Phoebus cartel

The article is incredibly biased. Although Phoebus was a price fixing cartel, the "planned obsolescence" is bullshit. Walmart replaces all of their lights and ballasts (power converters for the lights) on a regular schedule. That is why you rarely see lights not working at Walmart anymore.

They don't do it because they want all the lights to work. They do it because if they don't, it costs more in energy and the brightness goes down.

Long life incandescents also put out less light per watt and end up using more energy as the bulb ages as well as the light decreasing. Often times I would replace the bulbs before they died because the light was too low.

We do not have "truly free markets" and never have. This is not an example of that because there are no examples of that.

Re: Phoebus cartel

#6

Post by legitster » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

Reading up on it, it seems like the justification for creating Phoebus was to standardize the industry (it's the reason all of our lightbulbs today follow the same rating system and screw in the same way). But clearly they ran amok to serve their own interests.

Cartels are very interesting: historically few are successful long term - there is too much incentive for newcomers to undercut prices. They need something to keep new entrants at bay. It seems like in this case they pooled their patents together.

IEEE has a more detailed write-up: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/t...

Re: Phoebus cartel

#7

Post by nateburke » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

Great link in the wikipedia article to Gravity's Rainbow. Love this quote from the Byron the Bulb episode:

"His youthful dreams of organizing all the bulbs in the world seem impossible now—the Grid is wide open, all messages can be overheard, and there are more than enough traitors out on the line. Prophets traditionally don't last long—they are either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make them stop and think, and most often they do pull back. But on Byron has been visited an even better fate. He is condemned to go on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything. No longer will he seek to get off the wheel. His anger and frustration will grow without limit, and he will find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it."

Re: Phoebus cartel

#8

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

ptdel wrote: post #2

I don't see how this is relevant in today's world. - sent from my iPhone

[deleted]

Re: Phoebus cartel

#9

Post by zaphod12 » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #6

Reading up on it, it seems like the justification for creating Phoebus was to standardize the industry (it's the reason all of our lightbulbs today follow the same rating system and screw in the same way). But clearly they ran amok to serve their own interests. Cartels are very interesting: historically few are successful long term - there is too much incentive for newcomers to undercut prices. They need something to…

I suppose that's true, but I'm not sure it's fair to attribute the rise of a newcomer to the death of this specific cartel. WWII did a number on the global economy

Re: Phoebus cartel

#10

Post by Ibethewalrus » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

chisleu wrote: post #5

minikites wrote: post #3

This is what results from truly free markets.

The article is incredibly biased. Although Phoebus was a price fixing cartel, the "planned obsolescence" is bullshit. Walmart replaces all of their lights and ballasts (power converters for the lights) on a regular schedule. That is why you rarely see lights not working at Walmart anymore. They don't do it because they want all the lights to work. They do it because if they don't, it costs more in energy and the brig…

Source about Walmart?