[expnsv_hdphns]

When I went to the first semester of engineering school at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, there was a class called Engineering Professional Development 160: Introduction to Engineering.

One of the early class sessions was a lecture from a guy at a power tool company, making some kind of jigsaw or handheld cutting tool.

He explicitly told us, paraphrasing, "You don't want to make your product too reliable, because people won't buy more of them, and you won't make as much money". I was horrified, literally looked around at my classmates to see how horrified they would be, none of them were. I ended up majoring in philosophy.

Of course this site is dedicated to the idea he expressed, so I am not looking for agreement here, just relaying what I consider an interesting historical fact.

[gommm]

I had a similar experience in a mechanical engineering class, our professor was discussing MTBF (mean time between failure) and how calculating this more accurately allowed companies to better engineer their product for obsolescence. For a company, a product that is too reliable is unprofitable in the long term and so they adjust by making sure that the product works beyond the terms of the warranty but not much more.

My professor was himself horrified by that (but he was a teacher because he believed in not working for corporations so that was not very surprising)

I do know one company that has a reputation for not doing this. Miele in Europe but then their appliances are double to triple the price of typical companies.

EDIT: corrected Mean Time Between Failure instead of Mean Time Before Failure. Thanks slim

[semi-extrinsic]

It's obvious that companies do this sort of thing. The main thing that prevented it in the past was that parts and labour were actually a significant cost, so things would be more expensive (in real terms) than today. When a TV or washing machine could be as much as 100% of a month's salary for a family, people couldn't afford a new one every 4 years. Companies realised this, so they made stuff that lasted longer.

But today, when everything is made in Asia by people who earn orders of magnitude less than the people buying the products, that TV or washing machine is ~10% of a months salary, and you end up with "fixing it is more expensive than buying a new", because the labor costs of fixing stuff (locally) is orders of magnitudes larger than labor costs for manufacture (in Asia).

Corollary: if global salaries become more equal in the future, we will get quality long-lasting stuff again.

[Cthulhu_]

I'm afraid your corollary won't apply; the lowest wages will just move elsewhere. There already was a company in China that moved production to the US because of wages there (plus transport costs, etc). I could see countries in Africa become the next manufacturing powerhouse(s), direct access to major seaways to both the US, Europe and Asia, etc. I don't know if they have the natural resources though, or the political stability for that matter.

[TheAdamAndChe]

This exploitation of cheap foreign labor is a big reason why rural America is doing so poorly. Corporations used to go to rural America for cheap labor, but because of our environmental and labor laws as well as our higher standard of living, it's not viable. I honestly don't see how this trend can continue without destabilizing our country.

[lukeschlather]

If you look at a typical smartphone, the retail/supply chain labor costs in the US are at least twice the production and logistical costs in the country of origin.

Apple could easily increase the wages of all their Chinese staff to $10/hour and they would still be making 30-40% margins on every phone.

I suspect the real drivers environmental, China is willing to pour megatons of waste into their wilderness in a way that we would never consider here in the US.

[Pigo]

It makes me wonder if the people at the top could handle expecting less, could trends reverse themselves and more people benefit, or if it's beyond them with too many other factors to consider. Does it really all come down to "We have to grow every quarter or die"?

[PeterisP]

In any competitive market if one manufacturer decides to stray far from optimal behavior for such reasons, it won't even last a decade before their competitors overtake them (no matter if simply taking their marketshare, or with literal buyouts, or by taking over their assets in a bankruptcy/restructuring sale) and reverse those practices.

If the industry margin is e.g. 10%, then you might assume more beneficial practices that cost up to 10% if the company is privately held. Not more, and not anything significant if you're public - since if you do so, then it would be trivial for anyone with big resources (e.g. an investment bank or hedge fund) to buy your stock to gain a significant voting percentage, replace management with literally anyone else, and sell stock that immediately becomes so much more valuable.

[svachalek]

It already has; see the 2016 election. Factories will come back, but they won't require labor anymore, so in the long term something fundamental needs to change.

[admax88q]

> if global salaries become more equal in the future,

> the lowest wages will just move elsewhere.

Uhh.

[gue5t]

The richest capitalists are planning a move to Mars, and presumably instituting (effective) slave labor or indentured servitude there.

[pault]

Yeah but if you finish your contract on mars you get the anti-aging treatment for free.

[aurizon]

Ever notice how the high cost of wages in the USA combined with RORO car carriers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll-on/roll-off) to lose 85% of the UAW jobs in the USA? They allowed very low cost sea transport to the USA. The UAW constant striking for wages, perks and pensions (now close to $75 per hour)and other labor restrictive rules threw away 85% of their members jobs. This was an unintended consequence of greed and management parallel avarice who just upped the cost of cars by passing it to us. Now most people can own only used cars. The net effect also increased all other US wages - all of which now come home in spades. Furniture and matresses, locally built items can still be US made.

Remember - a bad job has low wages. I high wage job can also be bad - to the economy.

[emodendroket]

Yep, there is absolutely no way whatsoever policy could have prevented that from happening. It's all the fault of workers and there is no choice but for all of us to reduce our standard of living to compete with the world's most destitute places.

[M_Grey]

I think automation is going to do the very opposite.

[sixdimensional]

Ironically, I work for a manufacturer who tries to support their product for at least 20-30 years, but obsolescence is an incredible challenge due to use of a lot of commercial of the shelf electronics which themselves go obsolete at a ridiculous pace. What I'm saying is, even if you try to engineer a product to last, if the supply chain supporting you isn't to doing the same, the problem often compounds.

In my case, obsolescence is a problem to be addressed to attempt to support a long product lifecycle. In most companies, planned obsolescence is a tool to advance tech, decrease support and manufacturing costs over the long run, and increase profit.

[ams6110]

> What I'm saying is, even if you try to engineer a product to last, if the supply chain supporting you isn't to doing the same, the problem often compounds.

This makes sense to me. If you want to engineer and support a long-lasting product, you have to own more of the supply chain, make more of your own component parts, or limit yourself to components that are "standard parts" and likely to remain available.

[hx87]

What if your company decided to sacrifice features for maintainability and kept the electronics in the product to a minimum? There might be a strong market for something that does only 1-2 things but can be maintained indefinitely with simple materials and tools.

[sixdimensional]

Yes, actually this is a strategy for sure.

Historically, the company I work for has been a market leader in the niche they serve, and as such, their products were initially incredibly complex as they were first to market and invented a lot of the technology. Over time, those products have been simplified and cut down, with only the most important features kept (and a few "whiz-bang" features).

Interesting issue with this, though - while I completely agree with your suggestion, some of the pushback for taking that direction involves the perception that the inherent complexity of the products is a strategy in and of itself. If the product is simplified and streamlined then it is easier to copy and harder to protect, according to some who think that way.

Personally, the competition is going to be there if it really is that much simpler to make the same product with less components/features and easier to maintain. Patents, etc. protect a business' position to an extent but, ultimately, competition still often points the way to more efficiency that benefits everyone.

I think much like companies use "planned obsolescence" to try to control their market position, they also use "intentional complexity" to try to do so as well. Both strategies have their pros and cons.

I think really strong companies maintain market dominance with simply constructed, simply understood offerings, done well, at a fair market price, with the related mind-share branding that goes with it. But that definitely sounds a lot easier than it is in reality.

[Arizhel]

Then you can't offer the features and efficiency that the competitors' models do. Replacing the simple mechanisms of yesteryear with microcontrollers and sensors is how our appliances have become so much more efficient, just like humans have become the dominant species on this planet by having the most complex brain, instead of trying to get by with the mental abilities of an amoeba.

[frostburg]

Miele did have parts for a 30 years old vacuum cleaner a couple of years ago when I needed them.

[cc439]

>I do know one company that has a reputation for not doing this. Miele in Europe but then their appliances are double to triple the price of typical companies.

I think Miele serves as an excellent example for why the market has moved away from designing products with a 30+ year expected service life. If the average modern appliance lasts for 5-10 years as this article claims (and has proven true time and time again in my experience) but the reliable brand costs 2-3x more, you would have to be absolutely certain that the "reliable" product will actually last at least 20-30 years if you are to ever make up for the initial cost premium.

The problem is that even the most well built appliances will have random part failures and the chance of a failure happening (25-50% IME) over a span of 30 years is high enough that it has to be treated as an inevitability. Even if the parts are available that far in the future, the cost of having a technician diagnose the failure ensures the repair will cost at least $150 in labor alone and the average cost for any appliance repair with parts included is somewhere between $300 and $400 in my experience.

My point is that the "cheap and unreliable" appliance is almost always a financially sound choice even though it leads to a graveyard of dead appliances over time. The real problem is that graveyard of broken appliances we leave behind by making the financially sound decision to buy an appliance we know will only last ~10 years at best.

[r00fus]

There's another factor to this - the US homeownership has gone down over the years, and will likely go lower.

More renters = even less incentive for reliable products, as the cheapest install that works is sufficient to rent.

[Arizhel]

Not necessarily. The problem here is that many appliances are the property of the landlord, and it's their responsibility to repair or replace them. Landlords who buy cheap junk appliances that need quick replacement are going to see their profits wiped out.

I really don't see how home ownership is a factor here at all. This is just a symptom of modern society where people don't expect things to last and don't penalize mfgrs who sell them short-lived junk, and instead look for generally the cheapest stuff.

[r00fus]

> Landlords who buy cheap junk appliances that need quick replacement are going to see their profits wiped out.

Have you rented recently? I can tell you from my own experience (US/Ca and Ut) as well as family/friends who don't own - that often landlords (or property management companies hired to manage the rental) much prefer "new,shiny,cheap".

[chinathrow]

> For a company, a product that is too reliable is unprofitable in the long term and so they adjust by making sure that the product works beyond the terms of the warranty but not much more.

My 2002 Volvo V70, which I bought second hand a couple of years ago, is so reliable that I consider buying a Volvo again.

[cc439]

>(W)hich I bought second hand a couple of years ago

Would you consider buying a NEW Volvo? If not, your purchase exerts little to no pressure on the only market which Volvo is concerned with, namely the market for new cars.

Yes, a reputation for reliability increases the demand for used Volvos thereby increasing the resale value which positively factors into the decision to purchase a new Volvo. However, the increase in "value" to the buyer of the new Volvo is so marginal that it is overwhelmed by any number of other factors involved in the final judgement of value in the decision to purchase a new car. A Volvo V70 of similar vintage to yours can be had for anywhere between $1,600 and $2,500 depending on condition according to my local Craigslist. If their reliability is so well regarded that a Volvo V70 is hypothetically worth 50% more than an equivalent Subaru wagon, resale premium afforded to the original buyer is just $1,250. That premium is so small that a manufacturer's sale incentive can wipe it out entirely, nevermind the fact that many of Volvo's competitors are less expensive by a far wider margin.

Basically, my point is that long term reliability doesn't really matter to manufacturer's beyond a certain point. As long as the vehicle meets the expectations of the original buyer and remains useful enough to keep the resale value out of the gutter (which doesn't appear to be the case with Volvos, at least in my area), the manufacturer has no incentive to further improve the reliability of their products.

[galdosdi]

Resale value definitely affects new car purchasing.

For one, lease prices are partly determined by the expected resale value, and a lot of new car drivers get them by leasing them

[chinathrow]

> Would you consider buying a NEW Volvo?

Yes - sorry I forgot to add that bit :)

[ljf]

Plus 1 - my 2002 v70 had quarter a million on the clock and was very happy. 2.4 diesel was built to last. Not sure how the newer greener engines would be, all diesels now need a DPF that needs changing regularly, or a similar device to keep emissions down. I bought another (newers and sadly non Volvo) diesel, and I'm regretting it on a longevity POV - it's a great car now, but without pouring money into I'm not sure how long it will last - if I get 3 years I'll be happy (often less that 7k miles per year, so I don't tax my cars - just irregular long motorway trips with the rest of the time the car barely used).

[hx87]

Any diesel engine that has SCR and isn't miserly on the urea should be good to go. It's the ones that cheap out and rely excessively on EGR that you should watch out for.

[ljf]

Mine is a citroen so uses a urea system - hopefully good then... It's a lovely family car and easy 53mpg - though as a cyclist and parent I'm now feeling guilty about particulates, but as I say I drive irregularly and mainly motorway miles.

[hx87]

The urea system allows the engine to run lean and hot without excess NOx emissions, which reduces particulate emissions. The particulate filter should take care of the rest.

[oconnor663]

> their appliances are double to triple the price of typical companies

This seems like the most important detail by far.

[slim]

Mean Time Between Failures

[LeifCarrotson]

That's an interesting contrast. I mean, you're correct, but why is the acronym "between" instead of "before"?

As the article describes, when replacing a part costs a comparable amount to the price of a brand-new appliance, people buy new appliances. With this mindset, the correct term is no longer "between" failures - when you might replace a part and average the described time until the next failure - but "before" failure - at which point you replace the device and buy a new one.

[gommm]

That's a good point. I'm not sure why I misremembered the term but in this case it might actually be more accurate.

[bboreham]

The other one is Mean Time To Failure.

[modeopfer]

I also studied engineering and I think your professor missed the point. You don't overengineer stuff anymore nowadays, not because you want to scam your consumer out of money (aka planned obsolence) but because the design tools got better and every gram of metal or plastic and every screw and every operation like welding, glueing and so on costs money. Nowadays simulation tools, new manufacturing processes and experience allow very cheap designs that endure the predicted amount of stress but not much more. That's the trade-off.

Not every customer needs a power drill that lasts 5000 hours. Most people are okay with a cheap drill that lasts a cumulative 10 hours because that's the amount of lifetime use they get out of it.

[Spooky23]

Fundamentally, you can't serve a turd and call it steak.

Power tools are an example of how to get it right. If I go to Home Depot and look for a drill, it's obvious from the branding, battery, warranty and physical characteristics which DeWalt drill is the "ok" consumer one, and which is a professional tool. (I use this as an example because I bought one yesterday)

The problem with consumer appliances is that they use dark patterns to sell stuff. There is no meaningful signaling about what is garbage and what is not. No facts are obvious that tells me what the expected lifecycle of a washing machine is... can it handle 350 loads a year? 100? 50? 1000? No fucking clue. Counter-intuitively, many of the premium priced units are worse than their cheaper counterparts!

[roseburg]

Author here, you are absolutely right. Want to see me angry? You should have seen me when I found out my 90 year old neighbor lady is on her second Whirlpool made vertical modular washer in the past 5 years. (top loading washer with the led lights on the control panel) Not everyone can afford to be ripped off and sold garbage washing machines that WILL break within 3 years.

I think your power tool analogy is a good one. Same with most consumer goods, people know that when they are buying a plastic version of something that it likely won't last, so they wrestle through the tradeoffs.

[collinmanderson]

When it comes to tools, I usually buy the cheap version at Harbor Freight first, and then if I end up using it enough that it breaks, I'll research and get something more reliable.

Also, thanks for the Krylon tip. I bought a house that came with a Hamilton clothes dryer from 1970. Works fine, no plastic parts, though it is starting to rust. (My main worry is that the heating element will eventually rust away and they don't make replacements.)

[jonnycoder]

Considering that Black & Decker own DeWalt, I wouldn't put much hope into your drill being a long lasting professional tool. I put my vote with Makita.

[rbcgerard]

To your point, I saw or heard an interview with a Ford engineer a while back where he basically said look we know how to make parts that last forever, but they are heavy and expensive. He went on to say people want more affordable cars (cheaper parts) and we need to make cars lighter for fuel efficiency standards (lighter parts), so they set an internal goal of 10 years of longevity for a part, and then try and make the cheapest/lightest part that meets that goal.

[Balgair]

Having worked with their racing teams in the past, you are correct. A good example is the clutch. Most clutch pads made these days, and likely for the last 4 or so decades, are made out of composite materials like ceramics, carbon-fiber, and even paper. These clutch pads have higher heat tolerances before warping occurs, yes, but they wear out much faster under daily driving conditions. Brass clutch pads will last beyond the next 2 ice ages, but do warp at very high heat/pressures, as one may experience when first learning a stick (but then decided to continue grinding away for the next 15 years anyways). They also do not design such that it will only last 10 years, they design such that it will last until some statistical deviation longer than the warranty for that part/car (depending on the contract corporate pushes out). Example: The manual transmission has a warranty for 3 years/50,000 miles. The clutch pads are then designed to wear out at 55,000 miles/3.25 years, or whatever the algorithms says will produce the most money.

[rconti]

A clutch is a wear item that will not be covered under warranty, regardless.

That said, my BMW is at 147k miles without a clutch replacement, and it's lived a pretty hard life (track events, etc). In fact, in 20 years of driving, I've never replaced a clutch in a car I owned, and I've never owned a car with less than 50k miles (well, okay, I just bought a brand new car last year, so of course its clutch is still going strong).

[ams6110]

I don't think cars are a good example. Cars last much longer and with far fewer significant problems than they used to. A car made in the 1970s would maybe last 100,000 miles, if it didn't rust out first. And it would likely have one or more significant problems in that time (transmission failure, major engine problems, etc).

A new, mass-market quality (e.g. Honda) car made in the last decade will easily go several 100K miles if given basic care, and will probably not have any major problems or be showing much if any rust in that time.

[dsfyu404ed]

Eh, when you consider the drive-train of your average 70s American car there's nothing preventing it from going 300k. The same small-block v8s and 3spd autos were used through the 90s with very good reliability. It's the little crap going wrong everywhere else that makes people upgrade.

[filterfish]

It's a fucking washing machine, 10kg extra isn't going to make any difference.

[gregpilling]

10kg of steel would cost about USD$10.00, and then shipping it around the world costs again. At my factory, we use the number "50 cents a pound" as an average cost for shipping pallets around the lower 48 states.

So your extra 10 kg would cost me about $20 more. At retail that would be another $100 or so. In other words, making it 10kg heavier would sharply increase the price; it would also be for things that aren't easily visible to the consumer. Your competition would destroy you.

Source: I own a factory.

[mindslight]

Are washing machines not still being made with concrete in the base? I'm sure balancing has gotten more intelligent, but there still needs to be some mass to keep the thing from walking.

Of course if that 10kg of steel was on the drum, the stationary mass would need to be increased as well. But I doubt washing machine drums are really a high failure part, so a hypothetical "10kg of steel" is a useless in the context of a washing machine.

It's hard to make a comprehensive argument about entire machines when the problem is designers having a principle agent problem for every single part.

[Fifer82]

I seen an article on the ring pulls on top of coke cans. They are hollow because it has a huge impact on raw materials usage (over the course of 10 million cans). I think every gram counts to the bottom line of the share holders no matter how mundane. Similar to the UK Construction Industry. Hit the minimum possible legal requirement and charge the maximum amount of money.

[cr0sh]

> They are hollow because it has a huge impact on raw materials usage

It's been a while, but I remember when the transition from pull tabs to "pop tabs" occurred; at first (IIRC), the "pop tabs" were solid, but it wasn't long until they became hollow as well.

Of course, that led to some problems which still exist today (though not nearly as often). The biggest one being the balance between the strength of the tab, vs the opening part (whatever it is called - closure?). In the past (and occasionally today for the odd soda), you could pull up on the tab - and it would bend or break off, without opening the soda! Simple enough to fix (do not press down on the opening with your thumb!) with a butter knife or some other similar tool, but annoying at the same time.

[Bartweiss]

The other point is that you don't want to over-engineer any single part. Getting a 10,000 hour lifespan out of the motor is useless if the chuck cracks in 2,000 hours and the thing gets thrown away. Ideally you'd have the entire thing fall apart at once.

But, of course, failures are statistical. Worsening the quality of the most over-engineered part is usually beneficial, since in most cases you're paying for nothing, but occasionally that'll still be the part that gives out. So you come out ahead by making a more cost-effective product even while failure rates rise.

Of course, that's where the article's point about insufficient competition comes in... Standardizing quality throughout the device is sensible, but if those savings aren't passed to the consumer then they're losing money.

[jxramos]

That lifetime perspective is really on point. I recently bought some used barber supplies from a guy who's mom is in the styling business. There's been a shift for them to go cordless/battery powered for convenience and I wound up buying some trimmers and clippers from him for a fraction of the cost. The lifetime these tools were designed at far exceeds the lifetime of my usage with my family and stuff; they'll go the distance for sure. I've since come to learn that this little market does appear to have pretty serviceable parts as you can see with a lot of exploded diagrams they put out https://www.proproductsandmore.com/images/andis_sl2_trimmer.... I'm trying to remember what the lifetime quote to me was, something like these clippers were meant to cut 20 heads a day, day after day for some number of years. I realized at the rate I was going they'd be heirlooms to pass on to my son and stuff.

[caconym_]

If products are failing before their owners were "done" with them, then the analysis you describe is inferior to whatever design techniques preceded it, regardless of how sophisticated it is, because, well, products are failing before their owners are done with them.

You can explain this as "planned obsolescence" or poor engineering (or a poor understanding of the market's needs), but not both, really. I think what you say about consumers often wanting a "disposable" version of a product is true for a lot of products but by no means every product. This is all also tied in with the cycle of trendy new electronic gadgets, which seems to drive consumers' desire to replace perfectly good products they already own.

[2T1Qka0rEiPr]

Whilst this is clearly how no company should aspire to be, it's easy to understand that they want to make a profit, and if you design a "once in a lifetime" product, you'll find yourself out of business within 10 years or so after everyone owns said product.

The outcome is planned obsolescence as highlighted in this article. As the article also points out, not only does this damage us economically, it also damages use environmentally. It should be the place of Government to ensure that these externalities are re-addressed (e.g. by taxing companies on every item of theirs which goes into landfill), and for us the citizens to lobby them to do so.

[lr4444lr]

Heaven forbid said company should use that quality to build their brand reputation, charge more to funnel back into R&D to create another product to fulfill a different consumer need, grow, get more profitable, and continue the virtuous cycle. That'd be, like, justifying capitalism or something.

[marcosdumay]

This should be the default state of every appliance, just because it should outcompete every other player. (Who would buy something that breaks?)

It isn't. So, there's something very flawed on my reasoning above. Do people want stuff that breaks, is the problem a market for lemons? Or what else?

[platz]

Capitalism maximizes benefits to Capital, not consumers or labor.

[sqeaky]

I think the implication is that if consumers are well informed they will lookout for their own needs and try to buy goods of sufficient quality.

If enough consumers do this the market for junk should fail. In some markets it has and in others it hasn't, apparently in appliances junk prevails.

[platz]

> If enough consumers do this the market for junk should fail

I think over the long run we've seen evidence for the opposite due to consolidation. Markets aren't perfect; so I am highly skeptical of such a claim.

it almost seems like the more the market matters to society, the less choice consumers actually have.

I am more interested in trends over time than point-evaluations of dynamics at a specific moments.

[henrikschroder]

> Do people want stuff that breaks

No, people want the thing that is the cheapest to buy, not the thing with the lowest total lifetime cost.

[Chaebixi]

> it's easy to understand that they want to make a profit, and if you design a "once in a lifetime" product, you'll find yourself out of business within 10 years or so after everyone owns said product.

I don't think that's really true. There's something like 4 million people born in the US each year, plus immigrants. If your product is so good that it gets 100% market penetration, that's still a lot of sales. Plus, you can still make money selling spare parts and support.

I think the real "drawbacks" to a company of not pursuing planned obsolescence are actually:

1. You can't slack and rely on milking your existing customer base for new sales (without making compelling improvements).

2. You're less likely to get the "world-spanning megacorporation" achievement, because you won't be running waste factories to fuel the obsolescence. Once you hit total market penetration, your operations and company will need to scale back to a smaller, sustainable (but still profitable!) size.

Both those "drawbacks" are probably better for the world and humanity in general, but they conflict with the self-interest of a few minority groups.

[hvidgaard]

   taxing companies on every item of theirs which goes into landfill

Just tax each sale at the cost it takes to recycle.

[mozey]

> by taxing companies on every item of theirs which goes into landfill

Second that idea. From my perspective, if recycling was perfect the only limitation on single use items would be how convenient it is to dispose and obtain another one. Also, I hate searching for new clothes that fit when the current options go out of fashion.

[Cthulhu_]

In NL, whenever you buy a new appliance, you (the consumer) have to pay a "removal fee", which is a few% or a fixed price depending on the product - think like €15 for a washing machine. This is used for the shop you buy a product from to take away your old one, and to cover some of the costs of recycling (I guess the materials in a dishwasher aren't valuable enough on their own to warrant recycling for the sake of making money off of it. Probably not many reusable parts either)

[CWuestefeld]

It should be the place of Government to ensure that these externalities are re-addressed (e.g. by taxing companies on every item of theirs which goes into landfill), and for us the citizens to lobby them to do so.

That won't eliminate the externality. All appliances will now cost $X more. In the meantime, the government will have collected $X*N more revenue, but it won't have gone toward recycling the decommissioned appliances; instead, they'll have gifted it to their favorite special interests. Net outcome is a happy special interest, a re-elected politician, but a sad consumer and a sad mother earth. I don't see it being worth it.

[PeterisP]

It would make a difference - an appliance that would last 15 years would be $X more expensive, but buying 5 appliances that each last 3 years would cost 5*$X. If $X is meaningfully large, it becomes a strong motivation to prefer things that last longer.

[CWuestefeld]

It would make some difference, but it's only doing half the job. The tax would remove the manufacturer's incentive to sell additional units through planned obsolescence (or at least, to the degree that the government has the ability to calculate this).

But I feel confident in predicting that it won't address the other side of the coin, that revenue would be used to actually keep the old appliances out of landfills, and to recycle their components. I'm hard pressed to think of examples of putatively earmarked taxes where the entirety of the revenue still goes to what it was originally promised for.

[woah]

So is your argument that there should never be any taxes of any kind (anarcho-primitivism)?

If that's not your argument, then what is unique about landfill taxes that make them more likely to be "gifted to special interests"?

[CWuestefeld]

So is your argument that there should never be any taxes of any kind (anarcho-primitivism)?

I didn't say anything that even implied that. Clearly there are public goods that are best handled by a government.

My reply was directed specifically at a comment that proposed a tax to address environment problems caused by planned obsolescence. I was showing that the proposal doesn't actually do anything to eliminate the environmental externality.

If you can show me a more complete proposal that (a) really does address the environmental impact as part of the program; and also (b) addresses Public Choice economics (meaning that it accounts for regulatory capture, capriciously re-purposing the funds by politicians, etc.), then we can talk about it.

[erelde]

Also, what other tools could we have made if we had optimal tools for the existing ones?

[Zelmor]

Time to stop thinking about profits and start thinking about sustainable developments.

[hueving]

And that will happen when money stops being useful. If you want sustainable solutions, realistically companies need to be charged for their externalities. Expecting altruistic behavior on a massive scale just won't work.

[dang]

> Of course this site is dedicated to the idea he expressed

Whoa! Where on earth did you get that idea? This site is dedicated to being interesting. Making things last is interesting.

The software that runs HN has lasted a decade so far and we would love it to achieve 1950s refrigerator longevity.

[jdbernard]

I can understand where he is coming from. As a community we do spend a lot of time talking about companies and products that are definitely not going to last. If building to last is a priority it's not very high on the list.

The growth curve of the venture-backed companies native to this community seems to be "get as big as you can as fast as you can." That's not necessarily in contradiction to building something that lasts, but it does seem like long-term considerations are often cast aside in favor of the funding round.

Similarly, the idea of pivoting your business is not necessarily contrary to the idea of building things to last. Obviously it does no good for anyone to build things no one wants, regardless of how long it lasts. Still, it does make it hard to plan for ten years from now knowing we may abandon the current direction in six months. Or that the team building the product may have entirely turned over within those ten years.

Enough of the companies and products we love and discuss here get acquired and shut down that it is a semi-regular topic in our community. That's not building to last.

Even the big players in our community are not really committed to products long-term. Change is the name of the game. Disruption does not lend itself to long-term stability. We don't actually value the company creating reliable, predictable products. We value the company disrupting that company with untested, immature products.

The attitude of our whole industry is tied to the ephemeral. We don't stay with employers long enough to see things through over ten year periods. And generally we all praise the more flexible job arrangements. I know I personally have benefited from it, but I know it was always left a hole in team I was leaving.

So I can understand why he would get that idea.

[e40]

Yeah, I downvoted the comment solely based on this. It's absurd.

[deegles]

I don't think it's a conscious, malicious strategy. Just a reality of manufacturing.

Let's imagine a market where 1,000 people need a widget, with 10 new people per year. You design and develop a 100% reliable widget and quickly sell 1,000 of them (recouping your development costs). You need to sell 10 per year to stay in business. Other companies see your success and rush to market with a less reliable but cheaper widget. No one buys from you since it takes years for reliability issues to surface in your competitors product. You probably don't have enough cash reserves to wait it out. Ergo, you go out of business.

[sqeaky]

So this is why Dyson no longer sells vacuums and Apple No longer sells phones. Sorry for the sarcasm

Premium products can command premium prices. They just don't move the same volume.

[galdosdi]

The parent was talking about premium reliability, not all kinds of premium.

The issue is a premium that people can't notice for many years. Apple's phones are not premium in a reliability sense, so are not a good example.

Selling reliability can be a serious problem when nobody will know what's reliable for sure without waiting several years. There's some tricks, like offering a warranty and heavily marketing the reliability, but the consumer still has to reason about the chances the vendor will still exist and be solvent, whether the warranty will be annoying to cash, how honest the vendor will be about allowing claims, etc. Until a company has been around long enough to have a reputation, it can't really get out of that

[lsaferite]

> "You don't want to make your product too reliable, because people won't buy more of them, and you won't make as much money"

> Of course this site is dedicated to the idea he expressed, so I am not looking for agreement here

This feels like a comment that needs some explanation or proof (your comment, not lecturer's).

[aljones]

I experienced nearly the exact same thing except it was from a guy that worked for a heating and cooling manufacturer. He specifically talked about how they tested their products to last 2 times longer than the warranty. If they lasted longer then they looked for cost saving opportunities. This was in 2001.

[ISL]

That's not so different from software service level agreements.

[hatfieej]

I spent years designing electronics and motors for GE, including the washing machines. I never once heard anyone in any department make the slightest mention of designing a product to fail. That was a side effect of something like "design for 20 years" but "prove reliability for 10 years". The purchase price set by the market was just too low to prove reliability longer. I'm not sure if the following was true, but I did hear the discussion of "for every $1 we add to the product cost, it will cost the customer $5". People move every 7-10 years and moving appliances is a pain, so I think that's just where the market landed when accounting for reliability vs price.

I think there's some unfair nostalgia about appliances being built to last years ago. A quick search revealed a 2 speed/3 cycle 1962 washer sold for $185 which is over $1400 today. You can buy that washer for $300 today. Plus it has safety features to prevent ripping your kid's arm off. :)

Sources:

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60selectrical.html

http://www.in2013dollars.com/1962-dollars-in-2016?amount=185

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Roper-3-5-cu-ft-High-Efficiency-Top...

[eatbitseveryday]

If engineers are taught this, I imagine orgs like NASA, SpaceX, Boeing etc. must surely hire individuals who do not subscribe to this idea. Reliability IS important in these areas.

In my opinion, what this individual told you should belong to a business lecture, not engineering. If your systems fail in engineering, you aren't doing your job right.

[greglindahl]

Making engineering tradeoffs between cost and reliability or performance and reliability is very much a part of many engineering situations.

[eatbitseveryday]

Engineering something so that it is reliable JUST ENOUGH so you can make more money from it failing sooner is not a trade off between cost of producing it and its performance.

[irrational]

I don't understand this if you have any competitors. Whenever I have a product fail, I don't buy any products from that same company again if at all possible. I had a Maytag dishwasher fail. I won't buy (and haven't bought) Maytag dishwashers since.

[dangerbird2]

As the author notes, there is very little real competition in appliance manufacturing, with a few companies making the vast majority of brands out today. If you stop buying a Maytag dishwasher, there is a good chance you'll end up with another brand that happens to be owned by Whirlpool Corporation.

[irrational]

Yeah, I'm aware that Maytag is owned by Whirlpool. For this reason I most recently purchased a Bosch.

[drzaiusapelord]

Except its rare to see actual documented proof that this is a real practice in reputable industry. Sure it must happen (or seem to happen as a unintended effect), but from a rational perspective if Samsung does this then I'll switch to LG, thus costing Samsung business and reputation. I have no brand loyalty so it doesn't make sense to make unreliable products. I, like any consumer, get pissed off and I switch to other brands at the drop of a hat. I'll also address the article point by point:

> Motors last about 1/3 to 1/4 as long as they used to.

That's questionable, but lowered motor life is probably in the cards due to efficiency gains. Modern motors are far more efficient than old ones and the more efficient designs are simply more delicate for a variety of reasons not the least of it is lighter materials and running closer to their optimal maximum which means more wear and running hotter in general. Also the reduction of hazardous materials and other regulations means we can't just use environmentally dangerous materials like lead willy-nilly anymore. I recently read that due to laziness and consumer ignorance, your average ceiling fan was something like 30% efficient up until fairly recently. So you were burning a good 75-100 watts on what should have been 15-30watt usage. These manufacturers just used these old designs for decades, thus increasing our electric bills and adding to pollution. Consumers pick up the fan and feel its "heavy" due to this old motor and think its "quality." Its really just a waste of electricity.

>Not enough competition.

I just bought all new appliances for my house a few years back. If anything, I was bowled over by all the players in this space and had to do a lot of legwork in regards to reviews. I really don't think lack of competition is an issue.

>Refrigerator door seals are glued on now instead of screwed on

This is a generalization. For my current and previous fridge they were screwed on. Even then, strong glues could hold these for their expected two decade lifetime if done correctly. Again, the author can't, or won't, give us specifics here. Certainly cheap and poorly engineered brands exist. Name and shame. Don't generalize.

>They can often be found for $300 at big box retailers, but they usually break within 2-3 years.

10+ years on my last dishwasher before I moved and 4 in on my current one. No issues and my current one is a fairly low-end Samsung. I do ok financially, but I'm cheap. My samsung is a cheap knock-off of the 'real' Bosch at the store. It even mimmicks its styling. So yeah, I'm not buying rich guy stuff here. Also, we're parents so we run that thing almost everyday.

>There is too much confusion over who is making quality appliances.

10-20 minutes reading reviews isn't asking a lot. I spend more time reading reviews of office chairs or video games, let alone $500+ appliances I depend on for my daily living.

>Newer appliances start rusting within even a year or two whereas I’ve seen washers and dryers and other appliances from 40 years ago that are still rust free.

I can't remember the last time I saw rust on a modern appliance. Maybe this is limited to one vendor using cheap paint. I wish the author tried to be specific. Rust on the stuff I grew up with was everywhere. I remember trying hard not to cut my hand while doing the laundry. I remember my dad buying rustoliem all the time because everything rusted back then. We didn't have clear-coats as an industry norm and stainless steel, a mid-range finishing today, was rich guy and restaurant only stuff back then. We had nice thick but brittle paint, but if you chip that, and don't catch it on time, then you got rust.

> If an old refrigerator or freezer would last 40-50 years before being replaced

These were serious edge cases and as an old-timer I remember having a repair tech come out periodically and my parents paying fairly significant bills to fix this stuff. Sure they "lasted" only because we were constantly replacing their innards.

>Elon Musk would have already started working on building a better appliance that runs off a battery bank and solar.

If you think today's stuff is overly engineered and delicate, wait until you start dealing with the pita that li-ion batteries are and how short their effective lifetimes are with daily use. Let alone running solar and how much that'll cost to install within code on your roof and how much that'll increase the cost the next time you re-do your roof. I have cheap-ish electricity and natural gas available in my basement. I'm good, thanks.

Seriously, this guy isnt a researcher or engineer, he's some guy who sells junk on craiglist. This post is one step above 'forwards from grandma' territory. This is classic fallacy of idealizing the past here. I imagine as a craigslist junk seller he doesn't see the old appliances our parents all threw away, he's just seeing a biased sample of all the stuff that were well maintained or had low usage, like buying a 30 year old car with 20,000 miles and bemoaning how 'cheap and crappy' modern cars are.

That said, the modern world isn't all roses. Because there are so many more manufacturers and so many budget brands, its easy to cheap out and get a lemon. Or there are so many lines, its sometimes unfair when you get a lemon model from a decent manufacturer. When I was a kid these things cost, fixed for inflation, a whole hell of a lot of money. And even in the late 70s and early 80s, in a normal non-ghetto but not rich Chicago neighborhood, I still watched old ladies scrub their laundry on washboards and hang them on laundry lines because of cost prohibitive issues. You either could afford for the reliable $1,000 GE washer or you couldn't. Lets not romanticize a time where everything was super expensive and which left a lot of people out in the cold.

Some people are going to buy the budget Amana that is crappier than the GE they grew up with, but it regularly goes on sale/clearance for $250 or so at Walmart. Sure beats the $700+ GE if you're poor and very much beats paying the laundromat. The take away here isn't modern things are terrible, its don't buy budget brands if you want quality.

[nneonneo]

> I just bought all new appliances for my house a few years back. If anything, I was bowled over by all the players in this space and had to do a lot of legwork in regards to reviews. I really don't think lack of competition is an issue.

The post specifically addresses this: most of the brands you see have actually been consolidated into a small number of manufacturers. Brands under the same parent corporation may only appear to compete, while really being a means to achieve market segmentation and illusion of choice.

[drzaiusapelord]

It still doesn't matter. GE is run by its own management and engineers. It doesn't matter that its all owned by one Chinese conglomerate or NBC or whoever. They're not re-badging Shenzhen #1 Super Fast Machine with the GE tag. Corporate ownership is, generally, an abstract that shouldn't matter in most cases. Unless they're purposely cutting lines or just rebadging stuff, then reading reviews is still the solution here.

I also noticed he didn't mention any giant German brands like Bosch or Miele. Nor any Japanese brands. Or less popular brands like Amana or Admiral or Hotpoint. Again, this space is full of competition. Compare that to tech where we have natural monopolies all the time or a duopoly, at best, with lots of little third-level competitors that barely get sales.

Car guys fall for this fallacy too. Latte-sipping Fiat engineers with only small car diesel experience who are appalled by off-roading aren't designing the new Wrangler. The Wrangler is its own design and designed by the same engineering team that worked on it before the buyout. The 2018 Wrangler won't be a Fiat mini with slightly larger wheels. It'll still be Wrangler and reading reviews on it will be all that matters. Of course, this can change, but the idea that a single large owner depresses the market and hurts quality is questionable. They do, of course, have a big advantage with pricing and other market advantages.

[cc439]

>Unless they're purposely cutting lines or just rebadging stuff

This is exactly what they're doing. Your example, GE, actually sold off it's appliance division to Haier. They had also been relabeling LG appliances for years prior to the sale of the entire division. The article for this thread also made note of the fact that "Kenmore" is nothing but an umbrella label under which includes products from almost every manufacturer. The only difference between my Kenmore refrigerator and the LG equivalent is the label on the door and the far lower number of reviews on the Kenmore due to its limited distribution. Unfortunately, the LG was widely known to be junk but since the Kenmore was exclusive to Sears, there was no information available to make this connection until I had it disassembled in my home and I began to look up part numbers to fix it.

Source 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/business/dealbook/haier-g...

Source 2: http://www.appliance411.com/purchase/make.shtml

[Arizhel]

Kenmore is not representative of the appliance industry. Kenmore has been nothing more than a rebadger for probably its entire existence, and certainly more than my lifetime. It's not a secret, and never has been. The advantage to buying Kenmore was that you could buy it at your local Sears, and you could always get parts for it at your local Sears, as that was part of the deal Sears made with the manufacturer. These days, since Sears seems to be swirling the drain, there's no advantage to buying a Kenmore versus getting the same non-rebadged model from the OEM.

[mindslight]

> more efficient [electric motor] designs are simply more delicate

Nope. This argument works for portable power tools (lighter designs are more delicate), but not for stationary motors. The efficiency gains for stationary motors have primarily come from better drive circuitry.

> running closer to their optimal maximum which means ... running hotter in general

This is utterly wrong. The maximum power is defined by the amount of copper (and thermal resistance to ambient), which is constrained by cost/weight. Warmer windings actually mean higher ohmic losses, so the manufacturer's savings actually mean higher electricity consumption.

> I recently read that ... your average ceiling fan was something like 30% efficient up until fairly recently

Citation needed, especially with your implication that this was due to the motor itself (as opposed to say shape of blades and electrical power factor)

[drzaiusapelord]

I'm probably wrong on the technical reasons specifically (my motor experience is limited to robotics and rc cars), but its only recently you could buy 29-35 watt ceiling fans due to the use of DC motors:

http://www.ceilingfan.com/35-to-50-watt-ceiling-fans-s/1647....

http://www.hansenwholesale.com/ceilingfans/reviews/emerson_m...

Averages currently are 75 watts and up to 100 for typical sizes.

http://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_ceilingfan.htm

You can google up articles from the early 2000s were it was conventional wisdom that the fan ran 100 watts.

I did read a bit about motor design but I can't find it now, but clearly the differences in wattage are real. I believe the newer ones are brushless DC vs the single phase induction of old. I imagine newer fan design helps too.

This Kensgrove is a whopping 72" but with a DC brushless motor. 31 watts on the highest setting.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Decorators-Collection-Kensgr...

Cheaper 56" at 35 watts:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Decorators-Collection-Breeze...

This ultra efficient 56" phase induction motor design still uses nearly twice the power of the DC motor!

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Westinghouse-Industrial-56-in-Ind...

[mindslight]

Sure, fans have become more energy optimized. That doesn't support the implication that the lightness was required to get the modern lower energy usage, nor that a better built (heavier) motor wouldn't be more efficient and last longer. That lack of longevity is what the "motor weighers" are lamenting - a major reason this whole topic is important is that we're currently unable to buy new more efficient appliances that will also last long.

> newer ones are brushless DC vs the single phase induction of old. I imagine newer fan design helps too.

Yes, this is the advance in drive circuitry that I referred to - same with the "DC motor" fans. It's still a fact that at the current consumer design point, adding more copper to the windings will increase weight, efficiency, and longevity.

[BoorishBears]

This anecdote seems to be crafted to imply that exchange is why you didn't major in engineering, but it doesn't outright say that.

Did you really not major in engineering over that exchange with your class?