Comment by stabbles
1 day ago
With sufficient competition, the incentives of companies would change if consumers would be willing to rent instead of owning products. Then planned obsolescence is not to their benefit.
1 day ago
With sufficient competition, the incentives of companies would change if consumers would be willing to rent instead of owning products. Then planned obsolescence is not to their benefit.
I do think our consumer rights in Norway help a bit on this (the article is a page to the consumer agency here). We have 5 years mandated "warranty" on almost all purchases. Which means selling a cheap blender that breaks after two years, you as a shop/producer/importer have to eat the cost to provide a new one if it happens. Which means that the chance of something breaking becomes priced in, so you can't really get away with selling something flimsy a bit cheaper to trick the consumer.
5 years is great, but I'm sure in Norway they advertise "no flip" / "no turn" / "single-sided" mattresses as a feature too ;)
Planned obsolescence is absolutely to the benefit of corporations if those goods are being rented. Non-durable goods are inherently profitable to rent out at above the cost of outright ownership, because then the companies involved can double dip on the consumers paying the costs of producing the good as well as claiming depreciation on the good the company still technically owns. It's a similar concept to why owning durable goods and renting them out to consumers is so viable.
I imagine you're looking at it from the avenue of "if those goods last longer, they can be rented for longer", but having to manage and store more durable goods after consumers have moved on to newer and better things is a considerable cost. A good that has to be returned is often better discarded, from the company's point of view.
Most cars are rented nowadays and they are less durable than ever. It's better for the manufacturer to lease and then get you to upgrade periodically to keep you as a novelty-seeking consumer.
Long warranty is better as there is no other incentive who has to pay if the product breaks down. Cars should have a 7 years warranty by default for instance.
Aren’t newer cars more reliable than older ones? Back in the day it was a feat to get a 200000 km car and these days it’s like not that big a deal.
I wouldn’t really know, I’ve only used car share for the past 10 years shrug
We have reached a point where it's possible to make a car that lasts 200,000 km reliably, but the economic incentives are to make a car that people want to upgrade every few years. The ability and incentives are hugely misaligned.
My goto example for this is Hilti powertools. They can (and have) made some of the best tools in the game, but they now make most of their money from companies going the "fleet" option, where, for a monthly fee, tools can be replaced almost immediately when they fail. The result of this is tools that work brilliantly for a short time but are non-field-repairable, and aren't really designed to last any more.
Economic incentives beat engineering ability.
Cars and motorcycles have massively increased in quality compared to before. You can't fix them yourself as easily as before, but also you won't have to.
And this fact nukes most of the arguments made in this thread and in the article. Vehicles have become better because everybody who is going to buy a new or used vehicle will do very diligent research among their contacts to know which brands and models are reliable and which aren't. It's the free market and care of reputation in action.
well, if you religiously maintain the car, it was easy even back then. The dirty secret is keeping rust out of the car - in the winter, regularly wash it to avoid salt ingress, and generally store it in a dry (both physical and humidity) garage, to routinely change engine and transmission fluids and to only run good quality fuel.
Oh, and don't subject your car to constant short start-stop cycles (i.e. drives of less than half an hour), warm up the car prior flooring the gas pedal on a highway, and for turbocharged cars, take it easy on the last 5 minutes so the hot side of the turbo can cool down.
Ignoring any of that can kill modern cars just as fast as it could kill old cars. Even electrical cars need their love - don't always go for the HVDC charger, use trickle AC chargers instead whenever you can, and look what needs lubrication and maintain that (e.g. transmissions).
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Why would planned obsolescence not be to their benefit in a world where things are rented?
You still renting the old Xbox? Try renting this new Xbox instead, the verification cans come in additional flavors!
That would apply more to things like a washing machine or microwave - things that don't become obsolete quickly.
...some kind of subscription as a service model? looks up dramatically