601–610 of 877 posts
Like the author said, there are a million brands but only a few manufacturers. Consumers can't buy based on reliability, even if they want to.
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Well that, and a home appliance doesn't cost 1/7th of your annual budget anymore. Some things were built to last because to justify the expense, they had to last. James May (unusually) made a very good point that the "good old days" is an illusion created by survivorship bias, nostalgia, and failure to understand economics. The survivorship bias especially should be obvious: Lots of cheap crap was made throughout the…
Well, there's buckling spring model-m style keyboards, or even other keyswitch keyboards vs typical gel membrane keyboards... but even then, the casing material and backplate on a newer unicomp doesn't match the older IBM keyboards... it's definitely cheaper plastic everywhere except the keys themselves. Unicomp are about the only kb mfg today whose keys don't show obvious wear within a year of purchase. Even Lego is…
Being both non-American and non-public, LEGO are less susceptible to the MBA bean-counting that is at the root of most of the problems described in this thread.
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recycling in the US has to be profitable. Where I live we are no longer allowed to put glass into the recycling because it is no longer a profit center for the city. I should add that getting rid of big items can be especially difficult, but most appliance delivery includes taking away the old one to .. wherever they go.
> to put glass into the recycling because it is no longer a profit center And because recycling it is one of the most pointless things you can do. It's sand, we have unlimited quantities of it, the planet is made of it.
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That's what I do. I bought the "dumbest" TV I could find; I just want a display with speakers and HDMI inputs. Give me something I can plug the latest smart streaming box into and change that box as needed.
I think it should be that way with cars. Just include a screen and some buttons, then let people connect their smart phones.
https://www.android.com/auto/ http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/
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Right, no one would ever make products intentionally worse as part of creeping modernism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel No one would ever, for economic reasons, plan (or just allow) for the lifespan of their products to decrease. http://resource.co/article/lifetimes-household-appliances-be... Technology is always getting better! The old timers who almost universally report this phenomenon just don't kn…
>Technology is always getting better! >The old timers who almost universally report this phenomenon just don't know enough arm chair statistics. Delusional, basically. Most all the links that you've referenced do acknowledge the role of perceived obsolescence, ie, replacement of an appliance before its useful life is up. That, along with selection bias and the absence of solid data from the 50s-70s, are important fac…
Selection/survivorship bias isn't something you just get to make up... it's also not a smart guess, in this case, because the common anecdotes don't make the mistake of saying "oh, most of these washers are new, therefore old washers must suck." That would be selection bias, but no one is saying that, as far as I can tell. They are saying, the average age of appliances at replacement is decreasing over time. Selection bias would not explain that.
Now the GP, whose train of thought you seem to relate to very closely here, suggested -- without evidence -- that labor costs have gone up, explaining why you both seem to think people simply throw away good appliances now, instead of repairing them.
The problem is that real labor costs have been stagnant for middle class workers (i.e. appliance repair people) during the period for which I actually cited data. So it's very unlikely that would be the explanation. Can you generate another explanation for why people would throw away good appliances now?
Apply this to gas grills as well. Spend $500 at Lowes/HomeDepot and you will have a pile of rust a few years later. At least in the grill industry (for now) you can still choose to spend higher $$ to get much better quality. An AOG ( http://www.aoggrill.com/ ) will cost you 3-4x the Lowes grill, but it is 100% stainless steel with a 10yr full warranty. That thing will outlive me. Unfortunately you won't find these at…
I have had to replace burners and heat shields twice but it still works. Every part that isn't stainless steel is rusting away but fortunately, the internals can be replaced on the cheap.
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I also studied engineering and I think your professor missed the point. You don't overengineer stuff anymore nowadays, not because you want to scam your consumer out of money (aka planned obsolence) but because the design tools got better and every gram of metal or plastic and every screw and every operation like welding, glueing and so on costs money. Nowadays simulation tools, new manufacturing processes and experi…
To your point, I saw or heard an interview with a Ford engineer a while back where he basically said look we know how to make parts that last forever, but they are heavy and expensive. He went on to say people want more affordable cars (cheaper parts) and we need to make cars lighter for fuel efficiency standards (lighter parts), so they set an internal goal of 10 years of longevity for a part, and then try and make…
A while ago I read the biography of Anton Philips. He described a board meeting where they decided to make the lifetime of a light bulb 1000 hours instead of 5000. So they actually decided to make their product less good, only to get more (short term?) profit. (some) people are never satisfied, always want more more more...
Wouldn't the free market solve this automatically?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
But I guess in the end the free market did bring about it's demise, when Scandinavians produced cheaper alternatives.