Ever wondered why your grandparents' furniture is still standing while your furniture barely makes it through one move? In the capitalist competition to grow, corporations prioritize profits over durability. Following their episodes on landfills, Jorden and Kimberly consider why so much stuff ends up in the waste management stream. Part I begins the story in the 1920s, when lightbulb companies realized they were potentially sitting on a goldmine if they only made a few tweaks, starting the corporate trend of planned obsolescence.
Key Topics Jorden and Kimberly discuss include:
How one lightbulb made us believe we were being duped
Why every industry does it, everyone knows they do, but they still get away with it
Why no one is spared in the pursuit of obsolescence, even Henry Ford
How many varieties of one product do we really need
Whether it’s possible to enumerate how many strategies MNCs use to gain an edge
How planned obsolescence fits right in with our disposable culture
Why profit-driven design beats quality manufacturing almost every day, but some companies have bucked the trend and live to tell about it
Recommended
Resources
About Planned Obsolescence
Practices in the computer industry that widely apply
The environmental impact of planned obsolescence
Your New $3,000 Couch Might Be Garbage in Three Years. This Is Why.
Kimberly’s Substack newsletter post
