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A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

mstdn.social

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Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#341

Post by pessimizer »

karaterobot wrote: post #315
Qwertious wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above all else, and reliability basically not at all Don't blame the consumer for this. It's just The Market For Lemons at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons If you really need someone to blame, then blame the MBAs who buy up quality brands and then sell junk until the reputation is all ground up.

This isn't a relevant paper, not only because it's not about home appliances, but because it's about a situation where there is information asymmetry. I can research everything I need to know about a refrigerator before buying it, including whether it's a piece of junk or not.

No, you can't.

What you can do is read as much as possible, and make a guess. Most of what you have read will probably have been indirectly sponsored by the manufacturer, or one of its competitors. None of it will be rigorous - in fact, the most honest information you get will be anecdotes from people whose purchases have failed, and who are as likely as not outliers.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#342

Post by JohnFen »

jdminhbg wrote: post #305
Qwertious wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above all else, and reliability basically not at all Don't blame the consumer for this. It's just The Market For Lemons at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons If you really need someone to blame, then blame the MBAs who buy up quality brands and then sell junk until the reputation is all ground up.

> It's just The Market For Lemons at work. It's not, really. Information about brand reliability is widely available. People just value different things.

> Information about brand reliability is widely available.

Information that you can trust, however, is harder to find.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#343

Post by magicalist »

dublin wrote: post #320
jancsika wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best low-end Frigidaire you can get today is around $750. For $5k you could buy 6.7 of them. Lowe's extended warranty appears to be 5 years, so I'm guessing these things are designed to last 6 years. 6 * 6.7 = 40.2 years. My own estimation is that a $5k fridge today will last perhaps 10. And most of that money is going toward smart features that add complexity, which adds to the risk of having to pay for repairs.…

Not as much as you think - the people selling them want you to think the old ones were awful and need replacing, but they were designed for both reasonable efficiency and decades-long life. (You really need to factor in a literal 6-10x lifespan difference into efficiency and environmental impact figures, too...) I have a large 60s/70s vintage chest freezer I bought on Craigslist a few years ago. I worried that it was…

I mean, it's a cooler packed with a bunch of frozen stuff. Of course it's cheap to maintain its cool, that's why it's designed the way it was.

> in Austin (with the highest electric rates in the state, by far)

This is tangential to your point, but this isn't remotely true

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#344

Post by amluto »

bombcar wrote: post #204
Swizec wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would I not want more insulation in an oven that's going to be used a lot more? Primarily different regulations. Everyone interacting with a commercial oven is a trained professional getting paid to be there and the space is designed to a certified standard. This means you can focus more on pure performance and less on liability stuff. And commercial equipment, because it needs to last long, is optimized for ma…

Insulation on a home oven is to protect the kids (by trying to keep the outside from being finger burning hot) and to let the heat slowly dissipate into the kitchen. A commercial oven runs all day when it is being used, so it will eventually get hot no matter how much insulation you have unless it's somehow cooled or can send waste heat elsewhere.

The outside of an oven running for a long time will tend toward a steady state temperature at which heat is lost from the surface to the room (by radiation, conduction, convection, etc) is the same as the rate at which heat is added to the surface (from loss through the walls). Increasing insulation will decrease steady state temperature, and keeping a safe exterior temperature matters even in a commercial kitchen for safety and for comfort (even if no one cares about the comfort of the cooks).

One can also actively cool the exterior surface by forcing air through a gap in a double wall oven. Many residential ovens do this.

As far as I know, the actual material difference with residential ovens is that most of them are mean to be installed in cabinets, which severely restricts the amount of heat that can be safely dissipated through the walls.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#345

Post by coryfklein »

jdminhbg wrote: post #305
Qwertious wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above all else, and reliability basically not at all Don't blame the consumer for this. It's just The Market For Lemons at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons If you really need someone to blame, then blame the MBAs who buy up quality brands and then sell junk until the reputation is all ground up.

> It's just The Market For Lemons at work. It's not, really. Information about brand reliability is widely available. People just value different things.

> Information about brand reliability is widely available

I too see this information everywhere but I have no idea what to trust on this anymore and what information is paid for and gamed by the companies themselves. Brand reputation is its own business these days with its own products and markets.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#346

Post by etblg »

imchillyb wrote: post #23
dustincoates wrote: post #7

This reminds me of the same types of complaints around air travel now versus the 50s/60s. Both ignore the relative costs and the fact that you can still buy high-end fridges or first class tickets if you are willing to spend the same amount of money that you would have had to back then.

There is no real world comparison between air travel in the 50’s with anything else, except perhaps rampant enshitification. Double decker airframes, a standing lounge, smoking on board, unrestrained pets at the lounge… Nothing compares to the removal of these standards on all domestic flights. No industry did the consumer as dirty.

Choosing the 1950s as a great time for air travel seems like an odd choice, the first pressurized airliners to be used widely started in the late 1960s.

Air travel in the 1950s was done in slow propeller planes like a DC-6, which were very loud, had a low service ceiling, had a low range, weren't particularly safe, and were unattainably expensive for most people to use.

The 747 was only put in to service in 1970, the 737 in 1968.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#347

Post by layer8 »

karaterobot wrote: post #315
Qwertious wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above all else, and reliability basically not at all Don't blame the consumer for this. It's just The Market For Lemons at work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons If you really need someone to blame, then blame the MBAs who buy up quality brands and then sell junk until the reputation is all ground up.

This isn't a relevant paper, not only because it's not about home appliances, but because it's about a situation where there is information asymmetry. I can research everything I need to know about a refrigerator before buying it, including whether it's a piece of junk or not.

> I can research everything I need to know about a refrigerator before buying it, including whether it's a piece of junk or not.

Nope. The information made available is usually laughably sparse. And often you only learn about the model’s reliability when it isn’t in the market anymore. Models change faster than reliability can be assessed.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#348

Post by amluto »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #265
starbugs wrote: post #3

> Thing is, producing crappy, cookie-cutter, uninspired, overpriced junk that falls apart within 5 years (generously speaking) pays more to the shareholders. That's how we got from there to here. This summarizes it quite well for me.

I get a little tired of repeating this, but there are some good reasons why fridges (and most appliances) are the way they are now: * Strong regulation on energy use by appliances (modern fridges are much, much more efficient than ones from 70 years ago) * Extreme competition from companies all over the world * Consumers who care more about convenience and cost above all else, and reliability basically not at all The…

> Just take a look at modern clothes washer agitators compared to the old ones.

Huh? Good modern clothes washers don’t have agitators. Agitators clean well, but they are terrible for clothing. A good modern front loader cleans almost as well and damages your clothing much less in the process.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#349

Post by D13Fd »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #74
ljf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also do entirely plain units that last well with no 'extras' - their commercial units are also great and easy to repair. But most people want to spend as little as they can so avoid the commercial units.

You do not even have to use commercial units. Go to Costco.com or HomeDepot.com or Lowes.com or BestBuy.com and you can filter for fridges without unnecessary frills and see many options. There are at least 7 different simple top freezers at Costco, and at least 3 French door freezers without even water dispensers. Not sure what else people want, other than to complain.

Have you actually tried this? In my experience if you do it this way you just end up with the low- or ultra-low-end stuff that lacks those features, but is also of generally poor quality.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#350

Post by hobo_in_library »

dublin wrote: post #320
jancsika wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best low-end Frigidaire you can get today is around $750. For $5k you could buy 6.7 of them. Lowe's extended warranty appears to be 5 years, so I'm guessing these things are designed to last 6 years. 6 * 6.7 = 40.2 years. My own estimation is that a $5k fridge today will last perhaps 10. And most of that money is going toward smart features that add complexity, which adds to the risk of having to pay for repairs.…

Not as much as you think - the people selling them want you to think the old ones were awful and need replacing, but they were designed for both reasonable efficiency and decades-long life. (You really need to factor in a literal 6-10x lifespan difference into efficiency and environmental impact figures, too...) I have a large 60s/70s vintage chest freezer I bought on Craigslist a few years ago. I worried that it was…

> You really need to factor in a literal 6-10x lifespan difference into efficiency and environmental impact figures, too...

I would love to see energy efficiency regulations take the item's expected lifespan into consideration instead of being a mere "energy per hour" measurement.

One simple/naive way to do it would be to divide (energy per hour) by the number of years on the warranty. Your warranty is for twice as long as the other guy? Then your device can use 2x the energy.

Obv, this would require the warranty to be a "full" warranty, and not something manufacturers can too easily weasel out of.

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