorry. You can still make your own though ... Open it up, and replace it with an LED and a resistor, but be quick - it will be part of the LED's soon, if not already
Talking about trying to get people to buy newer cars as often as possible: Back in 2012, I bought a used 2005 Honda CR-V and I am still driving it today at about 208,000 miles and 18 years old and I intend to keep on driving it until it becomes uneconomical to repair. I feel absolutely no pressure to have the latest and greatest!
"Planned obsolescence and Apple"
Louis Rossmann: "There are no happy accidents, there are only mistakes."
lmao guess whose comment is right below yours
@@fenn_fren I just saw it. Awesome! :D
rob boss
Master oogway- there are no accidents.
If Apple products didn't die, they wouldn't be able to create new Apple products, that's just how -capitalism- fruit works.
Same thing with glass. In the GDR a basicly unbreakble glass was invented (with the unfortunate name chemical enforced glass) but production was discontinued in the 90s.
They did it to LED's too, through the circuitry inside the bulb.
Yes they do
Shout out to Louis Rossmann and his efforts towards right to repair.
Yes
Indeed
Hell yeah
For sure!
Amen to that.
How are we meant to reduce waste and move forward if so many companies models are literally, "let's make this stuff turn into garbage as quick as possible"
The other end to this is the fact that a lot of these companies will offer discounts on purchases of new products in exchange for the old items. They make a sale at a small loss for the discount, but in return they get the old items from you that they can reuse and repurpose. Our resources are finite.. this is the only way that I could see one justifying planned obsolescence. I still don't like it tho. 😒
youre dead on, pollution is primarily an issues with mega corps, not your average person. but they're great at shifting the blame onto straws ffs
It will not happen until they are *forced* to change, either by us or by the environment.
@@alwaystired1 This is why public recycling is a sham. Over 90% of what you put in recycling ends up in a garbage dump anyway, but you are asked to recycle so that blame is shifted away from corporations.
In my building staircase light I had used 100 w bulb and connected a simple diode in series .the effective consumption was 25 w...the bulb lasted for 20 yrs.during my stay....it may still be working ...I have left the building.
Hands down one of the most informative videos ever! Thank you
It is actually outrageous that planned obsolescence isn't discussed more. It is definitely one of the main issues we need to solve in order to save our planet.
Good luck trying to change the wealthy 1% minds.
I bet we will head towards "pay your climatic survival tools" instead of "stop climate change".
Unless everyone stops asking their neighbours to do stupid behavipural changes and star demanding the governments and companies
And they also worked out its actually a select few criminal groups even in the world that are responsible for like 90% of the worlds spam emails so if we just got interpol to crack down on them once and for all we could end both a nuisance that has plagued the world since the internet began and also take a chunk out of the global carbon footprint
@@umbium eat the rich ?
In George Carlin's words, "The planet is fine, the _people_ are fucked!"
We are living a capitalistic world
this explains the common phrase, "they don't make 'em like they used to."
also" we make myths about them. Man things wasn't really so good quality, many other was more durable as they were more complex (so not much to break) or people weren't sing them so much and actually main reason for lower quality is mass-production. Simply if you want to mass product cheap stuff it has to be made cheap. There is saying in my country "tanio kupujesz - dwa razy kupujesz" (literally: "You buy cheap - you buy twice")
Survivorship Bias is the main thing responsible for that phrase.
This is sentence false, a washing machine, for example, does NOT break up now in a shorter time than 20 or 40 years ago.
There are tests that independent laboratories have performed on the subject.
What is true is that: repair in not as cheap as it used to be, there are less independent repair shops around. It is much less easy to repair things. At the same time new items are more efficient (less energy, less water, less detergent, clothes come out with less wrinkles) and there is a trade off that people needs to balance.
@@nathanberrigan9839 Sure but especially in electronics, it was standard to build things with screws and to publish full schematics so you or an independent technician can repair it.
Humans are interesting. It is mostly the fault of the companies, but the individual humans do not help by always craving the latest and greatest version.
Do we know for a fact the drop in sales for the single year shown in the video was actually caused by the increased lifespan of bulbs?
Seems like any number of things could have caused a fall in sales. Curious if there’s more data actually bearing this out, or whether the bulb cartel simply assumed the cause-effect here.
I believe this video is 100% accurate. In my life I have had the experience to speak to former employees from different manufacturers. They all reported that if the company wanted to make their products last 20 times longer, they could do so with a very small increase in cost relative to the type of product.
Another example in my life is computer operating systems. Windows wanted to update to Windows 10 but I passed on it because I loved my current laptop, which ran perfect, and I hated Windows 10. The very first update AFTER the offer expired killed my laptop. Searching online at Windows, Windows chat rooms and talking to computer repair companies, they all reported to me that a massive number of people all had the same thing happen to them. I can't tell you that it was in fact on purpose, but what do you think?
Forgive my typos and grammatical errors.
This is one of the most important videos you've made Derek. The physical and chemical waste of disposable or intentionally short-lived items is one of the greatest ecological and economic challenges of our time
yup, capitalism is evil
this video is daft. long lasting bulbs were a dreadful idea. short lasting bulbs were an advantage to everyone. they cost less to run and made more light. bulbs cost pennies and are a disposable good, making them last longer at the cost of using far more power is asinine.
You obvoisly didnt finish the video, modern bulbs last 10k+ hrs, are qay brighter and use a fraction of the energy to power, what is cheaper, 10 bulbs that last 1k hrs or 1 bulb that lasts 10k? The 1k hr bulbs will take more man hours to make and cost more to ship for the same lifespan
China has reinvented the short lasting bulb.
Instead of using 10 diodes at 1w, they drive the same diodes at 2w and use only 5.
So they save a few pennies, and the overdriven diodes only last a fraction of the time they could have.
@@KarldorisLambley Bro, enough. If you have to intentionally make products bad for the economy not to self-destruct then that system is obviously flawed. You aren't fooling anyone here. Instead of wasting all your energy attempting to keep the human race in a constant state of ignorance-induced limbo, try to figure out a better alternative to the volatile system that is Capitalism.
I read some of the comments and obtained an abstract idea of the theme of this topic. I watched (so far) 90 seconds of it when an idea struck me; perhaps it has already been suggested, but here goes..
Maybe it would be of mutual interest between producers and consumers, if, the producers made products as the anecdotal lightbulb; and they offered a warranty for sale, for the given life expectancy of whichever product, under the conditionally the consumer must maintain periodic payments--such as insurance policies currently operate? Would this make sense?
Fantastic video. Thanks. I wish you spent some time on the environmental and sustainability impacts of planned obsolescence.
My grandma had an old lightbulb that outlived her. She lived in the city of Philips. I have known about life shortening of products all my life. I'm 54. My family can't be the only ones who knew this.
Not the only, but in the vast minority. Most people just accept life and don't ever question how or why things are the way they are. If most people did question this, we'd all be driving flying-super-efficient-electric-autopilot-boat-cars by now.
I think older generations are more likely to know about this. I remember how products felt like they were built to last. That doesn't seem to be the case any more. Some of my parents' household appliances are older than me (I'm in my 30s).
@Ranjit Tyagi bought a brand new iPhone, and the first thing i saw was 6gb were used for “systems” . Bruh what is the point to show that if you can’t delete or change it
Anybody who can fog a mirror ought to have observed this.
Valuable distinctions: Just because people should know something doesn't mean they do, and you can fool yourself quicker than another person- just by pretending you understand their circumstances.
People should know about planned obsolesce, but as long as a lack in lower tiers of the hierarchy of needs is the root cause of a large part of a given societies issues, they likely aren't affording the time to worry about it- despite, in spite, or maybe even because of it.
"A secret meeting of top executives..."
Nothing good ever comes out of secret meetings of top executives of any industry.
usb (although I believe in serial port superiority)
That's because the people most likely to become successful top executives have sociopathy / psychopathy.
You usually don't get rich by being generous and virtuous.
@@vorpal22 ... or just an average person.
@@vorpal22 i think like you. thats a solid point
@@eltwarg6388 Studies have shown that people with sociopathy are more likely to be successful in business, or be complete failures in life, while people without this personality disorder are less likely to be successful businesspeople. Certainly that doesn't imply that every CEO is a psychopath, but a disproportionate number of CEOs are psychopaths.
I love the hints of hopefullness in the video! Reminds us that things can and are getting better.
This change from Ford's original vision was really catastrophic in retrospect. The general idea that we all deserve to have (be ?) unique things is everywhere and dictates how we consume.
Good video, as very often. One thing that would have been worth mentioning about LED: while they are indeed a great technological improvement a) they are far more complex than incandescent lights, and did change an electrical device to an electronical one, that requires more material and is harder to recycle and b) yes, we seldom have to change our light bulbs, but we tend to use waaaaay more of them. Smart, modular LED panels, LED strips, small LEDs in toys, on the back of TVs, etc... the rebound effect strikes again.
The real reason that we can't have nice things is that we let companies get away with these things. We keep buying their products and don't call them out. People actually believe them when they are told they need the "latest and greatest". If we want nice things, we need to stop following marketing and start holding companies accountable.
This is true and is also a significant part of the problem. In essence we've become a society of convenience and a "throw away" society. Look at things like food packaging. Take for example bottles. There was a time when things like soft drinks and milk came in reusable bottles. The first time you purchased it you put up a small deposit on the bottle. from then on you just carrying the empty bottle to store or leave it the front doorstep for the milk man and avoid paying the deposit. The bottles were washed, inspected, and reused. nowadays that would be considered way too much inconvenience by most people and they'd never do it. Yet, those very same people will often cry and moan about "saving the planet" as long as it requires no effort whatsoever on their part.
It's almost as if our current economic system is somewhat misaligned with the interests of the vast majority of people
They do not only get a significant margin that did not change financial inequalities, they also build up a system of over-extraction without even considering that the volume of waste will follow the one of sales up to the environmental breakdown we are in.
@@stefanl5183 Bottle washing, cleaning, recycling, etc., etc., etc. &and etc. could mean jobs in those fields or/and related robotics jobs building and programming robots to do said bottle washing, cleaning, recycling, etc., etc., etc., and etc.
It's called jobs, not inconveniences.
Every time someone tries to hold Apple responsible, for example, they eventually settle out of court for hundreds of millions, which is small compared to how much they make overall from planned obsolescence/blocking repair and battery replacement as much as possible/etc because sadly even most people who claim to not want to let companies get away with these things get swayed to go away and shut up once they are offered a cut of those millions of dollars, lol. I wish all those class action lawsuits wouldn't have settled out of court. Defeats the whole point just for some money.
The worst part of planned obsolescence is that it affects the environment negatively ....waste produced by us would be far less if it wasn't for this stupid money making strategy
Exactly, this.
Interestingly, newer products are marketed as "more efficient" also.
I really hope more people are gonna see this trough. I think it's really unhealthy to consume so much. Especially with cloths but also with electronics and all kind of other stuff. I never knew but apparently there are people out there who even buy new cutlery and plates every season to "stay in fashion"
Exactly! If it wasn't for capitalism and planned obsolecence we could live sustainably.
I know. That's the first thing that comes to my mind.
happens all the time, always hear about all these things that were ment to last forever but now things barley last 3 days
I had an aunt born before 1920 who told me about testing nylon stockings that wouldn't wear out for a long time
.. .. I think she explained this in the 1970s when there was it was a brand of women's stockings called something like " Ironware" from Sears and which was less likely to tear than other brands.
My aunt's husband mentioned automobiles that got better mileage.
The big deal in the right to repair movement is not so much small personal consumer devices as large firm equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars where manufacturers add built-in and made illegal certain parts which were impossible to repair and got buyers to sign some kind of Licensing that they not attempt to do repairs themselves.
I think the obstruction to repairs had something to do with warranties on the equipment.
There was a lot of litigation about this because, addition to repairs to the manufacturer being made unnecessarily costly, there were massive knock-on effects such as not being able to get a service technician mechanic or parts at critical times in the planting and harvesting cycle come out there by putting the farmers entire operations and livelihoods at risk.
Some of us would like to think that the government is it supposed to help people by regulating or making illegal practices like these, but apparently nobody could demand it because we didn't know what we didn't know -- at least not in the aggregate as the population.
What people work in these industries and test them and have memories of buying products that work better. My mother's sister and her sister's husband were obviously hip to planned obsolescence, even though they may not have called it that. They would just mention that companies knew how to make things better and longer lasting.
Automobiles used to break down terribly often, to the point that many people learn how to work on their own cars. Even my mother who left everything mechanical to my father knew how to insert a screwdriver into the carburetor to open up the butterfly and change the mix between the air and fuel.
Only after the Japanese started more reliable cars into the US market did auto manufacturers start to pay more attention to reliability as an element of quality. Rust on car bodies particularly sheet metal what's a constant up the problem if you weren't trading in a new vehicle every few years play. So people who knew how to keep the cars running and we're unconcerned about style and color also had to learn how to perform cosmetic Body Work repairs. One reason people would hold on to their vehicles is that you could order exactly what you wanted from Detroit and the specifically vehicle would be put together for your specifications. Paint color including two colors, tires, different exterior trim, color and type of upholstery and other interior features including a specific radios; air conditioning was far from standard and so was power steering and power assist brakes. A big decision was whether the transmission was standard or automatic. The type and style of engines diferred but was linked with different models. That was the platform on which to build other choices. The last car I ordered was a Subaru from Japan in the early 1980s and they never shipped it. It wasn't really personalized but specific to two-door or four-door, motor and transmission. I think I had to pay $1,000 more to get something comparable from the next year's models. There wasn't much help from beyond the regional division of the Importer and no recourse.
Later I found out shopping for new models at one time the requirement was to put in your zip code and the dealer would only offer the price in your home area not the potentially better price that was available in another state or region.
These days it looks like a lot of new vehicles have design flaws in the engine compartment that can once again make repairs frequent and expensive, especially amongst pickup trucks. The last vehicle I bought was a 1985 pickup to avoid paying extortionate property taxes and because there's only so much that can go wrong with a vehicle with less electronics.
Whether it's vehicles houses or clothing or Electronics the mass media is always full of voices ready to shame people for wearing or owning something that is "dated". Maybe the people who are trying to make such a fuss about saving the planet or to look into the wasteful practices of the fashion industry and other proponents of style.
The fact that they were able to get away with this really angers me. Imagine how many other industries might have the same kind of agreement between major companies, like pharmacuticals.
Oh jeez that's scary. Pharmaceuticals are a shady enough already
IF not all then most of them will and do , do this to make more money.
I think they all do this.
The problem is that when it comes to meds, if there's either, A: no competitors, B: There's too many people with, a specific condition, or C: companies decide to work together like with the lightbulbs, then prices go up. Insulin for diabetics is a perfect example of this. So many people are obese and have diabetes that companies have to raise prices to meet the demand. One of the rules of supply and demand is that if there is a high demand and low supply, prices will go up. My dad has genetic diabetes, so he just kinda gets tossed into the mess of paying thousands of dollars per year just for insulin. Sorry for the rant. :)
thats why insulin costs 10x more in the us than it does for our neighbors 😀
As someone that took an entire course on and wrote a paper around planned obsolescence (among similar topics, and how those topics interact in the real world) in college, I can fully back this video up, this was basically a semester's worth of class summed up brilliantly in 20 minutes
Thank you for bringing more attention to this ecological disaster.
As a repair technician I HATE how difficult companies make it to repair very expensive devices.
Memento mori
Singer Sewing machines is where this thread starts
care to share your paper with us?
@@binkietheclown I see what you did there !😆 lol
Du Pont played the same move with refrigerant patents expiring. R-12, then R-22, and now R410a has issues.
Technology Connections recently made a great video about this topic (specifically about lightbulbs and the phoebus kartell). There were very good and economical reasons to make a bulb last for only 1000h, evan as a customer. Shorter lived bulbs are way brighter or use less power(depending on the wattage). And with how cheap a lightbulb were compared to the increased power a long lived bulbs used it was just cheaper for customers to change them more often.
Planned obsolescence sadly still exist, but the whole lightbulb conspiracy is kinda bs.
"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story." Unfortunately Veritasium has been a bit hit and miss as of late. Kind of disappointing when someone with a PhD in SciCom fumbles the science communication. It makes sense in the context of his views on clickbait. Kind of disappointing though.
@@beaver_warrior He does make mistakes sometimes unfotunately yeah. I remember he made a video where he talked with a scientist and that guy said that people should restrain the protein intake in order to be healthier, and Derek basically took it as a fact. He completely glossed over the scientific method, and didn't try to question if this is true, because if he actually went down that rabbit hole, he would've found out that while this guy definitely has some evidence on his research there is much bigger evidence by the scientific comunity that the opposite is true. You can read ton of articles that actually talk about how people should eat more protein because today's society has less of it than it needs. If you think about it, it actually makes more sense since humans started as hunters which were indeed more protein eaters. And I guess that's my problem with Derek in general, while he does have PhD, it is actually not in physics despite what people seem to think. It's in physics education, and I'm not saying that he doesn't learn physics there but you can kind of infere that he didn't actually had to do some regular research (like I do on spintronics for instance). I myself study engineering physics and so I actually see which people think like a scientists and which people do not, cause you can clearly see who actually understands physics because he asks these kinds of questions and who just understands stuff surface level. I would like to know which one is Derek, cause he has these moments where I think he is really smart, but at times he simply lacks the scientific mindset.
Yeah I don't understand why he picked the one conspiracy that had a good reason for it.
Exactly! This whole bit is a lot more sensationalist than it needed to be.
@@gammaraider that's the popular content on UA-cam right now.
"Quality over quantity, just make sure there's not too much quality, else there will be no quantity."
@@anonwithamnesia Let say you made a ever lasting phone . You can only sell what 7 billion after that you have to move on
I think the solution is to "embrace the change". Train the people to not just get stuck in one job but rotate their jobs. This way if we have reached pinnacle of light bulb we can use the workforce for some other challenge. Skill set of individual should free them not trap them in a job.
The software industry has embraced this. People in IT keep learning throughout their career. If they don't learn they get irrelevant. The learning pace is cut throat as well. Learning is good for individuals! It basically gives the individual the confidence to stand in the face of change.
@@testacals Oh woe is me, after getting stupid rich off of a single invention now I might have to use my genius-level intellect capable of creating an everlasting phone for some other productive thing, rather than sitting on that single achievement for the rest of my life and three generations of my heirs doing the same.
@@marzipancutter8144 that might be the reason why you are not a businessman
@@moving.quotes THIS
My parents love pointing out to me how everything made in their day was actually higher quality. It makes me so sad to not have nice things. And it makes the planet sad. Imagine how much less pollution there would be if things lasted decades instead of a single year.
I hate people that say that, it is not universally true that things were better. You think an aircraft from their day was better than the ones today? Nah bro. But I do have first hand experience and would agree many things built back then were in fact better, such as a 1930 tractor we have on my familys farm, that thing will run all day eevery day no matter what, meanwhile you go to the tractor shop buy or rent a brand new one straight from germany and it has a broken gas gauge due to arizona heat causing the plastic tank to expand and break the sensor, then you proceed to drive it and break more stuff on it... this is just my experience and I was always highly against the idea that things were made better. I have since agreed that yes, some things were definitly better. Keep in mind the tractors Im comparing were massively different, the old one has little that can go wrong, the new one is far far bigger and complicated with a lot of computer components as well. So definitly a grain of salt.
Our first refrigerator lasted 25 years. And even then we only threw it away cause the freezer was freezing (it could still refrigerate)
@@BenJaminLongTime well maybe their parent werent buying aircrafts and tractors left and right. Maybe they refer to domestic or daily life items. Even if technology has gotten exponentially better each decade you wouldt make a toaster out of graphite or a dresser out of some fancy alloy.
@@gwanael34 Of course it’s not universally true. Smart phones, for example, didn’t even exist back then. But it’s true of enough consumer products as to be a noticeable trend. When I said “everything” in my original statement, I was hyperbolizing. In reality, my parents would point to specific things and discuss those, not make blanket statements.
Things were also way more expensive: if the trend is to buy the cheapest thing, no matter the quality, then the average quality would drop...
The appeal of paying less but more often, as well as pushing new trends in styles, is how this has been so accepted by most people
I feel this in music, that art is recycled by older samples from previous music, and it's also last few seasons nowadays. I don't believe that a band like Queen would though of composing something to last a season only.
This hit close to home. I had a friend that was an engineer at Kohler (which I always thought of as a plumbing company, but they make engines too). At the time, he worked at a plant making Kohler small engines, for lawn mowers and small tractors. Anyway, he stops by my place after work, and he looks exhausted. He said it was a very stressful day at work, they were on a conference call with the Kohler HQ bigwigs all day, and they were NOT happy. It seems that one of Kohler's most popular consumer lawn mower engines was lasting way too long! I was dumbfounded, reliability sounded like a Good thing to me, but they considered it a disaster and heads may roll over this engine lasting so long.
So I asked what did you guys decide to do to correct this "problem"? Redesign the engine to be less reliable? Use inferior parts? And he says, all those were considered and discussed at length, but were less than ideal solutions. Their solution was to stop selling those engines on the consumer brand mowers that you buy at Walmart, Home Depot, etc......and design a new, less reliable, consumer engine that would ensure that you'd have to buy a new mower every few years (just like the light bulb cartel). So......what did they do with the uber reliable engine that caused this problem in the first place? They simply rebranded it as "Commerical Grade", charged way more money for it, and put it on their more expensive commercial line of mowers that were priced, to last longer. Yeah, so the cheap consumer engine was simply increased in price by who knows how much, even though it cost no more to manufacture, and now it's an expensive "commercial grade engine", rather than a cheap consumer grade engine. I learned so much in this conversation. I knew that Commerical grade items cost more, and lasted longer, and I always assumed it was because they were built from better parts and cost more to manufacture, but that wasn't always necessarily so. In some cases, Commercial grade simply costs more, because it will last longer and the company will sell fewer of them. And that is the only reason, that they charge a premium for them. That's not always the case, but it was the case in this particular instance. It was also the first time that I found out that engineers could get in trouble for designing a product that was too good, and lasted too long. This conversation was a real eye opener. I never forgot it.....it kinda pissed me off too. haha When I wrote this, I thought about leaving out the name of the manufacturer, but my friend no longer works for Kohler, so screw them. It's not like this only happens at Kohler anyway, this kind of thing goes on in manufacturing everywhere. Planned obsolescence. There is a reason that people say they don't make things like they used to, it's because they make them to wear out on purpose. It's not that older tools, engines, appliances, etc....were built so much better than today, it's because today, things are DESIGNED for maximum profitability, and NOT maximum reliability. This is why things tend to break shortly after the warranty runs out......they are precisely engineered to last thru the warranty period, and fail shortly afterwards......or the engineers are not doing their jobs. It makes sense from their end, but I sure can't help but be pissed as a consumer.
Thank you for your story, it really gets some thoughts going alongside this video. As someone who wants to start engineering a "not yet known to man product", I'm looking at both sides of the story. I drive a 20 year old car, that is still going strong, and if something fails I can repair it myself. It makes me grateful for the way the car was designed and manufactured back then, and I want my future (hopefully engineering) company to operate like that as well. Though, once the market is completely saturated with products there is nothing to be sold anymore, forcing planned obsolescence to be applied. This makes me want to be able to make products that become obsolete not by breaking or failing, but rather from something else that does not disappoint customers...
Again thanks for sharing your story :)
capitalism at it's finest
@@igorino1767 You know back when they made them to last, that was also capitalism, and no other -ism, right?
Lol aint capitalism grand? xD
If we can't come up with ways to better utilise our (finite) available resources while still providing for people and keeping them employed and able to sustain themselves, we are doomed.
You cannot have a system designed around perpetual expansion and "planned obsolescence" in a finite world where you're eventually going to run out of raw material resources which you need to produce goods with in the first place.
This seems pretty common sense but common sense isn't quite so common anymore.
@@TyberiusTheThird we are witnessing the endgame of capitalism - when it becomes predatory and even self devouring.
Just because something starts off OK doesn't mean the final result will be desirable.
And there is no resolute FDR to save it this time.
The most insane thing is that people are so unaware of this and so surprised when they hear about this, almost unable to believe. "Whaat!? The mega companies don't love us!?"
Worst yet, when I explain these things to them they paint me as a tinfoil hat wearing "conspiracy theorist" smh these people deserve to be exploited.
capitalism does a great job of brainwashing the population that is it really the best system we could have, this is ofcourse, a lie
@@smh9902 some of the want to abuse you.. some of the want to be abused..
@@clown134 they stimulate the population with stimulant and then feed their ego that they are better than others.. and like magic you are under their spell..
@@clown134 I'm a free market entrepreneur and I'm of the opinion given my experience on these matters that much of these issues stem from regulatory capture creating conditions that allow cartels to easily form and maintain dominance.
Many product manufacturers make there money on service. From my direct experience - When the CEO/inventor of a famous printing press company retired, his last vanity project was to engineer (over engineer) a perfect printing machine, which was not only superb in performance, but rarely needed service. It sold for close to 1 million dollars (1988). 3 years later, another company bought out the printer manufacturer and 'evolved' that perfect printer, giving them higher ranking model numbers, implying improvement/evolution of the product line. These evolved models actually were instead dumbed down - expensive components with high MTBF (meantime/average time between failure) rankings, were replaced with cheap components which broke often. Performance suffered, but the new manufacturer cleverly convinced their market that they were actually better, using bogus marketing claims and lies. When I asked someone internal to the company why they effectively killed the perfect printer, they replied, "the company makes money on service of the machines, not the sale. If they don't break...". It opened up a lot of work for my company competing and providing meritous solutions rather than scammy products. Still, consumers, even professional buyers, can seemingly easily be suckered, so...what to do.
Gratefulness is so important
this is why my grandma's sewing machine is the coolest, most amazing thing ever. The monster can sew through anything and it's pretty much working like a new one AND can ALSO do zigzags and decorative seams. I'll never sell it. (It's a sears kenmore 2142 just in case you wanna know)
good to know
cool :00
Kenmore is dead now.
I see you flexing
I have an old Kenmore
Sewing machines are the most complicated things to repair that I've ever worked on.
As an engineer this is why its frustrating when people talk about how dumb the engineers are for designing this the way they did etc.... my response is always to the effect of the engineers can design just about anything to work well and last forever but corporate/ management wouldn't want it
True, but you sure seem GOOD at designing these built-in defects.
Engineers can’t win or lose. The customers and corporations want it one way while the other want it’s another…
Now I understand not to blame the engineers for doing their job… but to become an engineer myself and make improvements so i the customer is happy and the corporation can think for themselves for once…
I’ve improved many things. They were actually better then the originals there’s always room for improvement.
@@matthewsalvador9783
If you did the then Megacorps would make you be arrested
The video above said it
Those that make Lightbulb more durable then get fine in proportion as how durable they are
My issue isn't with engineers, it's when poor design makes the usable product fail prematurely (within warranty periods, for instance), when a very inexpensive modification would prevent the warranty costs for the manufacturer and frustration from the consumer. Like a $.25 piece of plastic to prevent water from dripping on a $500 controller.
@matthewsalvador9783 my problem is when things that need to be worked on are designed to be difficult to work on.