Your and others' comments on this thread remind me of a though I had lately.
In the "before times", you would buy things that would last. So naturally, the companies that made them could not sell new products.
Planned obsolescence was one natural outcome that we ended up with. An electrical engineers I know told me how designing a CPU that would last a lifetime is relatively easy compared to designing an equipment that will fail only 5 years from now, but not earlier.
I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound. Right now economy, to me, seems like a thing of perpetual growth, but in a cancer-like way.
> I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound.
Regulation.
Fun fact: this is still possible! It's a little harder – it'll have to be steadily introduced, in multiple countries at once (so we don't break international trade), starting in the areas where it's cheapest to produce lasting equipment (so enforcement doesn't take out entire sectors), and I don't yet know what the regulations would look like, but if it's possible to make lasting things, it's possible to require manufacturers to make things last.
We need to do this, sooner or later, anyway: we simply don't have the raw resources to continue as we are.
guy4261|2 years ago
Planned obsolescence was one natural outcome that we ended up with. An electrical engineers I know told me how designing a CPU that would last a lifetime is relatively easy compared to designing an equipment that will fail only 5 years from now, but not earlier.
I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound. Right now economy, to me, seems like a thing of perpetual growth, but in a cancer-like way.
wizzwizz4|2 years ago
Regulation.
Fun fact: this is still possible! It's a little harder – it'll have to be steadily introduced, in multiple countries at once (so we don't break international trade), starting in the areas where it's cheapest to produce lasting equipment (so enforcement doesn't take out entire sectors), and I don't yet know what the regulations would look like, but if it's possible to make lasting things, it's possible to require manufacturers to make things last.
We need to do this, sooner or later, anyway: we simply don't have the raw resources to continue as we are.
unknown|2 years ago
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