[supergauntlet]

I really think planned obsolescence is the future for everyone. Why build things to last when you can 1. save money by cheaping out and 2. ensure a future customer by cheaping out?

There's no reason for them to build high quality, long lasting things. So why would they? They don't care about the waste.

[amelius]

I think we're heading in a different direction: products are not owned by the customer, but are owned by the company. You will pay a monthly fee, and it's the company's responsibility to keep the product from failing.

A slightly different thing is happening with Apple. When you bought your phone, you didn't receive full ownership. Instead, you bought a seat in a theater. Apple's incentive is to keep the phone working so they can sell you more apps/movies/songs.

[iamkroot]

You can buy stuff that lasts, it just tends to cost a lot more than the mass market products.

Consumers have voted with their wallets and the markets have responded. If consumer behavior changes, the markets will to.

[TeMPOraL]

"Voting with wallets" doesn't apply if one alternative is missing from the marketplace. For many good categories, there are no durable options.

It's a problem of the bottom the market raced to being placed too low.

[julbaxter]

It is more complicated than this. Many do not have enough in their wallet to 'vote' based on their values.

[iamkroot]

Which is why the "cheap" products are important. Without them many people would not have access to a wide variety of goods.

[julbaxter]

The fact that "cheap" products are important does not reinforce your first statement that "if consumer behavior changes, the markets will to". When a family can afford a swimming pool because there are now ones you can buy for 8 dollars I won't call it a vote. In my opinion, buying can be assimilated to a vote when your wallet is big enough to let you consider several market options.

[TeMPOraL]

> In my opinion, buying can be assimilated to a vote when your wallet is big enough to let you consider several market options.

And also, and I keep repeating this, if there even are options.

The problem with voting with your wallet is the same as the problem of voting in a typical western democracy. You never get to vote on a feature/issue in the abstract; you can only choose out of what's available on the market/ballot, and that's always a very large bundle of features/issues, so you have to make trade-offs when voting.

For instance, I very much want to have a replaceable battery in my smartphone, but my current one doesn't have this feature. That's because I had to choose a whole bundle and the replaceable battery lost with considerations like "won't turn into unsupported and underpowered garbage in 2 years", "still has audio jack", "support SIM cards" and "I trust the manufacturer". There's no way for the market to pick up on my preference for replaceable batteries here.