and uses four times the electricity and substances that have been banned since the 80s
…and burns people’s homes down due to lack of safety features.
…and children choke to death from easily removable small parts.
…and people get electrocuted because of a lack of warning label telling them not to use it in the bath.
You say this like it’s a bad thing.
You do see how many mother fuckers are around now a days?
And killing americans because it doesn’t have enough warning labels.
“Does not grant you the ability to fly”
And require regular matinence and still fail
Counter point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Counter-counter point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint
Count pointer:
Count Pointers:
Count Pointer:
*p++;
Happy cake day
Contra Points:
3
:3
I don’t think that’s relevant to this post. They aren’t saying that they want to recreate every old patented appliance. I am sure they would be cherry picking just the best ones from that era.
There are good appliances being made now. They’re just much more expensive than the cheap and “midrange” which is usually the cheap stuff with a coat of paint.
Or it’s just the cheap stuff with more “features”, so it actually breaks faster.
Guess how much its gonna cost
62€50
That would be relevant if we had no idea why the device broke down. In a plane shot down we can assume it was hit in a place that is critical to flight. We don’t know what took it down. We know the 5 year old fridge is not working because a $3 thermostat has stopped working but the part is not available and the computer onboard will not accept a generic one off the shelf.
It’s like any other luxury.
Back in 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour. You could get a meal at a diner for under $1.00 or go to a really swanky place and spend $4.00 or $5.00.
Today, minimum wage is $7.50, a diner meal is $20.00, and a luxury meal is $100.00
You can go out a find a really well build product that will last, but it will cost ten times as much as the one you can afford.
Ah yes, the Sam Vimes’ boots theory
Nope, totally different.
Look at the price of Super Bowl tickets.
First Bowl tickets were $10.00. This year they were going for $6,000.00
Top luxury car in 1960 was $7,500.00 for a sports car and $35,000.00 for a Rolls or Bentley. Most expensive car today is $30 million.
The rich have gotten much, much richer and ‘need’ to spend more so people will notice.
That’s how you can tell Discworld is a work of fiction. It has rich people that are actually sensible about their wealth
In “The Stars My Destination” Alfred Bester wrote that conspicuous consumption was the basis of all civilization
I agree with your larger point, but I think the super bowl comparison is poor. Popularity has changed so ticket prices will have gone up. The first Super Bowl is not what it is today. The luxury car example was a much better like-for-like comparison.
This is true for some products but absolutely the opposite for many others. You can go buy a $500 jacket that will outlive you but good luck finding a car or fridge that won’t break, especially the high end models with all the bells and whistles. Samsung will happily sell you a $5k fridge that has dozens of features that will break and require servicing far more frequently than the $500 white apartment fridge.
Err no, minimum wage is 13,90€
The only thing I know close to this is Maytag has a “commercial” washer and dryer line. It’s no frills, made in America, and has a 10 year warranty. That’s the line I chose.
Edit: It’s their Centennial line it’s made with their “commercial technology.”
I’ve gotten 15 years out of a Miele washer. Dryers are hard once they went condensing, though. Best you can get is just one where you can at least clean the lint out.
Speed Queen is also quite good, and honestly LG does pretty well in my experience. A big problem I think is people really wanting matching appliance sets.
You should look at the most reliable brand for each category and go that way, because just because Electrolux makes good washers for example doesn’t mean their ranges or dishwashers are going to be any good.
Embrace the mismatched scratch and dent appliances and you will achieve happiness
People match their washer to their dishwasher? I think if you’re going to do that, the Miele recommendation is probably the way to go.
When I was doing my shopping, LG and Maytag were trading places for most reliable
Specific models of Maytag. They also slap their label in junk Chinese ones as well.
You can buy appliances which will last that long, but they cost a lot of money. The reality isn’t that people forgot how to make things durable, it’s that consumer demand is so conditioned by price, most people “prefer” to spend less on appliances they will replace more often.
The average appliance these days is actually significantly cheaper when adjusted for inflation compared to the 60s and 70s.
One caveat I would note: lots of people can’t afford expensive, durable appliances.
It’s expensive to be poor.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Except good working boots are not cheaper just more comfortable. Due to the sole being a raised you need to replace it every 2-3 years which isn’t that cheap either. Speaking from experience
Yes, I’ve heard about that theory. The boot example is good because everyone can relate.
THIS.
Especially when it comes to things like Tvs.
“Would you like the extended warranty out to 5 years for an extra $200”
No because that would have made my $600 tv an $800 tv which will be made to look like a piece of crap by a $400 tv in 5 years.
This sounds great, I’d love to see an example if anyone has one handy for e.g. kitchen appliances.
Basically commercial grade equipment. A $10k oven/range which is designed to work 15 hours per day non-stop in a restaurant will last forever in your home. All the commercial manufacturers make “consumer sized” versions of their restaurant stuff for high end home kitchens.
I do think they are onto something. I just want a dishwasher that washes dishes, a dryer that just dries, a refrigerator that refrigerates. I don’t need another camera and tablet or more “smart” crap in my home, it’s just one more thing to break or need updating. I just need things that work reliablely when I need them to work.
Also, less plastic in the manufacturing material would be great. Just me thinking out loud but it also seems like it would be easier to control the life span by using plastic because you can play with the chemistry to start breaking down at a certain amount of usage and temperature and age.
Also just use bimetal temperature instead of making everything be digital, in lot’s of cases you don’t need that much and it is much cheaper to replace single simple cheap component than whole electronic board that costs half the price of new machine. Got dad that works on gastro repairs and this is quite common.
I want a dishwasher that washes dishes, that I have the schematics to so that I can hook up my own arduino and have it broadcast on MY network when its done. Same for everything else. The internet of things wasn’t a bad idea PER SE, its just that people were dis-invited to owning their technology. We don’t have a culture of repair.
You might be interested in this.
TLDW: Reverse engineering projects for firmware and communication on Miele/Bosch/Siemens appliances allowing local smart home integration of dumb (or smart) appliances.
The projects are FreeMDU and bsh-home-appliances.
in 2005ish, I went to Sears and picked up the most expensive bag vacuum. I think it was an elite something. 20 years later, I had to change out the hose once because I dropped it down the stairs and its been amazing.
If you take inflation into consideration, high quality products still exist at about the same price. Its just that there are now MUCH cheaper options now.
If you take inflation into consideration, high quality products still exist at about the same price.
There’s another side to all this. We used to have appliance and, specifically, vacuum repair shops. Sometimes, the latter were franchise operations by manufacturer/brand. Electrolux and Oreck had stores that also did repairs, to name two. The business model had a lot in common with the auto industry at the time. To me, that stands as a cautionary tale of how things can get twisted around to cost the consumer more money in the long run, not less. I think it’s an important consideration, as old designs/patents were from and for a market serviced on all sides by this business model. But we can do better. If such products were designed to be user-servicable, there wouldn’t be a strong need/want to capture breakage as another revenue center.
So, we can absolutely bootstrap a new “buy for life” economy, but I think the downstream user hassle, repair, and secondary costs are crucial to consider.
Its just that there are now MUCH cheaper options now.
This is the part people keep ignoring. I keep calling it “realizing the actual cost of things.” Nowadays, you can buy cheap, but you’re going to get something fragile and packed-to-the-gills with surveillance and advertising. To get what grandma had (e.g. a refrigerator that runs for 50 years and just keeps food cold), anything cheaper than the inflation-adjusted equivalent costs you in other ways.
Meanwhile, over in the hobbyist and professional tool world, we’ve been saying “buy nice or buy twice” for a long time now.
There are also different standards when you care about the environment. Old school fridges used incredibly bad greenhouse gasses (R22 and R142B) and were significantly less efficient using approximately $250 MORE energy per year than a modern fridge (1750 kWh vs 450kwh) so only factoring in your electricity bill you could buy a $2500 fridge every 10 years and break even and if you got a cheaper fridge like a whirlpool you could get a new one every 5 years for 50 years
Don’t get me wrong there is still planned obsolescence but a lot of the older designs aren’t as perfect as people like to remember them being
I love buy nice or buy twice. I think Harbor freight gets a pass though.
The second buy can even be the nice one. If you’re unsure how much use the tool will get, buy cheap then upgrade after it breaks.
If you take inflation into consideration, high quality products still exist at about the same price. Its just that there are now MUCH cheaper options now.
I think the Sam Vimes Boots Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness plays a part as well:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
As the saying goes, it is expensive to be poor.
Great idea! Horrible for sales though. Plus no shareholder would wanna touch it with a 10-foot pole when they hear “customers first”
This is why you don’t do shareholders!
And stay small lol. I hate the corporate world (i work in it) but it is what it is
We need a buyitforlife… Sublemmy? I forget the term
i think it’s just called a community but someone correct me if i’m wrong
Brother there are five
There is an open source hardware movement underway already, I’m hoping they get to large appliances soon.
They would cost $5000 each and burn your house down
Nah
Modern laws set power limitations (at least in EU)
That’s a horrible plan for a start-up.
How do your investors cash out?
Here’s a lovely british fridge from the 50’s: https://c7.alamy.com/comp/R2K1Y1/original-1950s-vintage-old-print-advertisement-from-english-magazine-advertising-frigidaire-refrigerator-circa-1954-R2K1Y1.jpg
the larger, budget model (250 liters, so about 2/3rd of a current single-door basic fridge) is 152 guineas. For those of you not usally paying in pre-decimal british currency, that’s 152 pounds and 152 shillings or 159,60 decimal pounds. Inflation from 1955 makes that about 2000 pounds/dollar/euros today.
No auto-defrost, no actually closing door, and a barely-adequate temperature controller. It did come in sherwood green though, with a kickass counter top!
I have an old Radio from the 50s - big wooden piece of furniture with a turntable and everything. The plug on that thing is absolutely terrifying, super flimsy and so small you have to almost touch the prongs to plug it in.
A plug is probably the easiest thing to replace on an appliance.
True, but that may be indicative of other safety issues that are not as obvious.
I mean that you should probably at least deal with the plug, if you ever use that thing.
The plug on that thing is absolutely terrifying, super flimsy and so small you have to almost touch the prongs to plug it in.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the secret of building appliances that outlast their owners.
So, this is TOTALLY doable with two caveats:
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For most things, you’re going to need a variance on high-efficiency and pollution laws. Those old appliances weren’t sipping water and electricity, and their refrigeration cycles threw out tons of waste heat and used refrigerants that were super rough on the atmosphere.
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They’re going to cost 3 times as much as a current appliance. Those heavy metal fridges were expensive back in the day, they were equialent to thousands of dollars today with shitty freezers and manual defrosting. Cast metal and shipping are disproportionately more expensive than the used to be.
Optimize builds and manufacture after a order is made could work. Would be even more expensive.
Sell them uncharged. Up to the user to find the freeon.
or… art?
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