Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Planned Obsolescence: Engine of the Consumer Economy

Episode Date: September 25, 2021

If you’ve ever heard an old timer gripe that things aren’t built like they used to be, that old timer was right! In this classic episode, learn about the nefarious, possibly mythical, mechanism that’s responsible for the cruddy products and waste our consumer society is based on. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's Select, I picked our episode on planned obsolescence. It's the one where Chuck and I turn into old fogies and start griping about how things today aren't as good as they used to be. But it turns out that we're right. It's one of the more eye

opening and maddening episodes, and hopefully it'll shine a bit of light on one of the more wasteful aspects of our global mechanism. I just made that term up. So sit back and check it out. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there, and there's Jerry over there. So this is Stuff You Should Know, built to break edition. Okay, I didn't, I was not paying attention when you said which one we were doing, and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to pick up on the clues. Wow. Well, right out of the gate, when did you have it when I said there's Charles W.

Chuck Bryant? I planned to break. Oh, okay, gotcha. That was pretty sharp, Chuck. Hey, man, after 11-ish years, it's as easy as that. You can read my mind. So let's talk about the Civil Air Patrol. He just threw me off. Luckily, it wasn't enough for me to stop and correct you, though. I'm excited about this one, because planned obsolescence is one of those things that's, I think, just annoying to people like us. Were you raised with the idea of planned obsolescence? Were you aware of it when you were younger? No, because when I was a kid, things seemed to last longer. I had the same refrigerator, my entire life as a child. Yeah, same metallic P refrigerator.

We even got it refaced. That's how long you could have an appliance like that. It's like the styles have changed. So just get a new front for it. That's astounding, man. I didn't even know that you could do that. Yeah, I mean, I doubt if you still can. No, you definitely can't. Back then, they were like, yeah, this is a 50-year fridge. So every 25 years, get a new thing on the front. Yeah. Well, if you're sitting there going, a guh, when Chuck said 50-year fridge, that's okay. That's the world we live in now. The point is, it didn't used to be that way. Things used to last forever and ever, right?

So what changed? That's a big question that's on people's mind. And what a lot of people point to is something called planned obsolescence, which is pretty straightforward if you think about it. It's basically companies deliberately making their products so that they last a shorter amount of time in order to make you, the consumer, have to go back and buy another one much more, much sooner than you normally would have if the things were built to last longer. Yeah. And there are a lot of ways that this can go down. It's not always just like, hey, build it cheap or build it out of cruddy materials, but that is certainly one way to do it. Obviously, with smartphones and the technology sector of the world, that's where you really

hear a lot about this because I know a lot of people have been frustrated with smartphones and the fact that like, hey, maybe I want to go five years with a smartphone and not have a new update, make it slow, or not have my battery not work after three years and stuff like that. Right. And I mean, it shouldn't have to be like an identity statement to keep a phone for five years, like you're swimming against the current or sticking it to the man. You should just be able to keep your phone for as long as you like. And it's still not only continue to work, but also to be like compatible with the rest of the world going on around it. That's just not the case. That's just not how things are made, especially in the technology sector, like you were saying.

Right. And here's the thing is, it's like, this is something that a company is not going to admit to. It's not against the law. Some people say it's a myth and it's just like tinfoil hat territory. Other people say, no, it clearly totally happens. Yeah. And then other people even say, yeah, it happens, but this is great for the economy to keep people making stuff all the time. Right. So there's this idea of, you know, is planned obsolescence a real thing? And if it is real, because I think you kind of touched on it with that third group, some people are like, yeah, it is real, but it's not like deliberate and out of like a sense of avarice or exploitation. It's just kind of part of the world we live in these days. I think a lot of people that are

like, no, it is real and it is deliberate and it is out of avarice. And it stinks. It does stink. We'll find that there's a lot. There's a lot wrong with it. Right. Yeah. So this early light bulb story is pretty interesting. Way back when Thomas Edison invented a light bulb in the late 1800s that people could use in their homes, he used carbon filaments, which were eight times thicker than the tungsten filaments that came like later, like three decades later. So these things lasted a long time and they were built to last and I can't believe I'm 48 years old and I never had heard of the centennial light, which is a light bulb from 1901 that is still working in California. Yeah. And a fire station in California and it's

on almost all the time. It's not like they, they turn it off for 35 years at a stretch. Now you probably wouldn't want to turn it off at this point, I would say. Probably not. That's probably the only reason it's working is because it doesn't know, it doesn't have to. Right. They've got like the, the scotch tape over the light switch with like do not turn off. It's dim now though. I saw that it's down to about a nightlight four Watts or so. Well, it's been burning for 118 years. Give it a break. Hey man, I'm not, I'm not knocking the centennial light. He's my favorite little old light buddy. Not my presence at least. But yeah, I mean that thing, point is they were built to last and initially this is because electric companies installed and maintained

all these systems, including like, Hey, you need a new bulb, like we'll come and take care of it for you. Yeah. And then that got shifted to the consumer and they were like, Hey, and they literally were like, Hey, because there was a concerted effort that wasn't just like some abstract thought. There was something called the Phoebus cartel in the 1920s when all these electric companies from around the world and bulb manufacturers got together and literally colluded and said, Hey, let's make light bulbs not last as long because we can sell more. Yeah. Collusion. Can you believe that? I can actually believe it very much. Not only it is not like they got together, like they sent some letters or smokes and cigars or happen to have like a conversation, a club or something

like that. Like they met in Geneva, Switzerland to hold a secret meeting to form a light bulb cartel to make light bulbs last a shorter amount of time so they could sell more. It's just, it happened. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's very much proof. If you're like, hmm, planned obsolescence and really a thing, like there's proof that at one point it was definitely a thing. It was a thing in one of the earliest industries around in the post industrial age. Yeah. So, so the light bulb cartel kind of, it definitely, it's not like that just kicked off everything where everybody was like, Oh yeah, that's what we're going to do from now on. It's almost like the impression I got is that this is an independent idea that was just kind of cropped up throughout the course of the 20th

century. But the next people that hit upon it, I think I don't, it's entirely possible that these guys were all sharing info, you know, the light bulb guys were like, Hey, you, you car makers are being idiots. Here's what you need to do. Yeah. They're all the same places in the cat skills every summer. That's what I would guess. Seeing that young upcoming comedian, Henny Youngman do his bit. So, so the, the automakers were the first to hit on it next. And specifically a guy named Alfred P. Sloan, who was a groundbreaking early president of General Motors who said, I've got an idea. We could sell way more cars if we just make little updates here or there every year to the same car, but just change it out enough so that you want the newer car. It's

newer. It's flashier. It's better than the car you own. So maybe after a couple of years, somebody will take their car that still works just fine and trade it in for a new one. And he's the guy who came up with that. Yeah, that's called dynamic obsolescence. And I mean, now we take it for granted because that's all you hear about is the new model year. But previous to that, I mean, I'd love to do a show on the early auto industry. I guess they just made cars and they were called the whatever. And I mean, when did they make new ones every five or six, seven years when they had a real innovation? Well, he had this idea in like the 20s or 30s. So they, there weren't, they wouldn't have been cars for that many years. Yeah, before them. But I think it was just like

the Model T or the Model A or the, the box with wheels, you know, which all of those were, right? Yeah, the actual term though, planned obsolescence was in a pamphlet for the first time in 1932, written by a real estate broker named Bernard London. And this pamphlet was called, you know, it's 1932. It's like the big pamphlet writing days, right? You don't get enough of those anymore. You really don't see too many pamphlets outside of like a government office or something. Right. Or if you're in Vegas and it's just got, you know, you know, you know what everyone knows. Yeah. Those kind of pamphlets. Right. But this was in 1932 and it was called, ending the depression through planned obsolescence. So right there, it's in the title. First time

it had ever been used. And this was a plan for, for products to include an artificial expiration date. So the idea was if you're a consumer and you continue to use that product beyond that date, sort of like, you know, taking a old pill or drinking old milk, except you would be charged a tax like, Hey, you're still using that fridge. It's two years past its date. So you got to pay a tax on that now. Right. And it did not take hold surprisingly or unsurprisingly. Right. But there's, supposedly from what I saw, there's 15 copies of that pamphlet known to exist still and they're all in libraries. And there were 20 originally. Right. Exactly. But that Bernard London, he had,

you know, he had kind of an idea, but it was misplaced. It was in the wrong place. It was like, nobody wants to tax the consumer for using an item they paid for fair and square. That's just, that's not going to be a very popular idea. So he had, he was kind of on the right path, but he found a tree and he started barking up it and it was the wrong one. You know what I mean? Yeah. But that was, in fact, that same year, there were two other guys, Roy Sheldon and, this is a great name, Egmont Arons. And they wrote a book that wasn't too far off that pamphlet called Consumer Engineering colon, or lease of a colon in a title, a new technique for prosperity. And they called it creative waste and just basically flat out said, we should make things

that are less durable because, you know, people are going to buy more stuff. Right. That was in 1932. Yeah. Which, I mean, lays the foundation for the consumer economy that we live in today. Like that's it right there. These guys came up with the basis of it. Yeah. And it got me thinking about like, when you, when you, there are places that make really awesome things that are like just like their selling point is this is really built to last. Right. Whether it's a wallet or you know, a piece of clothing or something. No, there are these, you know, there are these high end wallet makers now that are saying like, this is the wallet that you can have for 60 years like your father. I didn't know about that. But they often say things like, you know, use military

grade fabrics or this or that. And I think that's just like back then they used to use the highest grade. Right. And calling it military grade sounds all fancy. But what that really means is we use stuff like they used to because it just lasts. And now only the military does that kind of thing. You know. Yeah. No, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, that's what, that's what Bernard London and Roy Sheldon and Eggma Arons, the foundation of their ideas, even though they were separate ideas, was that things were made too well back then. And Bernard London's idea was, well, you can just keep making them really well, but you have to say that you can't use it beyond this, this date, which wouldn't work. But Roy Sheldon and Eggma Arons said, well,

we could go the opposite way and just make stuff less durable and sell more of it. That's the whole point to stimulate the economy. Because remember, both these were written during the depression and they, their idea was to stimulate the economy by artificially creating repeat customers that otherwise wouldn't exist because the stuff that you would go by is too durable. Like if you go buy a hose and that hose is going to last you for the rest of your life and you're not in a business where you need multiple hoses, you're just a homeowner. You're not in the hose business. You're a hose maker. Well, I'm actually referring specifically to a hose that my dad bought from Sears in the sixties. He still got it. He still had it until

the nineties and it sprung a leak and Sears used to guarantee everything that they sold for a lifetime. My dad took it back to his Sears and they gave him another hose in the nineties. Right? So, but the idea of a hose lasting 30 something years, let alone being replaced when it, you know, for free when it, when it breaks, like that was, that was the problem. Stuff was just made too well. And you can actually go on to like Etsy and eBay and sites like that today, Chuck. And there's like a whole, um, a whole like subculture, I guess, of people who buy vintage appliances that still work. They were, they work like they did the day you bought them. Like I saw a Sunbeam mixer from 1930 and it says like works perfectly well, has a few scuffs on

it. That's it from 1930. That's coming up on a hundred years ago. Yeah. It also weighs 275 pounds and it catches your house on fire. So you'll have to pay a lot of money to have it shipped. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's crazy because that was this early planned obsolescence was in the thirties and forties when we think of that's when they were making great stuff. And like now it's progressed to the point where it's just like, let's just make pure garbage, right? But won't last a year. The point originally was that, that it would stimulate the economy if you could sell the same person's stuff multiple times over their life rather than making something that lasts a generation so that they only have to buy the one hose for their lifetime, right? Well, your dad has

two nicknames now, the herbal Elvis and one hose, one hose Clark. One hose Clark. All right, shall we take a break? I think so. All right, let's take a break and we're going to come back and talk about a man named Brooks Stevens right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there

for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going

to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird. It got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So this idea is out there. Planned obsolescence. It's been written down. It's a term. It really kind of became more common in the 1950s, even though it was first written about in the early 1930s. And this is where a man named Brooks Stevens enters. He was a Milwaukee industrial designer and he did a lot of stuff. He worked in the automobile industry. He worked in the appliance industry. And basically, his whole jam was, no, no, no, we need to make things obsolete and not last very long because this is good for industry. Right. Let's go get that bread. Yeah. Go get that bread and keep people working, keep people making stuff.

At a 1954 advertising conference, he gave a speech where he said, quote, instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary, end quote. It's right there. Just make it a little crappier, a little crudier, and you'll sell more of them over a long period of time. You can take the long view of it. And if you are looking at it strictly from an economic sense, like an academic sense, this just makes total sense. It's perfectly normal and rational and kind of a good idea. But when you put it into practice, we've found there's a lot of problems that start to emerge pretty quickly and emerge so quickly that Brooks Stevens gave that very famous speech,

well, famous among industrial designers, but he made that speech in 1954. By 1960, six years later, there was a popular book by a guy named Vance Packard called The Wastemakers. And it was basically about all the problems that come from that kind of mentality that planned obsolescence creates, all the waste associated with it, all the unnecessary consumerism, all the keeping up with the Joneses that emerges, like just six years after that speech. So really quickly, people started to see the problems with planned obsolescence like right out of the gate. Yeah, this Vance Packard, I think maybe we could try and do a short stuff on. Yeah, easily.

Just kind of reading up on him. He was sort of a pre Ralph Nader social critic. And I guess Nader was a little more toward public safety, but Vance Packard, he wrote a bunch of cool books and essays, one called The Hidden Persuaders that tackled the advertising industry and subliminal advertising and stuff like that. He's like the arch enemy of Edward Bernays, I imagine. Those one called an essay called The Naked Society, which had to do in the 1960s, I think, about consumer privacy, so like way ahead of his time. Yeah. And then the last thing he wrote in 1989 was called The Ultra Rich, Colin, how much is too much?

How much is too much? Yeah, so he died a few years later, like up until the very end was kind of fighting the good fight for saying what a wasteful, invasive, gross society that we're building here in the United States. Yeah, it was an interesting dude, definitely the kind of author that guys like Gladwell and Friedman and all of them sort of followed in the footsteps of, but he kind of laid the groundwork for that, that kind of reporting on kind of the ugliness of the society that sold to us. I think we should definitely do a short stuff on him. Yeah.

Okay, some pinky swear? Pinky swear. Okay. Oh, your pinky's cold. I don't know if that's soothing to me or frightening. It should be a little frightening. I'm frightened by it because it feels sweaty. Guys, I don't think Josh is dead. My nose just falls off onto the table. Oh, God. Oh, let me put that back.

No problem. The funny thing is, as long as you could keep podcasting out of probably like, that's fine. It'd be fine, yeah. I like corpse, Josh. You buy me like a steel rod to go in my spine for Christmas. Yeah, but I'd have to buy one every couple of years because they don't last like they do. It's true. They don't last like they used to. That's another thing. I really, really want to say this, Chuck, because I'm sure to,

especially some of our younger listeners, we sound like a couple of fogies who's like, they don't make it like they used to. No, it's proven they don't make things like they used to. It's not just people like pining for the good old days or anything like that. Like, there is a definite progression of increasing cruddiness among the stuff you buy and the shortening in the lifespan and durability of the things we buy. It's just happening. Yeah, it's funny when I see stuff on social media about people complaining about their fridge that doesn't work or this or that and like, what about the lemon law? I'm always just like, oh, that's cute.

I'm sure you're going to get real far with the lemon law. Yeah. Although we should look into that for a short stuff too, because there is such a thing. I just don't know how, you know. I'm sure we've talked about it. We talked about it before. I swear we have. Maybe in the, God, we even did a show years ago on extended warranties. Oh, man. I harken back to that show pretty frequently. Like whenever I'm offered an extended warranty, I'm like, wow, that sounds like a really good deal. What did we say in the extended warranty episode? Oh, yes. Never get the extended warranty. It's never worth it if I remember correctly. All right. So shall we chat a little bit about some of the worst offenders these days?

Yeah. First up on the t-ball tee is Apple. Yeah. Apple is in the news a lot and is very much at the center of the talk among the skeptics and on the skeptics websites about their evil plan to keep you on their machines every couple of years through updates that slow down your phone, which was proven true. Yeah. Well, there's a class action lawsuit against them for it. Yeah. So here's what happened if you live under a rock. Apple got, they sent out an update. This is a few years ago and the update was shown and they admitted that it did slow the phones down. But their whole response was, hey, this is because the battery stinks. They're like, we're trying to make your battery last longer. So we're slowing some things down

in order to give you a better battery life. And then here's what we'll do, everyone. We're so sorry. You can buy a new battery for $50 cheaper for $29 instead of $79. So they replaced 11 million batteries in 2018. Did they really? I didn't know that. Yeah. Up from about, you know, replaced for $29 a piece. Sure. Sure. Up from one to two million in an average year, because I don't know if you've ever seen an iPhone buddy, but it doesn't have a little switch on the back that you just pop a little thing and put a new battery in. No, no. That's another big part of planned episodes that we'll talk about is there is a strict control over the product even after it's purchased. Oh, yeah. They want to control it through repair, through

everything. Yeah. So I was looking up on this lawsuit because I didn't know where it landed. And I think it's still going on. And the latest article I read was from February that said, basically Apple is squirreling away money because they're going to lose this thing. Oh, yeah. I'm literally setting aside money to pay for this lawsuit. That's so cute for a rainy day. Yeah. They've like opened up a new account. They went down to the bank and said, just call it lawsuit account. But here's the thing with Apple. It's not just the update thing. Like anyone who has bought a laptop from them like me lately or one of the newer phones and you're like, oh, wait a minute. I can't plug, like I've done since I had my Walkman,

I can't plug my headphones into this thing anymore without buying a little dongle, or I can't plug in a USB port because there is none unless I get some little adapter that they also sell. Right. So that's a classic hallmark of planned obsolescence is creating a newer model that is incompatible with older models. So if you want to keep using the older model, you're going to have to shell out some money one way or another. Or even if you buy the newer model, which is kind of an even bigger slap in the face, you have to shell out even more money for additional peripherals like chargers or headphones or something like that to make them compatible. Just making stuff

incompatible with older versions. It's a big part of planned obsolescence. Yeah. Do you know, I wonder how much money they made on the little headphone adapter. Oh man. It's 10 bucks. It's like $9.99. I've got one and I'm like, you know, I could really use another one of those because the worst thing that can possibly happen to a human being is to have two sets of headphones, one for like, you know, the flight on Delta and then one for your phone because they have two different ends on them. So I mean, to have to keep up with two sets of headphones is basically as horrible as it gets. So I'm probably just going to cave and get another adapter. Yeah. Or just quit ingesting culture.

Yeah. Well, flip phone. Yeah. Stop watching movies and TV all together. Yep. Sticking it to the man. The other, one other big offender that really gets my goat. And I know we are old guys complaining here. That's fine. But the old and young alike, I think can all agree that printer cartridges are one of the biggest, most frustrating, wasteful and environmentally damaging scams on the planet. Yeah. Which I didn't know about this. I've got a, I'm just going to go ahead and buzz them because I'm pretty proud of what they, what we got at an Epson printer at home. And it has like reservoirs that you fill with ink and hold a ton of ink from like a refill bottle. And

there's no cartridges involved or anything like that. The, the bottles that you refill it from are fully recyclable. It's just, this is good. Before we had cartridges, but they didn't have this particular component, which is a smart chip. Right. I had, so what I'm trying to say is I had no idea this existed until I researched this, but some printers, inkjet laser printers, home printers, the cartridges have a little chip on them, which is, I guess what you pull the tape off of when you load it into the printer, like a new cartridge. And it actually talks to the printer and says, here's how much ink I have left. What, what are you going to do this Friday? Oh yeah. Oh wait, I got another job coming in. Excuse me. And then eventually the ink level gets down to

a certain amount where the smart chip tells the printer, no more printing. They've reached the preset amount, not the amount where they've actually run out of ink, but the amount that the company has determined is enough. You can use, you can go buy another cartridge now. And these cartridges also, the smart chips prevent you from using other companies, cheaper knockoff cartridges, because the chips won't communicate with the printer. So it's like the printer doesn't know the cartridge is there and you can't refill them. They're designed not to be refilled. So they have to be thrown away and you have to go buy another cartridge. Yeah. And I've had that happen before in the past where I get down to, if I'm printing something out and just like simple black

text and it starts to come out a little brown and then it just stops. I'm like, I'm okay if it's a little brown. Right. I decide what's a legible printer. I know. So that's, there are, at the very least I can tell you Epson makes a printer out there that has reservoirs that you can refill with bottles and no smart chips. Okay. Give me some money Epson. The auto industry is, you know, still kind of doing the same thing that they started so many years ago, which is discontinuing parts that could keep cars running for a longer time, making those minor cosmetic changes for that new model a year, retiring models of cars that are really, really popular. Yep. Just because they want to bring out something new and make it harder to fix your old car.

So repairs Chuck, like we kind of teased earlier, that's a huge part of planned obsolescence. Like if you're the company that controls the market on your parts and who can repair your products with those parts, you have a, you're basically saying like I can see this product through after I sell it to the customer to ensure that it experiences just that artificially short lifetime. Yeah. And the thing that's so maddening about this is you can just hear it in the meeting rooms, you know, that like, and here's the best thing guys, we control the parts. We control the repair. Like the only thing we don't control is the shipping. And maybe we can make some deal with FedEx on that to get a little kickback. Exactly. I don't know if that really happens.

I'm just making it out. It probably does. No, I've got my tinfoil hat on. But as you can just hear it in the meeting rooms, and that's what's so frustrating is it's, it's just this ooze, steady ooze of greed with no regard for the consumer at all. Right. And just to lay it out, basically, you know, in explicit terms, if you're a company and you make a product, you can control that product after you sell it by saying, if you take this product, if this product breaks and you take it anywhere, but where we say you can say like to the Apple store or an authorized repair shop, you voided the warranty. So there's no warranty after that. You just, you just voided it. And by doing that, they can say they control what parts are used,

which means that they can be the only people who manufacture the parts that are used. Yeah. And then you say, can I fix under warranty through you? Then they're like, oh, we don't cover that under warranty. They're like warranty moron. So the, with the repair parts controlled, they can, they can raise the price or lower the price. They can adjust it however they want to make it so that it's actually as expensive to repair as it is to just buy another one or close to it. Yeah. To just basically nudge you toward, well, just throw this one away and get, get the newer model. Or they can also, this is a really big one, especially also in the auto industry. They can, they can stop making those parts, which are the only parts that you can use

to repair. So it ultimately eventually becomes impossible to repair that thing because all the parts, the finite amount of parts that were ever produced to repair them are all used up. There's no more parts available. Go buy the newer model. Did you see that used you go? The new used you go? No. Someone put a you go on eBay that had a 480 miles on it. Wow. And had been garaged since it was, you know, since 1988 or whatever. How much do they want for nine grand is what it sold for? Wow. Which, you know, it's nine grand plus you got to get that thing going again. Just it's been sitting there for that many years. It's clearly not road ready, but it was cherry and I think it's kind of funny that some no doubt tech bro with a little too much money wanted the most

ironic car in San Francisco. That is as ironic as it gets for sure. Every time I hear about you goes Chuck, I'm reminded of, remember that Saturday Night Live commercial for the Adobe? No. It was like the first car under $1,000 made out of clay. So when you got into fender bender, you just pour water on it and mold it back into shape. If only. Yeah. That was from like the Phil Hartman era. That's the opposite of planned obsolescence. It is. Clothing is sort of the same deal they make. And again, there are some clothing companies and I think more than ever now in recent years, well, not more than ever, but more than in the last 20 years, there are companies that are making really well made clothes. Yeah. But they're, you know, they're not cheap.

No. There are many, many more companies, huge, huge stores and big brands that are just pumping out cheap clothes because you're like, first of all, the styles change. So why do you want something? You don't want anything that's going to last more than a year or two anyway. Right. Right. But my beef, and we're calling that a lot of brands, might as well just keep it going. But when I was younger, you could buy a pair of Levi's and have those for a long, long, long time. Yeah. And a Russian would trade you a Ugo forum. Yeah, exactly. And now, like, I had a pair of Levi's for probably five months before I got a big rip in them. And that's sad. It's sad. Levi Strauss rolled over in his grave on that day. I know, man,

because that was the thing. It's just like these things are tough as leather. Sure. It'll last you so long. Like there's nothing better than inheriting dad's old Levi's. And it's just like, you know, or five months. Yeah, that's pretty sad to hear. Is there a middle ground? Can I get five years? Yeah, five years would be pretty good for some jeans. I'd take it. I always put, although I do less than I did before, but my jeans would always wear out, or my two thighs, my big fat thighs rubbed together. Sure. That's what would go first. Yeah. But then you can hide that for a little while until one day you can't. Right. You just hope that that day comes and you're not in public. I'm going to patch these because they're still

comfortable. But you shouldn't have to, Chuck. Shouldn't have to. That's a commie talk. I'm going to patch these. You want to know another racket? Yeah, yes. Or should we take a break and talk about it? We could take a break if you want. Or we can wait. Do you want to wait? Yeah, we'll go. We'll finish the rackets. This is fun, by the way. I'm having fun, like complaining about how stuff doesn't last like it used to. How about the college textbook racket? Okay. Hey, this is a new edition from the previous year. Oh, what's different? The page numbers. Right. So by the new one. Yep. Not the used one. Yeah, which is, I mean, like, if you're trying to follow along in class, that's kind of maddening because the information is

usually not that much, but it's enough to just throw everything off, right? Right. Whereas if they just put these things as like a supplement or an appendix or something in back, then you could just, or even to sell the additional stuff separately, you could, it'd be a lot better. Yeah, you could sell the little pamphlet for $8.99 and probably make money. Yeah. 15 copies. How about the toy industry? So the toy industry is frequently guilty. And this isn't the case across the board, but it kind of is of a specific subcategory of planned obsolescence called contrived durability. It's called garbage product. Basically. The toy industry isn't the only one that does it, but they're the ones that come to mind when you talk about this. And this

is purposefully using inferior parts that just aren't going to last for very long at all. Yeah. Especially the functioning parts, the stuff that moves or where the most stress is. Anybody who's ever gotten a switchblade comb and spent a half an hour just opening it and closing it, opening it and closing it. And then it breaks on the 50th time. Yeah. That comb was most likely made through a process of contrived durability. Right. And it's a big problem. Part of the problem is that's another really good example of a type of item that is just, are you going to take a switchblade comb into the switchblade comb repair shop? Yeah. And if you did, how much would they charge you? Would it be any more than you paid for like the three ping pong balls that you

managed to get into like a goldfish bowl where you won the switchblade comb from? I don't think so. Right. And actually we'll talk a little bit about some of the problems after this break here in a sec, but just an early, early shout to the death of the repair person. Yeah. And you died. Yeah. There are still some of those things, but like try and find a TV repair shop near you. Well, yeah. Try to find one that's open too is the other thing. And you can still find them in any given large city, but it's, it's not like it used to be where it was just like, oh, in any downtown there's a locksmith, there's a tailor, there's a TV repaired person, and or any kind of repair shop. Yeah. They are very, very few and far between,

but that may be changing as we'll see. All right. Let's take that break. Okay. Okay. Thank goodness. I had a lot of anxiety building up because I knew that break was looming. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey,

that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately,

I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, Chuck. So I feel like we've kind of hit upon the idea that planned obsolescence can be problematic. But let's talk specifically about the problems it does produce, right? Yeah. I mean, one of the big... Well, first of all, let's throw out some stats just so people know we're not just being angry. Okay. There was a study about four years ago in 2015 by a company in Germany, the Urco Institute. Nice. No E on the end of Institute, which is so German looking. Really? Because it's Institute otherwise. They found obsolescence was on the rise. Percentage of electrical and electronic products sold that were replaced because they broke within five years rose from three and a half percent in 2004 to 8.3 percent in 2012. And then household appliances,

which is one of the big gripes for people because those are high dollar items that you want to last 15 years. Large household appliances that had to be replaced within five years grew from 7 percent to 13 percent doubled between 2004 and 2013. This is a really rare study. Most of the evidence about this stuff is anecdotal. If you ever get your hands on an appliance repair guy who comes out, they will talk ad nauseam about how they literally don't make things like they used to and that the lifespan is like two to three years, five years, if you're lucky. But prices are still really high. Like it used to be like, okay, I'm going to shell out some money for a really good fridge. And you could tell basically by the price of the fridge, how long it was going to last.

That ended a decade or two ago. Yeah. You can still pay a significant amount of money for a fridge that has like a one year warranty. And it's going to last three to five years, even though you spend a significant amount of money. It's crazy. Yeah. Sometimes those appliance repair people will get specific too. I don't know if you've ever had this happen where they say, they don't just say like, oh, these things are junk now. They'll say like, oh, you know what they started doing is four years ago, they started making this part out of plastic. And I'd see the same repair over and over and over now. Right. And it costs X amount for them to even come out and diagnose the problem. X amount to put in the new part. And then you also have to pay for the part.

And depending on the appliance, I mean, like if it's a 1500 or $2,000 refrigerator, 500 bucks might be worth it rather than replacing it. But your $1,500 refrigerator just became a $2,000 refrigerator like 18 months later. Right. So that's part of the problem is the cost of repair when it is available can be a problem. But if your refrigerator does manage the last five years and they stop making replacement parts for it, four years after four years, you're out of luck after five years because you can't repair it anymore like we talked about. Yeah. We had a dishwasher that broke a lot from the first year that we had it. And it got to that point where I kept paying to repair it and getting angrier. And you know, Emily was eventually like,

neither one of us are like, oh, just get the new one. She was like, dude, we're spending more like we could have bought the new one for what we're spending on repairs because you're being stubborn about saying this thing should last longer. But you get in that sort of conundrum where you're like, you don't know what the right thing to do is. Yeah. Yeah. And eventually like just about anybody is going to be like, fine, I've spent more money than it would have cost or replaced. Yeah. Everybody's going to cry uncle eventually. I think it's just some people do it faster than others, you know? Yeah. One of the other things with plan obsolescence is a company can, you know, it's very rare that a company is just that company. Usually they're owned by some huge

Uber company that owns many of that company's, that brand's rivals. Yeah. So you can just, you know, if something gets a bad rep, you can just retire that brand and slap a new name on it. And it's the kind of the same thing. So you don't know, you don't know anymore if it's a good or a bad brand. Right. And if you just have a couple of mega brands and they're all doing the same thing with their multiple brands that they all own, which is they're just all kind of making crud that lasts maybe three to five years, then that means that there's actually technically no bad brand. They're all bad brands because there's also no good brand either. And they just trade on these brand names that you were raised to hear from your parents or from a repairman or whatever

that that's a good brand, but this brand's not any good. And then you have like a bad experience with that brand. So you switch to another brand, but there's a pretty good chance that those same, those two brands are still owned by the same company to whom it's all the same. You're still giving them the money ultimately. Yeah, I, I'm sorry. This is filled with so many anecdotal stories, but I was TV shopping recently and there was a TV that seemed like a really good deal and it got good ratings on all the places. But then you start reading the customer experience and like a lot of people were saying this has a banding issue where you can see like lines on the screen when the screen is darker and stuff like that. Oh yeah, yeah. It was like

ubiquitous. It was all over the place in these reviews and every single one of them, the manufacturer would reply and say, boy, we're so sorry you had this experience. We've never heard of this and it's certainly an outlier. So to get in touch with this and it's just so madding. It's like, no, man, it's like 30% of these reviews say this. And I say that sometimes when I'm, when I have to call about something like that, I'm like, man, I know it's not like, I'm not the only person this is happening to is all over the internet. And they're like, well, or, you know, we're not allowed to share stuff like that, sir. I have to say in my experience to Chuck, one thing that has gotten better over the last couple

decades is customer service. Do you think? Yeah, I think for the average person, the companies want to please customers enough that they make the experience of dealing with them better than it was before. I think, boy, I'm going to have to think about that. Okay, think about it. Maybe some companies, I've had the experience with some that are so big that you get the feeling that like they think it costs more to give a hoot. Right. Yeah. I think that's definitely true out there, but there's so many like, I think smaller companies and tech startups come from this place of like, we treat the customer really well. That's just what we do. It just seems to be more than there was before. Whereas before it seems like it was all big companies that you

had to deal with and they all had terrible customer service. I think the nineties were like the zenith of bad customer service if I'm not mistaken. Maybe so. So there's a really important point that we're kind of dancing around here, right? Like, 13% of large appliances breaking within five years and having to be replaced, like 8.3% of smaller electronics or all electronics. Those things being thrown out, it doesn't sound like that much, but when you actually translate it into numbers, you're talking about millions of things, of items, of products that are being thrown away because they broke. And the vast majority of those things are just, like I said, thrown away. They're not recycled. I think in the United States, 6% of small appliances

are recycled, which is a paltry amount. That means the rest just go into landfill. Yeah, and it's especially egregious because not only is all this stuff getting tossed, but e-waste are some of the biggest offenders as far as environmental damage. So you've got 350 million ink cartridges in the United States tossed in landfills every year. 348 million of which aren't even empty. Right, because of those smart chips. You got refrigerators being thrown out. We did get a new refrigerator a couple years ago, even though our old one that we bought used was still working. It was kind of a workhorse.

But we sold it, and I was like, sold it really cheap. It was like, I bought this thing used. It lasted us 10 years without problems. So someone's getting a good old workhorse here for a couple hundred bucks. Nice. So we try and recycle our stuff or sell it or donate it these days. Or at least set it on fire so it's not somebody else's problem. The good news is though, I don't want this to all be poopoo, is there are places in the world that are working on this and trying to change things.

Not here in the United States, of course, but in Europe, they are working on creating some standards. There's a program called Eco Design Directive, which would basically open up regulation of industry based on what they're trying to do is set new standards for durability and repairability and make it the law. Right. Yeah. The resource efficiency is what they're calling it. You have energy efficiency, like how much water does that dishwasher use. This is how long does this thing last? Like put it on the label. Right, exactly. Kind of like that Bernard London's idea. But rather than it being an expiration date to where you start to get charged for using it beyond that date, this is,

oh, well, this one's going to last five years. This one says it last seven. I'm going to go with the seven year one. Right. And because of the resources these things use, the seven year one is more efficient by definition than the five year one. At least you can make an informed choice as a consumer. Right. Here in the States, like I said, the federal government isn't doing anything. But when it comes to the states, there are some groups. There's one movement called Right to Repair started in the UK and is now catching hold. I think in 2018, there were 18 states that introduced Right to Repair bills, some of which have taken hold, some of which haven't. But it basically requires companies to make it possible to repair their devices on their

own or take it to a repair mom and pop repair shop and not have like the warranty voided. Yeah. These laws all kind of are different, but they have in common the idea that, okay, if you guys are going to build junk, at least make it easier for them to be repaired, like design them so a customer can repair them themselves or take them to an unauthorized repair shop. And those repair shops should be able to get their hands on parts that are as universal as possible. And you guys, the manufacturer should be supplying repair shops with repair manuals for them to reference. Like stop doing the opposite of everything we just said in order to make it hard to repair your stuff. Put out junk if you want, but let us repair it. That's

kind of what the gist of those bills are. Yeah. And like we mentioned before, there is a segment of people that think that firmly believe that this is all great for industry. It's all great for the economy. It keeps an army of employees working at these cell phone companies and smartphone companies and designers and engineers because of that cycle. So, you know, that's one way to look at it. If you turn over goods really quickly, then that's a lot more stuff that needs to be manufactured and a lot more trucks driving things. And, you know, it might be an environmental nightmare, but those trucks are moving. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, though, I do agree with the idea of saying, okay, we want to replace, we want people to buy a new phone every three years.

We have to give them a reason to buy a new phone every three years. And one of the outcomes of that is that technological innovation that is happening as a result of that. Like just, you know, there's multiple phone companies all scrambling for market share. So, they're trying to out innovate one another and justify customers going and replacing their phones. But barely. Well, yeah, because there's other routes they can take, they can take, you know, the fast fashion clothing route and just do cosmetic updates to it or like the Easy Bake Oven. It does the same thing, virtually the same thing from the beginning of its invention till today. It was just mainly cosmetic changes that were made to it over time to keep up with the times, just like fashion.

If you do that with a phone or technology, then yeah, you're a schlub, you're not doing your job. But ideally, if you release a new version of a phone every few years and it is just way better than the phone before, that's okay. Yes, there's still the manufacturing problem and the waste associated with it. That can be dealt with, but at least technology is being pushed forward. At least it's not just a total scam, you know what I mean? Yeah, there's also the idea of value engineering, like kind of walking that line as a manufacturer to not make junk, but also to make something affordable for a consumer. And if we built a card to the last 75 years, no one would be able to afford it because it would all be military grade materials. Or the same thing

with a phone, like if this technological progress is happening so that a phone does actually become obsolete, whether planned or otherwise in a couple of years, it makes more sense to build phones with cheaper parts that aren't going to last forever because then you have to replace a $500 phone every few years rather than a $5,000 phone every few years too. Right. And the final point kind of is that the consumer does have a little bit of responsibility. It's a little bit all of our faults because you might want the new phone in that color when your other one works great. There was a study by the same UCO Institute that said a third of all replacement purchases for things like fridges and washing machines were motivated by just having a newer, better unit,

even though their old one is still fine. Right. So like, you know, that's kind of on the consumer. Hit them with that last set, Chuck. 2012, more than 60% of TVs that were replaced were still functioning. Mike, drop. TVs, that's certainly a big one. Yeah. But I mean, the question is, did this like ravenous consumer society develop as a result of planned obsolescence or did planned obsolescence develop to keep up with this ravenous consumer society? That's the question we'll leave you with. That is a big question. Yeah. Love to answer that. We don't have the answer. Well, while we try to figure it out, how about instead, let's listen to some listener mail from Chuck. Yeah, this is a very, very sweet email from a gentleman named Tom about his daughter.

Hey guys, thanks for being a positive influence on my daughter, Grace. She recently graduated from high school, will be attending the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Biological Sciences, majoring in cellular and, uh, organismal. I don't even know that word. Tom just made up a new word. Physiology? Is that a word? I guess I've never seen it before either. Because of your shows. Oh, here he says she's even making up new words. There you go. Because of your shows, unique insight to learning, you're, you fan the flames of desire for knowledge. You routinely reinforce our awesome and cool knowledge and education can be. I started listening later than she did to try and listen to an episode each way and then tried to listen

to an episode each way from work every day. I've heard you read listener mail from other parents that compliment how you always give us something to talk about with our kids. That is also true in our home. Recently on our vacation to go skiing in Colorado, we stopped at a Pony Express station in Nebraska. That's awesome. Your influence is beyond academics too. She's involved in her community and articulates educated opinions for her passions. She will turn 18 this fall and is looking forward to voting. Many of the examples you give in your podcast have empowered her to take positions on social issues. I know you know, I hope you know the importance and influence of your show, guys. We look forward to your show in Chicago. Nice. Yeah. So Tom and the family are coming to,

from Rockford, Illinois to Chicago. Thanks, Tommy. What was Tom's daughter's name again? Grace. Grace, thank you very much for making us look so good. Yeah. And good luck in school. Congrats. Good luck with that fake major. Yeah. We'll see you guys in Chicago. I guess that's it. If you want to get in touch with us, like Grace and Tom did, you can, what? Chuck, go on to StuffYouShouldKnow.com and check out our social links. Sure. And then you could also just send us an email. And if you want to do that, send it to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe.

You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.