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.
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.
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...
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. 💡
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.
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.
Great video! As a carbon filament lightbulb enthusiast I'm glad you didn't hold out the centennial bulb as an example of long life in and of itself, as the limited power supply is certainly the main factor. The only flaw in this video (in my opinion) is the led bulb being held out as finally being everlasting. If anything, planned obsolescence is more at work in led bulbs than ever. Sure, the leds themselves last, but the components in the base of the bulb which supply the leds with dc power are absolutely not made to last (edit: Actually I should qualify that statement, because I don't know about all manufacturers. There could be some good ones.). You could make your own led bulb that would last far longer than those sold off the shelf.
Using the cheapest parts that fulfill the requirements saves a lot of money when mass producing. So a no-brainer for maximizing profit. Shorter lifespan is a welcome side effect.
@@sleepy_Dragon That's the trouble. You can rarely prove planned obsolescence because an equal excuse could be that the manufacturer just cheaps out on quality. In this case using quality parts would equate to only a few cents more per bulb, so the scale seems to lean one direction rather strongly, though there's some weight on both sides.
@@sleepy_Dragon If efficiency is what we are after, running more LEDs at lower voltage is where it is at. But of course manufacturers will never go for that.
Check out the special bulbs the Saudi's ordered from Philips/Osram if you want to know what a real long life led bulb looks like. Cant buy 'em here.. surprise!
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.
@@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
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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 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.
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
@@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.
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!
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.....
We're no longer wild animals where every day is a fight to survive, but we sure have made a great attempt at making it as depressing and sinister a reality as possible
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 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!
I work at a Chevrolet dealership as a Technician. A cars warranty usually fully ends at 100,000kms. Chevrolet Sparks and Cruzes mysteriously have failed turbos at 100,000-110,000kms, without fail. I know this isn't groundbreaking news but it was interesting to see for myself
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
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...
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
@@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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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 mobile home was built in 76 and basically everything is original except the microwave, fridge, shower curtain, and theres a small piece of a curtain rod that broke off, but it didnt break the rod. I love it.
That is why American Motors Corporation was found antisemitic by Semitic Industries leaders for unfulfilling industry trade practices affecting the profit of many semites. Next time research before you talk or even better MIND OWN BUSINESS, work or go to school.. if you have extra time (I don't know why) watch sports or drink or go shopping ..there are things commoners will NEVER understand that is why are best kept from the masses
LOL, 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 The FUNNIEST PART of all is that PEOPLE these days PAY as if the items would last forever, but for cheaper things. LOL, people these days are SO D*UMB.
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
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.
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.
@@jennifermarlow. Then again, how much electricity did it use compared to a new one? I also hate throwing away functioning devices, but with today's energy prices, you really are burning money with some stuff like old fridges and freezers. I'm certain my "new" fridge-freezer combo has easily amortized itself during the last 10 years.
@@Knokkelman And that is actually the reason the lightbulb cartel made sure lightbulbs died at 1000 hours. It's because when you run them hotter they are substantially brighter for the same power. The intention was to compete on brightness not lifespan because the companies also owned electrical power distribution and it was more expensive to upgrade the infrastructure and deliver more power for bright globes than it was to encourage people to use more efficient globes... And so the power companies gave globes away for free in the millions. The few cents per globe to hand out to customers were cheaper for them than spending millions to upgrade the infrastructure needed for longer life globes of the same output.
Auto makers and I have a mutually-accepted hate relationship: I NEVER sell a car. I use them until they simply aren't feasible to keep on the road, though I have gifted some to needy people. Currently my 2010 Pilot has 402,000 miles. My 2006 Odyssey at 310k and my 2007 Accord at 240,000. Nearly a million collective miles on 3 vehicles. I ironic thing is that I worked for an automaker for over 30 years, and never once owned a new car.
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.
@@junior.von.claire 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?
Judging by how many "20 year" LED bulbs I've already replaced, I'd say there's some intentional quality degradations in that field as well. But the worst part is they constantly change the style and slightly vary the color. So when one bulb in a fixture burns out, I can't buy a matching bulb anymore and I have to replace all of them anway.
Most modern LED bulbs are driven much harder than they need to be, there are ways to modify some of them so they are more efficient and last longer (but are somewhat dimmer).
Please tell my colorblind neighbors. They'll invariably have a white led lightbulb on one side of the garage and a white incandescent bulb that glows a golden color on the other side.
@@thisismagacountry1318 It doesn't bother them. They just don't care. It bothers you and I would have to talk to them so I know exactly what you're saying.
The "20 year" lifespan is based off of 3-4 hours of use per day...many people run them considerably longer hence considerably reducing their actual lifespan
@@infinitecomplaicency most LEDs have unnecessarily high current draw making them run hot (which is why they die quick when on 24/7). if the current were lower it would actually last for way more than just "20 years"
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."
Being from Poland I have old fridge, freezer and coocker made in soviet times. All are like 50 years old and still work. I keep them in my basement floor and store meet etc. Apart from having old gas coocker, I have wood fueled stove with top made from cast iron. You fill it with wood, make a fire and you can cook whatever the hell you like, plus you heat your home. This thing is 85 years old.
When I was an engineering student in university, our professors - especially the ones who taught DFMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly), would sneak in planned obsolescence everywhere like in our lectures, homework and examination questions. Still remember them clearly because I got slightly lower marks for disagreeing with the practice during one research project and the finals for DFMA. Academia and education systems everywhere really need to be reformed to or replaced by something else that is not heavily influenced by corporate workforce demands and trends.
agree..., I remember my construction management classes, where they would sneak in taking loans as a part of the contractor’s construction plan. Although, in reality there are other options.
Decentralizing education would not only make education accessible to more people, but also help prevent institutionalized (corrupt) indoctrination like that.
All education related to finances in the west tends to be aggressively neoliberal as well, I really wish people were more transparent and critical and taught as much
Corning followed this principle with their Corningware ceramic cookware. You know the white enameled cooking dishes you use in the oven? After many improvements over time, by the 1950's, they realized that their product was so unbreakable, so heat resistant, so perfectly cleanable, that no one needed to buy any more. One Ceramic dish might be used by several generations, as long-lived as the family silver. They saturated the market, everyone had a few of these, and the customer base was drying up. So they quietly reformulated Corningwear so it DID break more easily, and it DID stain and get dingy over time. Today, old Corningwear is highly valued and sought after, and new Corningware is considered a limited lifespan product, like most other kitchenware.
I believe you are talking about the Pyroceram cookware from Corningware. It's interesting because they got discontinued in 2000 and replaced with inferior stoneware products after the Corningware brand was sold off. But interestingly, eventually they were brought back after 10 years or so, so you can now buy the original type Corningware again. I'm not sure what motivated them to do so though. Maybe after all these years they decided there's enough market for it again.
@@snoglydox I noticed that a few years ago with a brand of undies, and just recently, I bought the same bathroom tissue I normally buy at Costco, and the Walmart one, packaged exactly the same, is far thinner and cheaper. Infuriating.
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)
The same thing is actually true of household appliances. Washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, stoves. Back then these things were meant to be bought only once, and then to last. We have a washing machine that has to be something likd 40 years old, and it has outlasted all of our newer household appliances.
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.
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.
It amazes me how many people boxed in by the thought that this short lasting disposable goods creates more jobs. There are much higher ways societies can work
yes how can people seriously be that dumb, its hard for me to even talk about it, no words can cover the complete void of logic behind this idiotic way of reasoning. What is most sad is that it seems majority of people operate on this amazingly low cognitive level. I want to die
it creates more jobs, and if there are these higher ways that can work then why don't they? what even are they anyway? short term increases demand, higher demand means a need for higher supply, higher supply can be acquired by more people working to make it
@@AutistiCat2406 Man, but it is nice to imagine what would all the effort and resources have achieved if big companies and big minds had worked around other problems rather than just finding out ways to keep themselves in the market. In the big picture, there is no need to spend absurd amounts of resources into manufacturing light bulbs or any other products that would otherwise not need to be replaced.
@@AutistiCat2406 None of us have an obligation to make sure that some company or industry makes a profit. They may think that shortsighted and juvenile way but we have an obligation to think about OUR quality of life, not theirs: our planet, our atmosphere. Let the lazy bastards do the hard work of actually developing something new and better for their profits, not just beating their last decade's dead horse into the ground for their profits, year after year.
Ikr ! As if cars that only last 20k mi are good for the “economy” and create more jobs . I never thought of a gerbil running in a wheel as a job that helped the “economy”.
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.
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.
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.
I have a clock that has run almost continuously since about 1938 when my mother bought it. It has been off only during moves and power outages. Eighty six years and still working great.
There are 3 things that have been in my family for as long as I can remember (I'm 70 years old) and have been used on a fairly regular basis. All of them still work. They are a Singer Featherweight sewing machine (1939), a Sunbeam egg cooker, and a Sunbeam toaster. The only repair done to the toaster was to replace the old cloth-covered cord with a safer new one. The toaster, with rounded corners and still shiny chrome, is now in the possession of my niece. They really don't make things they way they used to.
My mom's light (medium? let's call it a heavy home duty) Singer sewing machine fell out of the back of a moving pickup truck when she first bought it. Used, mind you. This sewing machine served as the first sewing machine in her just opened tailor shop. 40 years later it is still the work horse of the shop and the most damage suffered is a crack in the casing from falling out of the truck when she first bought it. Somewhat related pre-obsolescence lesson: if you want something to last forever, apparently, keep it well oiled!
@@KristoferPaul Those old Singer sewing machines are really something, aren't they? I haven't used mine in years, but I got it out to make masks last year. And you are so right, the poor baby is in bad need of a cleaning and oiling. I have the business card of someone who can do it. Yay!
As a musician, I’m so happy that instrument companies tend not to do this. I play the bass guitar and I am confident I’ll never have to fully replace any of my bass guitars. Everything on it that could break it fully replaceable and I can do the repairs myself.
Unfortunately, they do Although I'm not a professional musician or something, I've seen, and in fact experienced many musical instruments that seemed to deteriorate so much in just 1 year of playing, you wouldn't like to even play those anymore The "damage" is so obvious but subtle and thus irritates you more than ever - even worse than a major problem... Ultimately, you end up somehow (may intentionally) breaking it out of (passive) anger or just replace it with a perfectly good one, only to get "broken" again...
never met anyone who said "oh great, this e-guitar is from the 2000s, let's buy it" For some reason, the guitars built 50 years ago are much better. This seems to be consens, at least I haven't met anyone who disagrees. Not talking about violines and wood that was denser because of the climate but the 70s talking and the same producers as today
Of course, at some point, after many parts replacements, it's no longer the same bass. Like the guy who inherited his grandfather's axe. "It's been a great axe. I only replaced the head once and the handle twice."
the thing is , people tend to buy multiple instruments because you have various colors , designs , set ups , shapes , sounds.. i have 4 bass guitars and that's not a lot compared to some people ! We may not replace them , but we still buy them even if our initial one doesn't break , that is why they're built to last
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
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.
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. 😞
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.
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
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.
@@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 it is actually proven that wireless transfer of electricity is incredibly inefficient and it is very difficult to make something completely free.
The moment when The BIG youtubers have finally caught up on this problem is the moment im starting to have a little bit of hope. Thanks for the video. This is extremely important subject.
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.
@@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.
This is why a rise in personal manufacturing, even on a simple scale, would start having enormous impacts on society. Stuff that breaks down in months or years would start lasting decades and all the extra time and resources can be spent on much more important things than replacing things that we effectively broke ourselves by intention.
Wait - is this the reason why people are so excited about 3D printing? Now I'm imagining a world where "quality" means asking your Uncle Joe to download some blueprints to his fabricator unit for printing and assembly. Products from big box stores would come to be viewed as total scams.
@@SudoBurger as they should. Walmart is worth more than China's electrical company. "If it's a chain, it's free reign." No qualms whatsoever stealing from a company that absolutely won't miss even a hundred thousand dollars.
No the answer to the problem is Universal income and “smart factories” “Smart factories” have machines that could be work at semi specialized speeds but have the machine be able to do any other task. The giant cost of factory machines would be offset as you can make your “smart factory” to make anything, letting that factory last forever. I am using absolute terms to make it easy to understand. Since people don’t have to keep making one type of thing to offset the cost, you can make a thing to last 100 years (like lightbulbs). And change the output of the factory to make a different thing every time, after having sold to everyone in the world, would only need to sell parts for repair. This allows a system for a few factories to make parts for the whole world. But the problem moves to a monopoly one. Why wouldn’t they maximize gain and charge the max they can so that living expenses matches income? They would, the world has always had major powers. The problem moves again and is a problem of the human condition. Why would people do this? A person in power is a small part of the group in power, they are just small part, sharing tiny responsibility(a cog in the machine). They do not see the outcome of their decisions, + more factors. The system is stable. A solution is to change the human condition by gene editing to make people smarter, kinder, braver. To make a Superman! One that would sacrifice himself and his family for what is right. Like how you hear in the news of a family who are noble and publicly against a bad system, like how Jesus was. Over time the whole world would become a race of the best people to ever have existed, each one having the heart of Jesus, the mind of Einstein, and the body to Achilles. Earth would be a utopia, research would googolplex, people would become literally what Demi gods were in old times. That world would be a completely different world than any before, A Eternal Super Enlightened Futuristic Utopia. I am generalizing of course and leaving out different possibilities and viewpoints to make my point clear and powerful.
This is one of the best videos on UA-cam and needs to be shared far and wide. There's so many people being shafted by companies like Apple, and no one (apart from small number of people) seem to care. We need to stop this.
It's not that people don't care, it's that people are happy to be shafted. Do you think people really don't notice they're buying another phone they don't need? They know it. They just think they need it.
I used to NEED the newest iPhone every year but I am still content with my iPhone X & plan to keep it until it’s gives out on me. One of the biggest eye openers for me was learning how bad it is to upgrade our phones annually. We all need to be cautious consumers.
@@ccsutherland4621 Yep. I bought a $500 phone in the middle of 2019 and it's still perfectly fine, I don't see any reason to change it until it breaks. Phones aren't going to do new things, they're not going to be so much faster. Everything is a small change. Even if it takes 5 years I don't think a new phone in 2024 will be mindblowing.
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.
@@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.
Another great story on this is in David Halberstam's book "The Reckoning". It's a story about how the introduction of Japanese cars to the US in the 70s disrupted the careful planned obsolescence balance of Detroit and managed to win over the country.
Incandescent lights cast a prettier light, not only more flattering, but also more cheering. Halogen is also good - but more expensive & more complicated to replace. Thank you for this excellent video.
One thing about the "everlasting" LED bulbs is that that's a lie if the planned obsolescence is in the driver. That's what's happening constantly to our LED bulbs so they basically randomly go out when the bulb still works. Just the "driver" doesn't...
15:40 LED bulbs aren't immune to this, they can start flickering and/or fail within months to a year of normal use. The trick is in the controller, that's what fails, not the diodes themselves which could and would reach the rating on the box. This happens even with expensive, brand-name stuff. Maybe country-dependant but it's definitely a thing.
can you go in and mess with the controller and fix it? or some people have said they insulate the heat sink to make it less effective, could you go in and take off the insulation and make a long lasting bulb yourself?
@@Aidan-zc8wx Most of the time you can safely remove the top or white plastic cover/diffuser of LED bulbs to access the LED array and heatsink. The controllers are at the bottom compartment towards the threaded part which is hard to access without destroying the case.
@@qwtxlae5xtzn6n they invariably never last as long as they advertise. eventually there will be some sort of class action but it won't penalize the manufacturers nearly enough.
Bulbs are the problem. I mean - whole contruction of LED bulb can act like oven for electronics inside, especially if bulb is installed in non - ventilated chandelier. If we put LED driving circut and LEDs themselves in space where they can be cooled properly, then those LED lights would last longer. Second option - put more LEDs inside and pump less current into them. This will reduce heat generated by bulbs. Google "LEDS FROM DUBAI: THE ROYAL LIGHTS YOU CAN’T BUY" Of course LEDs in bulbs fail, not only LED driving circuts.
"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.
@@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
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.
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!?"
@@katiebarber407 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..
@@katiebarber407 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.
It is interesting to note that planned obsolescence revolves around 2 simple things at the cost of many other things. First, to make a product that is just good enough for people to keep buying, and 2nd that people will indeed keep buying it. It is businessmen and those in power who stifle progress, inventors of all types keep finding ways to improve upon an idea and coming up with new ideas. The concept of leaving a legacy or an inheritance is void in a business model. I believe it is short sighted people who drive planned obsolescence because they can not imagine what could be different or better. Unfortunately, those who invent seldom have the capital to make things into fruition, and those who have capital seldom have the foresight to think long term about what is best for everyone.
It's terrifying to think about the implications of this. We are so madly obsessed with profit and acquiring more material goods, we'll burn through our planet's resources like it's nothing. This really feels like end times.
It is. We're in the Fourth Horseman, Revelation 6:7,8, the green (chloros) horse. It began on 9/11/2001. It calls for 1/4 of the earth dead. No prophecy of the Bible has failed, in over 4,000 years.
@@karliszalite933 The alternative is we make hard decisions to ensure humanity's survival in Earth's history. The future is guaranteed. Humanity's isn't. Personally, I'm not too fussed. Doesn't seem likely that we're bound to live to next millennium, and it's natural selection in action. The only way we survive is we prove we deserve to survive by being smart enough.
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.
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. :)
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. 😒
@@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.
This really shows you how the world revolves around money and not about the well being of the people. “We are of the people, by the people and for the people” my butt
My mom had a washing machine for 20 years, and it worked perfectly. When a piece broke, she called the company. Turns out they had stopped making those pieces. She had to buy a new one. It didn't last two months before its first problem required maintenance. it still breaks every three or four months.
@Sfs rocket lab yeah, they started lasting less when global economy needed more profit. we have an immensely productive system, but the fact that we can solve a problem becomes poison to a system that lives off of selling solutions.
@@leexabyz oops, my bad. i'm pretty sure it had its first problem after two months, but I was editing the comment before posting and forgot to add that we didn't have to throw the machine away after the first problem, just pay someone to fix it. it kept having more problems every three or four months.
I've been thinking about this a lot... its wildly annoying. I visited my grandparents a few years back. And one day it rained, so I borrowed their umbrella to walk dads dog. Their umbrella was from 1985, and in perfect condition. No rust or holes, nothing wrong. However at home, I have to buy a new umbrella every time it rains, or deal with an older umbrella which is either stuck, rusted of cracked/broken somewhere. It doesn't matter how nicely I treat my umbrellas, they just fall apart like a sandcastle being washed away by a wave. And it doesn't seem to matter what price they go for. I'm sure I could order an umbrella from wish for 1 dollar, and get something better than what I paid 20 dollars for here. I am so tired of this happening to almost all our things that we need. I am tired of having to replace everything almost the instant we get it. Idk, maybe we are buying the worst batch of everything, but... really though? what's the odds of buying a defunct product every single time?
I remember 1985. There were a lot of umbrellas that would disintegrate with the slightest breath of wind. They’ve long since gone to landfill, leaving only the few decent survivors.
@@Smidgefishh When you hate something so much due to its "absurd quality", you started to create your version instead. And that's where the DIY trend landed in.
Planned obsolescence should be highly illegal. It should literally put people in prison if found guilty. The fact that there are some idiots in primaloft golf vests that are, at this very moment, intentionally making their products worse to increase sales over time is just horrifying and I hope there'll be justice one day.
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
In a deeper meaning he pointed out that many of our needs, if not the majority are fictitious. And the companies convinced us that we NEED all of these products.
My personal favorite of this was the invention of antiperspirants. The company that created it pushed it onto the market, but nobody cared, so they hired a marketing agency that ran a campaign to shame women about their body odour, and then once the demand was artificially created, their product suddenly sold like hotcakes. I can't wait for the time when someone invents a way to talk with another person in the room telepathically, and then they would start running an ad about how disgusting the movements of human lips are and everybody should buy their product instead. /s
@@Horvath_Gabor Same for listerine. They invented Halitosis to sell their mouth wash which before that was a household cleaning solution akin to pinesol
@@Horvath_Gabor I read somewhere that shaving body hair for women was also introduced this way by big shaving companies... By shaming women into thinking that their natural body hair is ugly and unattractive.
Planned obsolescence in phones and computers is a really big problem, considering that they require non-recyclable alloys of rare metals, which are running out. This could make the digital revolution collapse in a generation.
Not as big of an issue with computers if you build your own. I built my last one in 2011 and just built a new one in 2021. I honestly didn't even need to, it just felt like it was time. During those 10 years I upgraded the RAM, the video card, and the SS drive all to be more powerful. The only component that ever failed and needed to be replaced was the first motherboard after 3 years. The second MB is still going strong going on year 8.
Man, the fact a lot of these obsolescent trends began cropping up around the 1920's/30's really adds a whole new level of context to the Great Depression, which I think is really fascinating as a rare but extremely enlightening crossroads between science, history, and economic principles.
The age of invention eventually collided with the age of advertising. Once marketing emerged with easy to earn sales commission and easy no down payment credit everything changed. We’ve been deceived ever since. The green economy is little more than a marketing sham. If you sell an ideology hard enough people succumb to crowd psychology and flock to buy into it even though it’s selling claims are dubious.
The Global Slave Masters want a modern Great Recession and they call it the "Great Reset" The answer to this is the GREAT AWAKENING where humanity purges the Technocrats for their crimes against humanity.
@@ericmacrae6871 most government officials also saw it coming decades before it happened. And it would start with farmers as predicted. They experienced there depression almost 10 years before the stock market depression
Fun fact: The Centennial Bulb isn't even the only Shelby Electric Co lightbulb still in existence. It's just the oldest (and therefore most famous) one. There are actually 26 lightbulbs that were made by Shelby Electric prior to 1914 that still function even to this day.
Henry Ford built model T , model A , and 8n tractor to be serviceable & useable, as long as possible, and he did not “run-out of customers”. That economic “downturn” was a construct .
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.
“…I couldn’t imagine we had better lightbulbs (phones, TVs, cars, clothes, appliances, etc) and then made them worse. “ Every industry now has their own Phoebus Cartel, it’s the new standard business model. Thanks for a great video!
The worst part is the cost to enter the market. While we were buying (say) a saddle, it was easy: "everyone" could make one - so one maker kept the other in check. Now we talk about a 3 billion dollar (USS dollars) plant, and people say it is cheap. CHEAP! It really limits who can enter the market.
Not every industry. A lot of products doesn't require conspiracies to be obsolete - and the main example of that is agriculture... But that's also true for entertainment, culture and many others. The truth is that we could all have a lot of basic needs fullfilled and only have to regularly buy food, music and a few other things, but instead we're artificially dependant on stuff that last 100 less times than it should.
@@Ezullof but there is also a "conspiracy" if you will of monsanto suing agricultors (who dont use their products). And big companies have big lawyer budgets... so they do as they please, sadly.
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.
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.
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.
15:53 you optimistically say we've "finally reached the point of what is essentially an everlasting light bulb" for LED lights... Buuuuttt... Big Clive had a teardown of several LED light bulbs recently. His findings? Many use similar internals, the same circuit designs, and they ALL overdrive the LED to put out more light at the expense of life span. In other words, we have LEDs and circuits of higher quality, easily capable of extremely long life, BUT there seems to be similar market forces at play yet again, where the manufacturers of the most common bulbs are artificially keeping their products from being "TOO GOOD."
Lupine lighting systems from germany makes top tier outdoor lights, undervolting the leds for battery life, repairs for ages, excellent customer service, and even upgrades for older lights (my fathers flashlight has i think only the case original, the batteries and worn out switch were replaced and the leds upgraded) this comes at the expense of being one of, if not the most expensive brand for outdoor and bike lighting (luckily their new streetlegal bike lights are quite popular)
i saw that too and it got me paranoid. i destroyed many led bulbs like this (why can't they just make them disassembleable...) but midpriced ones from aliexpress are actually UNDERVOLTED with gigantic heatsinks. since then im using them around the house and only 1 has failed and that was from a really unfortunate event and a proper electrician mucking about in the apartment above.
So I made a comment in the main feed. But this is exactly what I was referring to. It's the Dubai light bulb from Philips. They use more LED filiments so they don't overload them and they use way less wattage to light. I'm not an electrical neard so I can't tell you all the details off the top of my head. Look it up if you aren't already aware.
@@timdec5488 Those are called Dubai light bulbs because they'll never be sold outside Dubai. They only begrudgingly make them for dubai because the alternative was to be banned from the country entirely.
Imagine the waste of resources, human labor and damage to the environment, that the planned obsolescence have costed the world... For all the products that this tactics have been used combined, we're probably talking about many millions of human lives wasted to sustain this system, let alone the resources and the environment...
The alternative system, maybe not planned obsolescence, but probably. Greed pervades all systems. But in our system, the cartel broke up after about a decade. In the other system, the gov and cartel are the same thing by design.
The question then leads to "what to do with all the people who aren't working?" I recommend looking into the Rat Utopia experiment. It shows that when animals no longer have to worry about life, they end up with all sorts of horrible issues. I despise planned obsolescence as much as anyone, but people without work is potentially a worse issue to have. I don't know the correct answer. I don't think anyone does. I personally feel that we just have too many people, and that have an addiction to progress. It could very well be that we are playing out the story of Icarus, and we won't know we are metaphorically flying too high until our wings melt and we fall to earth.
@@Puzzlesocks "I personally feel that we just have too many people" Except lots of people make economy of scale possible. Smartphones would be prohibitively expensive if the population of the world were significantly reduced. Anyway, I liked your reply and I also don't know the correct answer.
I remember hearing about Isaac Singer, whose sewing machines were so durable and long-lasting, that when people traded up to a newer model, he had the old machines destroyed, to keep them out of the second hand market. My old 1939 model treadle machine still works like new.
There's actually a kind of resurgence for these old sewing machines, akin the vinyl. That's the beauty of rather "primitive" designs, fewer, simpler parts, mean fewer parts that are less likely to break. Also easier the fix.
Back in highschool my mom bought me a newer singer model since I was into sewing at the time. Had a bunch of buttons and lights, was kinda hard to understand how to use at first. A few months later our elderly neighbor gave me her older model that she never used. It only had 2 knobs and a slider on it. I took the older one and my mom took the newer one. Present day we threw out the newer model since it kept breaking. The only thing that ever broke on that older one was the needle. Now my sister is using it much more than I ever did and it still works perfectly fine.
planned. obsolescence. The government is trying to ban those cars as they're """unsafe""" and """not certified"""... They're verbooten. Not allowed. Taboo. They harm the government's plan to keep you in a tight cage endlessly farming you for "tax" money.
The fact that they weren't complicated enough to break terminally is part of the reason. A Model-T doesn't have an oil pump, or a water pump, or a fuel pump, or even brakes at the wheels, just one in the middle of the transmission, They also weigh a heck of a lot for what they do since stronger lighter materials weren't used yet, and so they had very low performance and high consumption, but they also couldn't easily rust out because they were made of basically solid rail road rails. So a Model-T can run forever, but it doesn't run very well for what it consumes. Including operator time in near constant tending to it. That being said, there's still a lot of the world that would LOVE even an old Model-T compared to what they have now.
@@dimitar4y They ARE unsafe, they don't have airbags and highly compressible bodies, in a car crash you almost certainly die rather than just getting hurt.
@justan idiot simple pumps use a 100$ circuit board that gives the ghost in 2 weeks instead of just .... you know, on-off switch... IT'S THE NEWEST GREATEST MODEL WITH MANY FEATURES and we don't sell the old one anymore faaakk youuu give us 1000$ every dayyyy
A friend and I are building a '32 Buick Series 50 Coupe powered by a 2016 Suburban motor, and sitting on the suspension of a stretched '86 'Vette. It's been quite interesting fitting 20th/21st century tech into parts and assemblies that are 89 years old -- especially in the area of LED lighting and a workable dashboard. As my friend is 80, he had no interest in an ADB glass panel dash, but he did go for digital gauges. In another month, we'll be ready to install the computer, put coolant in, and fire it up! Time on project working nights and weekends is at about year #2....
Just for information, "TEPCO" is not "Tokyo Electric", it is "Tokyo Electric Power Company" which provides power to the East half of Japan (except Hokkaido). "Tokyo Electric" is a company that existed from 1890 to 1939, which merged with another electric company "Shibaura Seisakujo" to become the company we know today as "Toshiba".
I didn't think my comment would be interesting to anyone, basically. Thank you! to the Veritasium viewers who thought it contributed something (at least) to the community 😊
Maybe redoing it with a smartphone or a perfect (1000x the mWh per 0.0001 the weight of a li-ion) battery instead of a cloth could be a very interesting start point for a remake of that movie.
@Free Mankind unless you have a set of sanitary institutions testing every medicine that they are going to buy and emitting fines for dozens of millions per years because of security issues or private lobbying attempts, and you have free medicines and you have to pay only 36 euros for whatever exam, surgery, or rehab plan you need to do because you live in a real nation and not in america.. Big pharma only wants money, find a way to structure its demand of money over time and you will have all the quality you want.
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
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
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...
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!
@@susanrabideau9089 I also thought about his mom
I'm thinking about his mom rn@@rokpeter8012
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! As a carbon filament lightbulb enthusiast I'm glad you didn't hold out the centennial bulb as an example of long life in and of itself, as the limited power supply is certainly the main factor. The only flaw in this video (in my opinion) is the led bulb being held out as finally being everlasting. If anything, planned obsolescence is more at work in led bulbs than ever. Sure, the leds themselves last, but the components in the base of the bulb which supply the leds with dc power are absolutely not made to last (edit: Actually I should qualify that statement, because I don't know about all manufacturers. There could be some good ones.). You could make your own led bulb that would last far longer than those sold off the shelf.
Using the cheapest parts that fulfill the requirements saves a lot of money when mass producing. So a no-brainer for maximizing profit. Shorter lifespan is a welcome side effect.
@@sleepy_Dragon That's the trouble. You can rarely prove planned obsolescence because an equal excuse could be that the manufacturer just cheaps out on quality. In this case using quality parts would equate to only a few cents more per bulb, so the scale seems to lean one direction rather strongly, though there's some weight on both sides.
@@sleepy_Dragon If efficiency is what we are after, running more LEDs at lower voltage is where it is at. But of course manufacturers will never go for that.
@@kjyost Cost efficiency for the producer means cheapest parts while advertising "maximum output". More light for the Watt sells.
Check out the special bulbs the Saudi's ordered from Philips/Osram if you want to know what a real long life led bulb looks like. Cant buy 'em here.. surprise!
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
welcome to the real world where people want money and power.... sorry to inform you....
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.
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.....
We're no longer wild animals where every day is a fight to survive, but we sure have made a great attempt at making it as depressing and sinister a reality as possible
The fight for survival is still on, just the jungle changed.
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..
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.
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
I work at a Chevrolet dealership as a Technician. A cars warranty usually fully ends at 100,000kms. Chevrolet Sparks and Cruzes mysteriously have failed turbos at 100,000-110,000kms, without fail. I know this isn't groundbreaking news but it was interesting to see for myself
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...
@@user-fje4ztx46no86 * Lenin gets up from his grave *
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.
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.
The fact that this video opened up with a Harbor Freight ad is the most beautiful irony available on the planet
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.
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.
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
my mobile home was built in 76 and basically everything is original except the microwave, fridge, shower curtain, and theres a small piece of a curtain rod that broke off, but it didnt break the rod. I love it.
That is why American Motors Corporation was found antisemitic by Semitic Industries leaders for unfulfilling industry trade practices affecting the profit of many semites. Next time research before you talk or even better MIND OWN BUSINESS, work or go to school.. if you have extra time (I don't know why) watch sports or drink or go shopping ..there are things commoners will NEVER understand that is why are best kept from the masses
LOL, 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 The FUNNIEST PART of all is that PEOPLE these days PAY as if the items would last forever, but for cheaper things. LOL, people these days are SO D*UMB.
I watched this video 3 years ago and come back today to use its information in a school project. Thank you!
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.
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
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.
@@jennifermarlow. Then again, how much electricity did it use compared to a new one? I also hate throwing away functioning devices, but with today's energy prices, you really are burning money with some stuff like old fridges and freezers.
I'm certain my "new" fridge-freezer combo has easily amortized itself during the last 10 years.
@@Knokkelman And that is actually the reason the lightbulb cartel made sure lightbulbs died at 1000 hours. It's because when you run them hotter they are substantially brighter for the same power. The intention was to compete on brightness not lifespan because the companies also owned electrical power distribution and it was more expensive to upgrade the infrastructure and deliver more power for bright globes than it was to encourage people to use more efficient globes... And so the power companies gave globes away for free in the millions. The few cents per globe to hand out to customers were cheaper for them than spending millions to upgrade the infrastructure needed for longer life globes of the same output.
@@milamber319 Do you have a source for this info?
Auto makers and I have a mutually-accepted hate relationship:
I NEVER sell a car. I use them until they simply aren't feasible to keep on the road, though I have gifted some to needy people.
Currently my 2010 Pilot has 402,000 miles. My 2006 Odyssey at 310k and my 2007 Accord at 240,000. Nearly a million collective miles on 3 vehicles.
I ironic thing is that I worked for an automaker for over 30 years, and never once owned a new car.
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.
@@junior.von.claire 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.
Judging by how many "20 year" LED bulbs I've already replaced, I'd say there's some intentional quality degradations in that field as well. But the worst part is they constantly change the style and slightly vary the color. So when one bulb in a fixture burns out, I can't buy a matching bulb anymore and I have to replace all of them anway.
Most modern LED bulbs are driven much harder than they need to be, there are ways to modify some of them so they are more efficient and last longer (but are somewhat dimmer).
Please tell my colorblind neighbors.
They'll invariably have a white led lightbulb on one side of the garage and a white incandescent bulb that glows a golden color on the other side.
@@thisismagacountry1318
It doesn't bother them. They just don't care. It bothers you and I would have to talk to them so I know exactly what you're saying.
The "20 year" lifespan is based off of 3-4 hours of use per day...many people run them considerably longer hence considerably reducing their actual lifespan
@@infinitecomplaicency most LEDs have unnecessarily high current draw making them run hot (which is why they die quick when on 24/7). if the current were lower it would actually last for way more than just "20 years"
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...
Being from Poland I have old fridge, freezer and coocker made in soviet times. All are like 50 years old and still work.
I keep them in my basement floor and store meet etc.
Apart from having old gas coocker, I have wood fueled stove with top made from cast iron. You fill it with wood, make a fire and you can cook whatever the hell you like, plus you heat your home. This thing is 85 years old.
When I was an engineering student in university, our professors - especially the ones who taught DFMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly), would sneak in planned obsolescence everywhere like in our lectures, homework and examination questions. Still remember them clearly because I got slightly lower marks for disagreeing with the practice during one research project and the finals for DFMA.
Academia and education systems everywhere really need to be reformed to or replaced by something else that is not heavily influenced by corporate workforce demands and trends.
agree..., I remember my construction management classes, where they would sneak in taking loans as a part of the contractor’s construction plan. Although, in reality there are other options.
Yashua will replace all the corruption ...
Decentralizing education would not only make education accessible to more people, but also help prevent institutionalized (corrupt) indoctrination like that.
Academia is sponsored by lobbies who need more worker drones 🤷🏿♂️ the illusion is deep
All education related to finances in the west tends to be aggressively neoliberal as well, I really wish people were more transparent and critical and taught as much
Corning followed this principle with their Corningware ceramic cookware. You know the white enameled cooking dishes you use in the oven? After many improvements over time, by the 1950's, they realized that their product was so unbreakable, so heat resistant, so perfectly cleanable, that no one needed to buy any more. One Ceramic dish might be used by several generations, as long-lived as the family silver. They saturated the market, everyone had a few of these, and the customer base was drying up. So they quietly reformulated Corningwear so it DID break more easily, and it DID stain and get dingy over time. Today, old Corningwear is highly valued and sought after, and new Corningware is considered a limited lifespan product, like most other kitchenware.
I believe you are talking about the Pyroceram cookware from Corningware. It's interesting because they got discontinued in 2000 and replaced with inferior stoneware products after the Corningware brand was sold off. But interestingly, eventually they were brought back after 10 years or so, so you can now buy the original type Corningware again. I'm not sure what motivated them to do so though. Maybe after all these years they decided there's enough market for it again.
. Just about every company that sold through Walmart were/are required to reduce the quality of their product in order to sell at Walmart stores.
i still use an old 50s stovetop coffee pot made by them . its stronger than a toilet
@@skeeter8297 That should be their slogan.
@@snoglydox I noticed that a few years ago with a brand of undies, and just recently, I bought the same bathroom tissue I normally buy at Costco, and the Walmart one, packaged exactly the same, is far thinner and cheaper. Infuriating.
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.
The same thing is actually true of household appliances. Washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, stoves. Back then these things were meant to be bought only once, and then to last. We have a washing machine that has to be something likd 40 years old, and it has outlasted all of our newer household appliances.
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.
It amazes me how many people boxed in by the thought that this short lasting disposable goods creates more jobs. There are much higher ways societies can work
yes how can people seriously be that dumb, its hard for me to even talk about it, no words can cover the complete void of logic behind this idiotic way of reasoning. What is most sad is that it seems majority of people operate on this amazingly low cognitive level. I want to die
it creates more jobs, and if there are these higher ways that can work then why don't they? what even are they anyway?
short term increases demand, higher demand means a need for higher supply, higher supply can be acquired by more people working to make it
@@AutistiCat2406 Man, but it is nice to imagine what would all the effort and resources have achieved if big companies and big minds had worked around other problems rather than just finding out ways to keep themselves in the market. In the big picture, there is no need to spend absurd amounts of resources into manufacturing light bulbs or any other products that would otherwise not need to be replaced.
@@AutistiCat2406 None of us have an obligation to make sure that some company or industry makes a profit. They may think that shortsighted and juvenile way but we have an obligation to think about OUR quality of life, not theirs: our planet, our atmosphere. Let the lazy bastards do the hard work of actually developing something new and better for their profits, not just beating their last decade's dead horse into the ground for their profits, year after year.
Ikr ! As if cars that only last 20k mi are good for the “economy” and create more jobs . I never thought of a gerbil running in a wheel as a job that helped the “economy”.
Great video. Thank you for bringing attention to this.
I love your voice
wow, what a crossover
woah
sudah malam
Here before this comment blows up
13:42 I can't even imagine living in an economy so good that the AVERAGE car ownership span is 2 years. Wild.
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
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.
@@RazzleDFrazzle 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.
I have a clock that has run almost continuously since about 1938 when my mother bought it. It has been off only during moves and power outages. Eighty six years and still working great.
There are 3 things that have been in my family for as long as I can remember (I'm 70 years old) and have been used on a fairly regular basis. All of them still work. They are a Singer Featherweight sewing machine (1939), a Sunbeam egg cooker, and a Sunbeam toaster. The only repair done to the toaster was to replace the old cloth-covered cord with a safer new one. The toaster, with rounded corners and still shiny chrome, is now in the possession of my niece. They really don't make things they way they used to.
your right. My mother gave me this ugly old toaster from the 70's or so and it still works just fine.
I have a 1979 Maytag dryer that I ran until the motor bearings died in 2018. I replaced the motor and stored it in the garage for later.
Everyone should try to live like you. I guess my house does have beds and furniture from the 1990s, at least.
My mom's light (medium? let's call it a heavy home duty) Singer sewing machine fell out of the back of a moving pickup truck when she first bought it. Used, mind you. This sewing machine served as the first sewing machine in her just opened tailor shop. 40 years later it is still the work horse of the shop and the most damage suffered is a crack in the casing from falling out of the truck when she first bought it.
Somewhat related pre-obsolescence lesson: if you want something to last forever, apparently, keep it well oiled!
@@KristoferPaul Those old Singer sewing machines are really something, aren't they? I haven't used mine in years, but I got it out to make masks last year. And you are so right, the poor baby is in bad need of a cleaning and oiling. I have the business card of someone who can do it. Yay!
As a musician, I’m so happy that instrument companies tend not to do this. I play the bass guitar and I am confident I’ll never have to fully replace any of my bass guitars. Everything on it that could break it fully replaceable and I can do the repairs myself.
Unfortunately, they do
Although I'm not a professional musician or something, I've seen, and in fact experienced many musical instruments that seemed to deteriorate so much in just 1 year of playing, you wouldn't like to even play those anymore
The "damage" is so obvious but subtle and thus irritates you more than ever - even worse than a major problem... Ultimately, you end up somehow (may intentionally) breaking it out of (passive) anger or just replace it with a perfectly good one, only to get "broken" again...
Unfortunately, the optimal number of guitars is "one more."
never met anyone who said "oh great, this e-guitar is from the 2000s, let's buy it"
For some reason, the guitars built 50 years ago are much better. This seems to be consens, at least I haven't met anyone who disagrees. Not talking about violines and wood that was denser because of the climate but the 70s talking and the same producers as today
Of course, at some point, after many parts replacements, it's no longer the same bass. Like the guy who inherited his grandfather's axe. "It's been a great axe. I only replaced the head once and the handle twice."
the thing is , people tend to buy multiple instruments because you have various colors , designs , set ups , shapes , sounds.. i have 4 bass guitars and that's not a lot compared to some people ! We may not replace them , but we still buy them even if our initial one doesn't break , that is why they're built to last
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.
15:35 No. The LED bulbs I have in my house, from various "reputable" companies, last for around 3 years. Same old story.
Same here...
Maximum 4 or 5 years
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.
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.
>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.
I'm really glad to see +23.000.000 views. I love the idea of awareness getting powerful enough to overthrow wrong standards.
The moment when The BIG youtubers have finally caught up on this problem is the moment im starting to have a little bit of hope.
Thanks for the video. This is extremely important subject.
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...
This is why a rise in personal manufacturing, even on a simple scale, would start having enormous impacts on society. Stuff that breaks down in months or years would start lasting decades and all the extra time and resources can be spent on much more important things than replacing things that we effectively broke ourselves by intention.
I'm interested in this. Do you have any good recommendations on where I could go to learn more?
Wait - is this the reason why people are so excited about 3D printing? Now I'm imagining a world where "quality" means asking your Uncle Joe to download some blueprints to his fabricator unit for printing and assembly. Products from big box stores would come to be viewed as total scams.
@@SudoBurger as they should. Walmart is worth more than China's electrical company.
"If it's a chain, it's free reign." No qualms whatsoever stealing from a company that absolutely won't miss even a hundred thousand dollars.
No the answer to the problem is Universal income and “smart factories”
“Smart factories” have machines that could be work at semi specialized speeds but have the machine be able to do any other task. The giant cost of factory machines would be offset as you can make your “smart factory” to make anything, letting that factory last forever.
I am using absolute terms to make it easy to understand.
Since people don’t have to keep making one type of thing to offset the cost, you can make a thing to last 100 years (like lightbulbs). And change the output of the factory to make a different thing every time, after having sold to everyone in the world, would only need to sell parts for repair.
This allows a system for a few factories to make parts for the whole world. But the problem moves to a monopoly one. Why wouldn’t they maximize gain and charge the max they can so that living expenses matches income?
They would, the world has always had major powers.
The problem moves again and is a problem of the human condition. Why would people do this? A person in power is a small part of the group in power, they are just small part, sharing tiny responsibility(a cog in the machine). They do not see the outcome of their decisions, + more factors. The system is stable.
A solution is to change the human condition by gene editing to make people smarter, kinder, braver. To make a Superman! One that would sacrifice himself and his family for what is right. Like how you hear in the news of a family who are noble and publicly against a bad system, like how Jesus was. Over time the whole world would become a race of the best people to ever have existed, each one having the heart of Jesus, the mind of Einstein, and the body to Achilles. Earth would be a utopia, research would googolplex, people would become literally what Demi gods were in old times. That world would be a completely different world than any before, A Eternal Super Enlightened Futuristic Utopia.
I am generalizing of course and leaving out different possibilities and viewpoints to make my point clear and powerful.
I have a feeling politicians would outlaw some types of repair shops at the behest of their corporate donors citing copyright infringement.
Veritasium: How much do you bet the IPhone 14 has rounded edges?
IPhone 15: I guess you wonder where I've been
How bro felt after making this comment: 😂🤣😂🤣👹👹🥵🥵🥵🥶🥶🥶🥶🤑🤑🤑
This is one of the best videos on UA-cam and needs to be shared far and wide. There's so many people being shafted by companies like Apple, and no one (apart from small number of people) seem to care. We need to stop this.
It's not that people don't care, it's that people are happy to be shafted. Do you think people really don't notice they're buying another phone they don't need? They know it. They just think they need it.
@@kaldogorath yup. and its really annoying it works ugh. we need to wake up to the truth please
I used to NEED the newest iPhone every year but I am still content with my iPhone X & plan to keep it until it’s gives out on me. One of the biggest eye openers for me was learning how bad it is to upgrade our phones annually. We all need to be cautious consumers.
@@ccsutherland4621 Yep. I bought a $500 phone in the middle of 2019 and it's still perfectly fine, I don't see any reason to change it until it breaks. Phones aren't going to do new things, they're not going to be so much faster. Everything is a small change. Even if it takes 5 years I don't think a new phone in 2024 will be mindblowing.
It's all according to plan. If you want to stop this you need to replace your leaders
"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.
Another great story on this is in David Halberstam's book "The Reckoning". It's a story about how the introduction of Japanese cars to the US in the 70s disrupted the careful planned obsolescence balance of Detroit and managed to win over the country.
Well that and a rather large oil crisis or two...
@@junkscience6397
Four banger brrrrr
Incandescent lights cast a prettier light, not only more flattering, but also more cheering. Halogen is also good - but more expensive & more complicated to replace. Thank you for this excellent video.
One thing about the "everlasting" LED bulbs is that that's a lie if the planned obsolescence is in the driver. That's what's happening constantly to our LED bulbs so they basically randomly go out when the bulb still works. Just the "driver" doesn't...
They also drive the LEDs themselves way past the most efficient point, also reducing their lifespan.
BigClive made a video about "Dubai Lamps". An LED bulb designed to spec will last for ever.
I bought an LED last week, today it died.
@@TheJaniable don't buy from Walmart
do NOT use CFLs and LEDs in places where they can get too hot, that's usually what kills them early.
15:40 LED bulbs aren't immune to this, they can start flickering and/or fail within months to a year of normal use. The trick is in the controller, that's what fails, not the diodes themselves which could and would reach the rating on the box. This happens even with expensive, brand-name stuff. Maybe country-dependant but it's definitely a thing.
can you go in and mess with the controller and fix it? or some people have said they insulate the heat sink to make it less effective, could you go in and take off the insulation and make a long lasting bulb yourself?
@@Aidan-zc8wx Most of the time you can safely remove the top or white plastic cover/diffuser of LED bulbs to access the LED array and heatsink. The controllers are at the bottom compartment towards the threaded part which is hard to access without destroying the case.
@@qwtxlae5xtzn6n they invariably never last as long as they advertise. eventually there will be some sort of class action but it won't penalize the manufacturers nearly enough.
Bulbs are the problem. I mean - whole contruction of LED bulb can act like oven for electronics inside, especially if bulb is installed in non - ventilated chandelier. If we put LED driving circut and LEDs themselves in space where they can be cooled properly, then those LED lights would last longer. Second option - put more LEDs inside and pump less current into them. This will reduce heat generated by bulbs. Google "LEDS FROM DUBAI: THE ROYAL LIGHTS YOU CAN’T BUY"
Of course LEDs in bulbs fail, not only LED driving circuts.
Then they should make the controllers external or easy to acces and replacable
"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
"and how much do you wanna bet that the Iphone 14 has round edges"
looks down at IPhone 14 with round edges
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.
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..
@@katiebarber407 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..
@@katiebarber407 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.
"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.
It is interesting to note that planned obsolescence revolves around 2 simple things at the cost of many other things. First, to make a product that is just good enough for people to keep buying, and 2nd that people will indeed keep buying it. It is businessmen and those in power who stifle progress, inventors of all types keep finding ways to improve upon an idea and coming up with new ideas. The concept of leaving a legacy or an inheritance is void in a business model. I believe it is short sighted people who drive planned obsolescence because they can not imagine what could be different or better. Unfortunately, those who invent seldom have the capital to make things into fruition, and those who have capital seldom have the foresight to think long term about what is best for everyone.
It's terrifying to think about the implications of this. We are so madly obsessed with profit and acquiring more material goods, we'll burn through our planet's resources like it's nothing. This really feels like end times.
I mean whats the alternative?
It is. We're in the Fourth Horseman, Revelation 6:7,8, the green (chloros) horse. It began on 9/11/2001. It calls for 1/4 of the earth dead. No prophecy of the Bible has failed, in over 4,000 years.
@@karliszalite933 The alternative is we make hard decisions to ensure humanity's survival in Earth's history. The future is guaranteed. Humanity's isn't. Personally, I'm not too fussed. Doesn't seem likely that we're bound to live to next millennium, and it's natural selection in action. The only way we survive is we prove we deserve to survive by being smart enough.
Go watch a "programmed obsolescence " documentary to be more afraid 🤧
@@horseman4now 🤣🤣
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 😀
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.
This really shows you how the world revolves around money and not about the well being of the people. “We are of the people, by the people and for the people” my butt
I used to live near that lightbulb, and seeing it in over 4 years fills me with happiness and nostalgia
Damn. I live here too. Small world eh
Damn. I don’t. Small wor.. nah.
Big world
@@SomeUsernameSomeoneElseTookIt lol
Now imagine a firefighter that worked there 40 years ago or more
My mom had a washing machine for 20 years, and it worked perfectly. When a piece broke, she called the company. Turns out they had stopped making those pieces. She had to buy a new one. It didn't last two months before its first problem required maintenance. it still breaks every three or four months.
2 months?? Damn bro, didn't you have a warranty or something? 2 months is far too quick even for planned obsolescence
@Sfs rocket lab yeah, they started lasting less when global economy needed more profit. we have an immensely productive system, but the fact that we can solve a problem becomes poison to a system that lives off of selling solutions.
@@leexabyz oops, my bad. i'm pretty sure it had its first problem after two months, but I was editing the comment before posting and forgot to add that we didn't have to throw the machine away after the first problem, just pay someone to fix it. it kept having more problems every three or four months.
leexabyz lol.
That's like my great-grandfathers microwave. It lasted over 20 years before it broke. They've had to get 2 new ones in the last 5 years :(
I've been thinking about this a lot... its wildly annoying.
I visited my grandparents a few years back. And one day it rained, so I borrowed their umbrella to walk dads dog.
Their umbrella was from 1985, and in perfect condition. No rust or holes, nothing wrong.
However at home, I have to buy a new umbrella every time it rains, or deal with an older umbrella which is either stuck, rusted of cracked/broken somewhere. It doesn't matter how nicely I treat my umbrellas, they just fall apart like a sandcastle being washed away by a wave.
And it doesn't seem to matter what price they go for. I'm sure I could order an umbrella from wish for 1 dollar, and get something better than what I paid 20 dollars for here.
I am so tired of this happening to almost all our things that we need. I am tired of having to replace everything almost the instant we get it. Idk, maybe we are buying the worst batch of everything, but... really though? what's the odds of buying a defunct product every single time?
I remember 1985. There were a lot of umbrellas that would disintegrate with the slightest breath of wind. They’ve long since gone to landfill, leaving only the few decent survivors.
@@katbryce with that in mind I hope I one day can find a unicorn umbrella ☂️ haha :^D
@@Smidgefishh When you hate something so much due to its "absurd quality", you started to create your version instead. And that's where the DIY trend landed in.
@@Smidgefishh "I become a top-class scientist to create myself an everlasting umbrella, and dress"
@@kasoffice9342 to be fair, I'd love to make my own umbrella that lasts for ages, but I feel like I'd need some expensive equipment to do so xD
Planned obsolescence should be highly illegal. It should literally put people in prison if found guilty. The fact that there are some idiots in primaloft golf vests that are, at this very moment, intentionally making their products worse to increase sales over time is just horrifying and I hope there'll be justice one day.
THISSSSSSS
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
In a deeper meaning he pointed out that many of our needs, if not the majority are fictitious. And the companies convinced us that we NEED all of these products.
My personal favorite of this was the invention of antiperspirants. The company that created it pushed it onto the market, but nobody cared, so they hired a marketing agency that ran a campaign to shame women about their body odour, and then once the demand was artificially created, their product suddenly sold like hotcakes.
I can't wait for the time when someone invents a way to talk with another person in the room telepathically, and then they would start running an ad about how disgusting the movements of human lips are and everybody should buy their product instead. /s
@@Horvath_Gabor Same for listerine. They invented Halitosis to sell their mouth wash which before that was a household cleaning solution akin to pinesol
Spot on
@@Horvath_Gabor I read somewhere that shaving body hair for women was also introduced this way by big shaving companies... By shaming women into thinking that their natural body hair is ugly and unattractive.
I spot a great potential for reducing co2 emissions without sacrificing standard of living.
Planned obsolescence in phones and computers is a really big problem, considering that they require non-recyclable alloys of rare metals, which are running out. This could make the digital revolution collapse in a generation.
Buy from Costco. Return everything.
I still use the same laptop for almost 10 years, and the only thing that broke was the battery
Not as big of an issue with computers if you build your own. I built my last one in 2011 and just built a new one in 2021. I honestly didn't even need to, it just felt like it was time. During those 10 years I upgraded the RAM, the video card, and the SS drive all to be more powerful. The only component that ever failed and needed to be replaced was the first motherboard after 3 years. The second MB is still going strong going on year 8.
@@j.u.c.o Well done!
@@DoloresJNurss You don't need to buy new pc's every few years if you build your own like JuCo said. Now with consoles that's a different story
You open my mind, Thank you.
Man, the fact a lot of these obsolescent trends began cropping up around the 1920's/30's really adds a whole new level of context to the Great Depression, which I think is really fascinating as a rare but extremely enlightening crossroads between science, history, and economic principles.
that was all predicted by Karl Marx
The age of invention eventually collided with the age of advertising. Once marketing emerged with easy to earn sales commission and easy no down payment credit everything changed. We’ve been deceived ever since. The green economy is little more than a marketing sham. If you sell an ideology hard enough people succumb to crowd psychology and flock to buy into it even though it’s selling claims are dubious.
The Global Slave Masters want a modern Great Recession and they call it the "Great Reset" The answer to this is the GREAT AWAKENING where humanity purges the Technocrats for their crimes against humanity.
@@ericmacrae6871 most government officials also saw it coming decades before it happened. And it would start with farmers as predicted. They experienced there depression almost 10 years before the stock market depression
Yooo thank you for opening my eyes to this
Fun fact: The Centennial Bulb isn't even the only Shelby Electric Co lightbulb still in existence. It's just the oldest (and therefore most famous) one. There are actually 26 lightbulbs that were made by Shelby Electric prior to 1914 that still function even to this day.
@@KarldorisLambley I agree. Would love to know how efficient that bulb is for that pitiful 0.1 candela amount of light
Henry Ford built model T , model A , and 8n tractor to be serviceable & useable, as long as possible, and he did not “run-out of customers”. That economic “downturn” was a construct .
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
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
Believe in Jesus and you will be saved ❤
No
“…I couldn’t imagine we had better lightbulbs (phones, TVs, cars, clothes, appliances, etc) and then made them worse. “
Every industry now has their own Phoebus Cartel, it’s the new standard business model.
Thanks for a great video!
The worst part is the cost to enter the market. While we were buying (say) a saddle, it was easy: "everyone" could make one - so one maker kept the other in check.
Now we talk about a 3 billion dollar (USS dollars) plant, and people say it is cheap. CHEAP!
It really limits who can enter the market.
Oligopolies are dope! 🔥🌎🔥
Edit: for them, I mean 😈
Not every industry. A lot of products doesn't require conspiracies to be obsolete - and the main example of that is agriculture... But that's also true for entertainment, culture and many others.
The truth is that we could all have a lot of basic needs fullfilled and only have to regularly buy food, music and a few other things, but instead we're artificially dependant on stuff that last 100 less times than it should.
@@Ezullof but there is also a "conspiracy" if you will of monsanto suing agricultors (who dont use their products). And big companies have big lawyer budgets... so they do as they please, sadly.
Lul wut?
Shout out to Louis Rossmann and his efforts towards right to repair.
Yes
Indeed
Hell yeah
For sure!
Amen to that.
What is the bulb at 5:12? Can you give me any information on it or how I could purchase some if available?
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.
"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
15:53 you optimistically say we've "finally reached the point of what is essentially an everlasting light bulb" for LED lights... Buuuuttt... Big Clive had a teardown of several LED light bulbs recently. His findings? Many use similar internals, the same circuit designs, and they ALL overdrive the LED to put out more light at the expense of life span. In other words, we have LEDs and circuits of higher quality, easily capable of extremely long life, BUT there seems to be similar market forces at play yet again, where the manufacturers of the most common bulbs are artificially keeping their products from being "TOO GOOD."
Lupine lighting systems from germany makes top tier outdoor lights, undervolting the leds for battery life, repairs for ages, excellent customer service, and even upgrades for older lights (my fathers flashlight has i think only the case original, the batteries and worn out switch were replaced and the leds upgraded) this comes at the expense of being one of, if not the most expensive brand for outdoor and bike lighting (luckily their new streetlegal bike lights are quite popular)
i saw that too and it got me paranoid. i destroyed many led bulbs like this (why can't they just make them disassembleable...) but midpriced ones from aliexpress are actually UNDERVOLTED with gigantic heatsinks. since then im using them around the house and only 1 has failed and that was from a really unfortunate event and a proper electrician mucking about in the apartment above.
So I made a comment in the main feed. But this is exactly what I was referring to. It's the Dubai light bulb from Philips. They use more LED filiments so they don't overload them and they use way less wattage to light. I'm not an electrical neard so I can't tell you all the details off the top of my head. Look it up if you aren't already aware.
@@MsHumanOfTheDecade can you give us the link 🥺
@@timdec5488 Those are called Dubai light bulbs because they'll never be sold outside Dubai. They only begrudgingly make them for dubai because the alternative was to be banned from the country entirely.
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
Imagine the waste of resources, human labor and damage to the environment, that the planned obsolescence have costed the world... For all the products that this tactics have been used combined, we're probably talking about many millions of human lives wasted to sustain this system, let alone the resources and the environment...
So true my friend ....this is very bad for the enviroment.
I saw your thumbnail and thought, "Wait, I commented on this video already?" Nice pic!
The alternative system, maybe not planned obsolescence, but probably. Greed pervades all systems. But in our system, the cartel broke up after about a decade. In the other system, the gov and cartel are the same thing by design.
The question then leads to "what to do with all the people who aren't working?" I recommend looking into the Rat Utopia experiment. It shows that when animals no longer have to worry about life, they end up with all sorts of horrible issues. I despise planned obsolescence as much as anyone, but people without work is potentially a worse issue to have.
I don't know the correct answer. I don't think anyone does. I personally feel that we just have too many people, and that have an addiction to progress. It could very well be that we are playing out the story of Icarus, and we won't know we are metaphorically flying too high until our wings melt and we fall to earth.
@@Puzzlesocks "I personally feel that we just have too many people"
Except lots of people make economy of scale possible. Smartphones would be prohibitively expensive if the population of the world were significantly reduced.
Anyway, I liked your reply and I also don't know the correct answer.
I remember hearing about Isaac Singer, whose sewing machines were so durable and long-lasting, that when people traded up to a newer model, he had the old machines destroyed, to keep them out of the second hand market. My old 1939 model treadle machine still works like new.
There's actually a kind of resurgence for these old sewing machines, akin the vinyl.
That's the beauty of rather "primitive" designs, fewer, simpler parts, mean fewer parts that are less likely to break. Also easier the fix.
@@lunakoala5053 vinyl wasn't really good though.
@@DanateDMC that's not my point, yes vinyl is overrated.
But it's "in" again among audiophiles, and so are vintage sewing machines.
@@JohnDoe-wx2oo Isaac Singers? Well by the name alone I would guess Jewish, but I fail to see how that's relevant.
Back in highschool my mom bought me a newer singer model since I was into sewing at the time. Had a bunch of buttons and lights, was kinda hard to understand how to use at first. A few months later our elderly neighbor gave me her older model that she never used. It only had 2 knobs and a slider on it. I took the older one and my mom took the newer one. Present day we threw out the newer model since it kept breaking. The only thing that ever broke on that older one was the needle. Now my sister is using it much more than I ever did and it still works perfectly fine.
My grandfather tunes up & repairs Model T cars, in a garage next to his home. The fact that they still can run, even now, is honestly mind-blowing.
planned. obsolescence. The government is trying to ban those cars as they're """unsafe""" and """not certified"""... They're verbooten. Not allowed. Taboo. They harm the government's plan to keep you in a tight cage endlessly farming you for "tax" money.
The fact that they weren't complicated enough to break terminally is part of the reason. A Model-T doesn't have an oil pump, or a water pump, or a fuel pump, or even brakes at the wheels, just one in the middle of the transmission, They also weigh a heck of a lot for what they do since stronger lighter materials weren't used yet, and so they had very low performance and high consumption, but they also couldn't easily rust out because they were made of basically solid rail road rails.
So a Model-T can run forever, but it doesn't run very well for what it consumes. Including operator time in near constant tending to it.
That being said, there's still a lot of the world that would LOVE even an old Model-T compared to what they have now.
@@dimitar4y They ARE unsafe, they don't have airbags and highly compressible bodies, in a car crash you almost certainly die rather than just getting hurt.
@justan idiot simple pumps use a 100$ circuit board that gives the ghost in 2 weeks instead of just .... you know, on-off switch... IT'S THE NEWEST GREATEST MODEL WITH MANY FEATURES and we don't sell the old one anymore faaakk youuu give us 1000$ every dayyyy
A friend and I are building a '32 Buick Series 50 Coupe powered by a 2016 Suburban motor, and sitting on the suspension of a stretched '86 'Vette. It's been quite interesting fitting 20th/21st century tech into parts and assemblies that are 89 years old -- especially in the area of LED lighting and a workable dashboard. As my friend is 80, he had no interest in an ADB glass panel dash, but he did go for digital gauges. In another month, we'll be ready to install the computer, put coolant in, and fire it up! Time on project working nights and weekends is at about year #2....
I love the hints of hopefullness in the video! Reminds us that things can and are getting better.
Just for information, "TEPCO" is not "Tokyo Electric", it is "Tokyo Electric Power Company" which provides power to the East half of Japan (except Hokkaido).
"Tokyo Electric" is a company that existed from 1890 to 1939, which merged with another electric company "Shibaura Seisakujo" to become the company we know today as "Toshiba".
interesting...i learned something today. thanks
Wow, thanks for the information bro
The issue was never about technology being better, but humans being greedy and greed should never be the solution to fix anything
I didn't think my comment would be interesting to anyone, basically.
Thank you! to the Veritasium viewers who thought it contributed something (at least) to the community 😊
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"The man in the white suit" would be a very relevant movie to remake today.
I think it would be a great film to pixar-ify for kids, but Disney sure does love their profit so idk if thatll ever happen
yeah and how he defeated Thanos with his superpowers and guns and explosions, you know? One every year..
Maybe redoing it with a smartphone or a perfect (1000x the mWh per 0.0001 the weight of a li-ion) battery instead of a cloth could be a very interesting start point for a remake of that movie.
@Free Mankind unless you have a set of sanitary institutions testing every medicine that they are going to buy and emitting fines for dozens of millions per years because of security issues or private lobbying attempts, and you have free medicines and you have to pay only 36 euros for whatever exam, surgery, or rehab plan you need to do because you live in a real nation and not in america.. Big pharma only wants money, find a way to structure its demand of money over time and you will have all the quality you want.
@@AlxBrb The US has the best healthcare in the world. Nobody flies to the UK or Canada (or whatever shithole you're from) to get cutting edge care.