Designed Obsolescence v. Perceived Obsolescence et al.

[RAGE CAGE]

It's an interesting concept. Certainly, we can't all be farmers. What is the compromise?

I like the way you think...so I will play :devil:'s advocate on this.
While we can't all be farmers, we can't displace all farmers to build shoddy tract housing for frightened city dwellers suffering from urban sprawl syndrome, or vast expanses of empty strip malls. The devious Housing Bubble having been popped, along with credit default swaps and mega financial institutions shorting their own over leveraged bundled reinsurance sub prime morgtgage interests may reset the sytem- or it may not.
Is the compromise to live within one's means?
Is the compromise to strive for self reliance?
Is the the compromise to seek happiness outside the realm of material posessions? Who really knows.

 

[RAGE CAGE]

My parents have a refrigerator from 1988 that is still working and is in great condition. I know a few people who have had brand new refrigerators last for only 3-5 years. The same seems true with air compressors. My father has an old 35 gallon compressor from the 70's that has its own oiling system, it is just starting to leak. Most of the new compressors are oiless ones which depend on teflon seals and are unserviceable, they only seem to last for a matter of months.

I know- I have the original 1959 Caloric pilot light gas cooktop in my 1959 built home- works just great and I bought a "efficient" front load washer that died in 3 months.:candle:

 

[kingofwylietx]

jtr1962, you put a lot of thought into your response. I completely agree with your basic premise, but what to do about it?

Some minor points:
1. electrical grid - what you see is old, but underneath, the systems are continuously updated and upgraded. I work close to this field and the little substation (distribution) down the street may have been built in 1940, but inside it has a lot of digital equipment. Many substations are going switchless (in the physical sense) by utilizing automatic digital relay panels (something we sell) that can replace 80 switches in a tiny footprint. Transmission lines are still copper, so physically, not a lot has changed. However, there are many more safety and reliability devices to help prevent loss of power. Generation is much more efficient and cleaner now. Even todays coal plants are quite clean when considering emissions. Some of the old generation plants are crumbling, but they are only used a few days each year (long complicated explanation as to why they keep these). The generation plants that supply +95% of our power are in very good operating condition and upgraded regularly (though they may look aweful on the outside).

2. I completely agree with your comments on homes. Factoid: Did you know that homes used to be built by highly skilled craftsmen? Do you know how hard it is to even find a craftsman today (if you exclude the Sears tool brand)?

Most of todays homes are 20-30 year products (used to be 50+ years) built by unskilled labor using the cheapest products. This is what you get in the <$1M. If you are fortunate enough to be able to spend over $1M, you'll still get a lot of cheap product....but there will be some good stuff mixed in too.

3. Today, solar panels are a 'feel good' product. They don't pay for themselves yet, not at the consumer level. There has been a lot of progress made in the past year that may make them worthwhile soon. However, right now, you will pay to use them. The price per watt is too high, they don't last forever (they steadily lose output similar to how a lightbulb dims over time, so they are useful maybe 20-25 years with the best ones?), battery systems are expensive (batteries don't last that long and add to landfill).

4. I agree that products should be designed to last longer. My parents always told me to avoid buying cheap junk. I have learned that [generally] better products are less expensive over time because they last longer and need replacing less often. It doesn't always correlate to price, but many times it does to a certain degree.

 

[orbital]

+

If we didn't have the inherent desire to have more & more,....
we could simply subsist.
Most people in the world are easily told what to think, these people are led to believe they need something.

Designed Obsolescence exists because we let it.

 

[kingofwylietx]

I like the way you think...so I will play :devil:'s advocate on this.

...............live within one's means?
...............strive for self reliance?
...............seek happiness outside the realm of material posessions?..

You are Dave Ramsey's advocate

I think that if more people did these 3 things, (I'll add another) and made an effort to purchase quality products.......we would see a dramatic decline in designed obsolescence.

Perceived obsolescence is more psychological. What someone perceives to be real, is real to that person.

 

[RAGE CAGE]

I think that if more people did these 3 things, (I'll add another) and made an effort to purchase quality products.......we would see a dramatic decline in designed obsolescence.

Perceived obsolescence is more psychological. What someone perceives to be real, is real to that person.

You may have just hit a quality nail on the head with a 1923 Estwing Amercian made Hammer.
BTW- I think the Amish already know what the solution is.

 

[kingofwylietx]

But I don't want to become Amish. I just want to be able to purchase quality products, with my hard-earned money, in a way that is financially responsible for my family.

 

[Patriot]

Without any doubt, there are problems with the system and some real problems with pollution but the generalizations made in the first video are faulty. I about fell out of my seat when she started to reason about not "paying for the radio" and her assumption that health insurance is the right of every human being is classic. I've love to address each propagandist, red flag, point made here but I don't see anyway of doing this without making it an UG topic. I suppose I could possibly touch on a couple things vaguely though...

The section about "Consumption" was probably the least convoluted, other than her continued demonization of corporations. She also assumes that product "obsolense" is always planned or perceived, when sometimes it's actual based on the rapid rate of technology increase. Technologies exist today that just didn't a few years ago. The PC industry and processors are a perfect example. Since the PC is a tool, it's the progression of tool technology. For example, the computer I'm using right now is about 5-6 years old and works fine for typing in this forum but it's not capable of heavy video processing or for running larger more complex software with far more "tool" capability. As for turning a blind eye to the obvious, Government is one of the most wasteful entities on the planet but she seems fine with that revolving waste cycle (other than the military) because "it's the governments job to watch out for us and take care of us." Yikes! I love her concern and ambition but she's trying to wrap up one of the most complex dilemmas in existence into a partially unrealistic package.

 

[RAGE CAGE]

Without any doubt, there are problems with the system and some real problems with pollution but the generalizations made in the first video are laughable. I about fell out of my seat when she started to reason about not "paying for the radio" and her assumption that health insurance is the right of every human being is classic. I've love to address each propagandist, red flag, point made here but I don't see anyway of doing this without making it an UG topic. I guess I'll just keep reading....:shrug:

P.S. The section about "Consumption" was probably the best and most logical, other than her continued demonization of corporations.

Yeah..and she kind of fragged/slagged Radio Shack too on the $4.99 Radio....lol
agreed on the consumption aspect...dumbed down or not- it kind of made me think about how all the peices of the puzzle are not fitting together real well lately.

 

[fyrstormer]

We have long had a culture of waste. Before the 1970's the average appliance, toy or tool was designed to be maintained. They used screws and removable covers and spare parts were often easy to get, even if you had to buy a used one to use for parts.

Ebay is the modern version of this. People buy non-functioning units from their former users, strip out the working parts, and sell them back to other users who know how to fix their own widgets. Until they start potting everything in epoxy (which they never will, because then even the manufacturers would have to throw away units that fail QC instead of repairing them), they won't be able to kill the market for replacement parts.

Since the electronics revolution of the 70's, more and more devices were transistorized and marked with "No user serviceable parts inside". Fuses went from little glass tubes on the back of the TV to rice grain sized devices on a circuit board. Replace instead of repair became the norm.

Be careful what you classify as "waste", now. Throwing away a burned-out IC is much less wasteful than throwing out a bin full of burned-out vacuum tubes. The problem, I suppose, is that nobody wants to learn how to solder anymore, or else they don't feel like shipping the dead unit back to the manufacturer so the manufacturer can wave-solder a new IC into place and put the unit back into circulation. It's really the user's fault for being lazy, not the manufacturer's fault, at least insofar as the difficulty in servicing "comes with the turf" as opposed to being made intentionally difficult to discourage repairs.

While we think of the automobile as the poster boy for planned obsolescence, the computer is really the leader in this area. By design, each version of Microsoft's products require better hardware. By design, they refuse to provide support for older versions and will not license it. By design, they lobbied for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which makes it illegal for anyone else to provide fixes for their products.

I have two computers at home; one is a Sony laptop from 2004, and the other is a self-built desktop PC from 2003. (my work computer was built in 2001.) The Sony has been upgraded with a solid-state hard drive and a 802.11n wireless card (which required taking the entire lower half of the case off, yeesh); the old hard drive got put into a hot-swappable external enclosure and is now used for backing up files on my desktop PC. The desktop PC, on the other hand, has had virtually every original component replaced since I first bought it, and the originals are all still in-use in computers I have since built for my family. A few months ago I took the remaining spare parts and built a clunker to donate to a charity; it works fine, but it's obviously pretty slow by today's standards, but at the same time computer speed has leveled-off; the parts go as fast as they can now, give or take a little finessing.

The end result has been a self perpetuated cycle of needing new computers to run the new software that you have to buy to be able to run current applications. The new computers, of course, have to have the new OS to ensure that you have to upgrade your applications too.

To a certain extent that's true, because the engineers (such as myself) have been trying to push the technology to its limit, much like what happened from the 70's to the early 2000's with the combustion engine. Once that practical limit is reached, however, only incremental progress is made from then on, and the software running on that hardware will also reach a limit of what it can do in a reasonable period of time.

This could only happen if we are already conditioned to the idea that things are disposable.

I see a different problem: most people are too damned lazy to figure out how they can use what they already have to suit their needs at any given moment. (it may be egotistical of me, but I'm going to exempt myself from this because I reuse just about everything at least once.) To a certain extent, this can be blamed on slick marketing, as evidenced by the people standing in line to get a new Apple iPad when it doesn't even do anything their iPhones can't do, it's just a different size. (Woo, that's exciting, no really. ) But past that extent, it is, once again, the fault of the consumer for not looking to what they've got on-hand and applying their ingenuity (or a smart friend's ingenuity) to turn it into what they want to have. I realize the human brain burns 20% of a person's daily calorie intake even when they're slacking off and watching TV, but calories are so cheap anymore that there's no excuse to indulge the old instinct to think as little as possible.

Remember, when you point a finger at someone else, your other three fingers are pointing back at you. Fix your own bad habits, then blame The Man and his Establishment for causing all your (remaining) problems.

 

[RAGE CAGE]

fs'r......
lol...a giant 1.5 lb i-phone that will NOT fit in ANY pocket.
Safe to say you are self reliant on the high end electronic consumer front.
Have you ever thrown a dvd player in the garbage because they are only about $20 now. Sorry to say- I have- but not until I have taken it apart to see if there is anything inside that I can re task.
Soldering is almost becoming a lost art- and who needs to sweat copper now that there are sharkbite copper fittings- laziness at it's finest.
Soon you will have to go to an amusement park to see a master plumber or carpenter at work- much like the blaksmith attractions of today.:sigh:

 

[jtr1962]

1. electrical grid - what you see is old, but underneath, the systems are continuously updated and upgraded. I work close to this field and the little substation (distribution) down the street may have been built in 1940, but inside it has a lot of digital equipment. Many substations are going switchless (in the physical sense) by utilizing automatic digital relay panels (something we sell) that can replace 80 switches in a tiny footprint. Transmission lines are still copper, so physically, not a lot has changed. However, there are many more safety and reliability devices to help prevent loss of power. Generation is much more efficient and cleaner now. Even todays coal plants are quite clean when considering emissions. Some of the old generation plants are crumbling, but they are only used a few days each year (long complicated explanation as to why they keep these). The generation plants that supply +95% of our power are in very good operating condition and upgraded regularly (though they may look aweful on the outside).

I'll take you at your word here since you work with this industry. I'm just going by what I see, and as a layperson, it's less than reassuring. One interesting thing is recently the local utility started putting pipes under the street in preparation for putting the lines underground. This couldn't come soon enough in my opinion. I've always thought running electrical lines on poles was kind of half-a$$ed and a low-quality, less than reliable solution ( and ugly as well ). So this is a very visible, welcome upgrade to me.

2. I completely agree with your comments on homes. Factoid: Did you know that homes used to be built by highly skilled craftsmen? Do you know how hard it is to even find a craftsman today (if you exclude the Sears tool brand)?

This is the reason I do almost all home projects. Good quality work is hard or impossible to find at any price we're able to pay. Besides, there's a lot of satisfaction in DIY. But your point is taken. Highly skilled craftsman are so rare in this country that we had to go to China to find someone to build the new high-speed rail line in California. The fact that skilled craftsman are in short supply here is all the more reason to start more infrastructure projects so we can home-grow talent. It's frightening to be in a position where you depend upon other countries for much of what keeps your country going.

3. Today, solar panels are a 'feel good' product. They don't pay for themselves yet, not at the consumer level. There has been a lot of progress made in the past year that may make them worthwhile soon. However, right now, you will pay to use them. The price per watt is too high, they don't last forever (they steadily lose output similar to how a lightbulb dims over time, so they are useful maybe 20-25 years with the best ones?), battery systems are expensive (batteries don't last that long and add to landfill).

All true but development here is so rapid in 5 or 10 years they will likely be competitive with conventionsal sources. In some areas they already are. It depends on how much you pay for electric. Much of the country still pays under 10 cents per kW-hr. We pay about 30 cents, and it's likely to go well over a dollar in the next few years. Solar power is competitive with that right now.

4. I agree that products should be designed to last longer. My parents always told me to avoid buying cheap junk. I have learned that [generally] better products are less expensive over time because they last longer and need replacing less often. It doesn't always correlate to price, but many times it does to a certain degree.

I look for products which are either well-made to start with, or if not, can easily be upgraded by myself.

Perceived obsolescence is more psychological. What someone perceives to be real, is real to that person.

And you did indeed hit the nail on the head with this one. More often than not, people discard perfectly serviceable products because advertisers tell them to. People are lazy in finding out if what they already own can be made to do what they want. I've already had relatives on the verge of buying a new PC because their old one was "too slow". It turned out that their machines were simply bogged down with spyware, and also the TSR programs which get installed with seemingly every piece of software you buy these days. Once all this junk was cleared out, the machines were just fine. Now they're in the habit of just saying no when software asks to install this or that. Usually ( always? ) these TSR programs aren't needed. Often they simply link to the sites of associates. I think the software writers and hardware makers are in cohoots sometimes. The former writes bloated code with plenty of TSRs to intentionally slow down machines so the latter can get consumers to do regular upgrades.

In general though, there are plenty of resourses for DIY online and elsewhere for those willing to learn. It's a shame more people don't partake of them. I would imagine if enough did, big business would get in a tizzy and seek to ban or tax DIY sites given how their business model would be affected.

 

[blasterman]

We're making things which don't last

Uh, that might be better stated as "We BUY things that don't last".

An annoying example is right here on this site with the trolls in the fixed lighting section that are obsessed with cheap LED retrofit lamps and apply all standards accordingly. LEDs are only capable of 35-40 lumens per watt and lasting 20k hours, and any claims otherwise will get a grocery cart thrown at you.

 

[ElectronGuru]

if people didn't upgrade their homes every 7 years, then the suburbs would stop sprawling.

Put 10 people in a room and ask them most anything, much of the time you'll get 10 opinions. When most of a given society wants and does that same thing, there's often a subsidy at work.

Corn syrup doesn't taste that good. Federal subsidies of corn production make it so cheap that its practically given away. Result: massive consumption of corn based calories.

Housing is a bit more complex, but the same forces are at work. The money spent subsidizing corn is miniscule compared to that for home ownership. We love 'writing off' the interest on home loans, but this is governmental encouragement for ownership. Without it, there would be more renters and fewer owners.

But why low densities? The primary obstacle here isn't finding the land or even making the larger structures. As has been said, its the infrastructure that connects all the houses (and neighborhoods) together. These costs are usually not paid by the new home owners or even developers. Local governments install much of the water and power lines along with neighborhood streets, while state and federal governments pay to connect them together. Even the lawns popular in suburban arrangements are subsidized. Usually water intensive, government projects are usually responsible for making it cheap and plentiful.

Were the entire cost of new developments shouldered by new owners, there would be far fewer new developments - (with far smaller and fewer lawns).