[r4indeer]

> Now an old fashioned light bulb shouldn't be expected to last a decade, but an oven?

Funnily enough, there actually was the Phoebus cartel [1] which sought to reduce the lifespan of incandescent light bulbs to around 1,000 hours and raise prices.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

[gnicholas]

I recall reading a quasi-debunking of this. I didn't go down the rabbit hole far enough to understand all the details, but it seems the situation was more complicated than just corporate greed. [1]

The topic has been discussed here in the past a few times, including [2] and [3]

1: https://readmedium.com/en/the-phoebus-cartel-was-never-reall...

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21596792

3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606748

[0xEF]

I would not call any of that a debunking, even quasi. Just a different dance around the same hard-to-swallow pill.

Company X makes a great product that everyone only needs one of and lasts a long time. Over time, the market starts to dwindle and. Company X is going broke. Now, Company X must either invest in innovation or reduce the lifespan of its current offering.

There's nothing inherently evil about this concept, but we tend to want to chalk it up to greed when Company X really just wants to survive and make a profit, which I suppose is the point.

The problem is the concept is ripe for abuse. If Company X makes their product worse, but starts charging more while laying off employees, posting record profits during recessions, adopts unnecessary subscription models cosplaying as continued service and development, etc...now we get to the greed part. There seems to be a line between designing a product to secure the longevity of Company X and straight up using your customers as micro-transaction ATMs with planned obsolescence. Some companies conspire to cross it.

[TeMPOraL]

> There's nothing inherently evil about this concept, but we tend to want to chalk it up to greed when Company X really just wants to survive and make a profit, which I suppose is the point.

No, that's exactly the problem. Company X surviving isn't a good enough justification for it to start making shittier products. Especially when they don't inform the customers of the degradation.

This is a business model problem, or perhaps a whole-market problem; papering over it with "oh just a little planned obsolescence is good, because it lets the vendor survive" is kind of a bailout, and prevents the problem from being corrected. By now, this has happened in so many places across so many industries that it's a rot that runs deep through entirety of the market.

[duckmysick]

How do the manufacturers of long-lasting one-off-purchase products survive? Stuff like doors, windows, roof tiles, floor tiles, faucets, staircase railings, fences, etc. Are they filling Chapter 13 or are they in the process in reducing the lifespan so their products are replaced every couple of years? What's their secret?

[cafard]

Some do go broke. We rely on New York Replacement Parts for cartridges for our bathroom faucets, the original manufacturer being long out of business. Double-glazed windows may get blurry over the years, I guess, and then one would replace those. But that should take ten or more years.

A properly protected door should last many years. One that we bought was not up to outside use, and failed. That manufacturer ended up purchased by a competitor, I think.

[denton-scratch]

> are they in the process in reducing the lifespan so their products are replaced every couple of years?

My experience: swan-neck kitchen taps all now seem to be quite different in design from one-another. To replace a washer, you have to dive under the sink, completely dismantle the tap, replace the washer, and re-assemble the tap. And the new taps start dripping after just a couple of years.

So you have to hire a plumber; and he'll probably work faster (i.e. lower charges) if he's fitting a new tap than repairing an old one. So you might as well order a new tap before you call the plumber out.

[ghaff]

I have replaced or added many of those things. People remodel, build new houses, etc. There are certainly business models around goods that people aren't renewing on an annual basis. Collectively it's probably fair to say that people in a country like the US buy a lot of doors even if it's a rare purchase for an individual.

[djbusby]

This place https://www.franklumber.com/ has been selling only doors for 50+ years.

One can model their business around market rules. It just might not be as huge as you want.

[ghaff]

I just ordered a butcher block counter from a local company. I've also ordered butcher block from a different company. At a rather larger scale there's Andersen Windows and Doors. None of these are or ever going to be--or presumably have ambitions to be--Home Depot.

[hirsin]

They go broke or rely on an ever growing market, ie housing is always being built (most of your examples).

But Instant Pot is the classic example of going broke because everyone bought exactly one of their products and never needed another (ignoring the three we have...)

[duckmysick]

Is it? From what I've read, Instant Brands (the company behind Instant Pot) merged with Corelle Brands (of the private equity firm Cornell Capital) in 2019. Corelle Brands had a portfolio of house and kitchen products from Corelle, Pyrex, SnapWare and CorningWare. In 2021 they decided to change the name from Corelle Brands to Instant Brands. And in 2023 they filled for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

It is my understanding that when Instant Brands filled for bankruptcy, they weren't selling just the Instant Pot. It wasn't even the original Instant Pot company. They were selling a wide range of kitchen products. I don't think they went broke because people bought exactly one Instant Pot.

The story doesn't end here. Apparently, Instant Brands emerged from chapter 11 as Corelle Brands.

> They go broke or rely on an ever growing market, ie housing is always being built (most of your examples).

Wouldn't that mean those new houses have new families which want a new Instant Pot? In fact I can think of other situations: people moving, going to college, splitting some of their items in divorce, etc. Sure, it's not much but it's not like the demand grinds to a halt.

[InSteady]

I wish there was more tolerance for the Instant Pot situation in big business. Build a great product, sell wildly for many years, inventor becomes a multi-millionaire, many people are employed at good wages for a while, stock holders / investors make a reasonable return, millions upon millions of satisfied customers, and... that's it. The end of that particular story.

Keep a perfunctory tidbit of the once great company chugging along to provide replacement parts, do some servicing, and sell new ones at a much reduced volume. Just enough to keep a handful of people employed at good wages and turn a miniscule profit.

I know it is heresy to suggest this kind of thing when our entire way of life is predicated on infinite growth, but our entire way of life is also grossly inefficient (not to mention inequitable) and we are facing ever more scarce resources on a planet with less and less carrying capacity for our wasteful and destructive tendencies.

Of course this is all just yelling at clouds, because billionaires and the people who service them cannot be made to think in these terms, else they wouldn't be where they are in the first place.

[TylerE]

> chugging along to provide replacement parts

That's the expensive bit. That's a lot of machinery and tooling sitting around mostly doing nothing.

[xboxnolifes]

Sounds to me that Company X sold their product for too cheap if they really lasted that long. Which then it becomes: "Company X undervalued their product, leading to bankruptcy".

[mmkhd]

Nice video from the well known channel Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY => It's complicated. Yes, there was a cartel, but it was not all bad. There were legitimate reasons to go for 1000h light bulbs.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>but it seems the situation was more complicated than just corporate greed

Then their strategy worked - if you really believe it's more complicated. Haven't investigated this particular subject, but many others subjects are _made_ complicated to achieve a particular outcome. Along lines of: 'let's protect the children' argument.

[stronglikedan]

I'm convinced this happened recently with LED bulbs as well, even though I've found no definitive proof. The LEDs I installed in my house 10-12 years ago are still going strong, but every newer one I've purchased gives up the ghost within a couple of years. And I only purchase brands with a good reputation, like Feit and the like.

[surge]

The rule of thumb I've found with light bulbs is similar to the Boots Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory), which is you need to spend at least $8-$10 on a bulb to get something that will actually last. Feit is good but its hit or miss on life span, especially when I get them close to the same price and incandescent, often times its the little A/C to DC converter that dies (really need DC light circuits or dedicated converter in the light fixture). I feel its worth spending the extra to not replace them.

[SoftTalker]

Having lived most of my life with incandescent bulbs which you could buy at four for a dollar if you watched for sales, the idea of paying $8-10 for a light bulb is insane to me. I have probably close to 50 bulbs in my house.

But yes, the reasonably-priced LED bulbs don't last any longer than incandescents. I am replacing a few every year around the house. The saving grace is that they generate a lot less heat. I was in a house the other day that still had incandescent bulbs in the bathroom fixures, and could feel the heat from them as soon as I switched them on.

[surge]

You'd have to do the math, but similar to boots theory, if you're spending 2-3 times as much for something that lasts 5-10 times as long (50k hours for a good LED vs 1.2k hours for incandescent) you will save a lot more money in the long run (lets assume the 4/$1 deals are a thing of the past with inflation and reduction in production). Also cheap DC converters create more heat than the bulbs with decent ones. It's worth slowly buying expensive bulbs, at least start with the most used lights in your house and replace those with the expensive ones. You can keep cheap bulbs in your closets, spare rooms, etc assuming you don't forget to turn them off often (then you should get the most efficient/long lasting or get one with a motion timer).

I actually swapped out my shower light because it got so hot the insulating wire melted and it created a short. Took forever to figure out, but once I did, I got a nice $30/$40 shower light fixture that went right in the same spot and its much nicer now. I'm just glad the short was running through metal wire/fiberglass and never started a fire.

[brianshaler]

In a bathroom, a hot lamp is likely intentional. It's typically on its own circuit for use while taking a hot shower.

[SoftTalker]

No, these were just ordinary (clear) bulbs over the sink/vanity

[TonyTrapp]

There's a variety of reasons:

- Lower-quality components (especially capacitors) being used to meet the lower price point. This is by far the most common failure mode I have experienced, it's never the LEDs dying but the power supply.

- Higher-quality LED light is usually result of driving the LEDs harder, causing them to fail earlier.

- Probably some other reasons too.

[Frenchgeek]

The design may also be completely ignoring heat dissipation, and cook its components.

[tiberious726]

From what I've seen, it's usually skimping on the heatsink over the rectifier.

[404mm]

I recommend watching this:

https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...

Only shows you bulbs can be made well and last long. But those are not for you. (Assuming most readers here are not Saudi)

[CapitalistCartr]

The LEDs themselves are made in a handful of factories around the World and are usually robust. The power supplies are the weakness. Each bulb manufacturer makes their own, and it's a race to the bottom.

[Scoundreller]

At least you have a fighting chance of fixing your LED bulb, unlike an incandescent.

Usually they’re over-driven and you can jump a burned out LED and scrape off a bit of a resistor to reduce the amount of current going through to (over-)account for the reduced current need.

https://youtu.be/JBKF7rKB3zc

[seventyone]

There is definitive proof. They over-drive the LEDs which is why they die so quickly. If they were under-driven they last much much longer. It's the heat that kills them IIRC.

[kube-system]

That design doesn't prove anything about any malicious intent to decrease the lifespan of the bulb, any more than it proves that they're optimizing lumens/dollar for the customers who want it.

[Dutchie987]

They are optimizing dollars extracted per customer. Either that, or they are so incompetent designing electronics they shouldn't be allowed to.

[kube-system]

Unfortunately, electronics design does not operate outside the bounds of economics. Given a target retail price of ~$1.25/unit -- many of these bulbs are the best design possible.

The existence of poor quality products does not indicate malice -- many buyers demand low end products.

Cost/quality/performance is an engineering tradeoff without a "correct" answer. The answer is up to the opinion of the customer.

[Dutchie987]

I think that argument only holds when the customer is informed about those specific tradeoffs. The customer will choose the cheap bulbs because they can't be sure the expensive ones are better quality. They often aren't.

Buyers want cheap bulbs, they don't want crap bulbs. If that means $1.25/unit is impossible, so be it.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

WTF do you mean? All led lamps are PWM meaning they flicker meaning they are not at 100% over time.

[seventyone]

https://blog.1000bulbs.com/home/current-underdriving-and-ove...

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

That barely answers anything. If you want more light make the pwm cycle on longer, even up to just driving it with the smoothest dc you can.

[Youden]

It wasn't as simple as them wanting to make more money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY

Key points from an AI summary:

- Incandescent bulbs had to balance factors like light output, efficiency, and lifespan - hotter filaments produced brighter, whiter light but reduced bulb lifespan.

- Longer-lasting bulbs were less efficient and produced dimmer, yellower light, so they were not simply "better" products being suppressed.

- The 1,000 hour target was a reasonable compromise that balanced these competing priorities, not necessarily a sinister plot.

- Even after the Phoebus cartel dissolved, the 1,000 hour lifespan remained the industry standard for general-purpose incandescent bulbs.

[jimmydorry]

You're missing the fact that the Phoebus cartel fined members that sold lightbulbs lasting longer than 1,000 hours. Aftr reaching a stable equilibrium, it's not surprising that 1,000 hours remained the industry standard. It drove sales!

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-04/cheeri...

[hmottestad]

The reason for this, as I understand it, is that it's super easy to make a lightbulb that lasts 30 years. But there are two main trade-offs that make it bad for consumers:

1. Stronger filaments that last longer will be a lot less efficient, so the consumer ends up using a lot more electricity.

2. The filament doesn't burn per-say, but actually evaporates. This is why it'll eventually break. But where does the evaporated metal go? It condenses on the inner surface of the glass, making the lightbulb dimmer than when it was new.

So 1000 hours is a good middle ground. The lightbulb is fairly efficient and 1000 hours isn't long enough for the inside of the glass to get too dark from the condensed filament metal.

Price of the bulbs was also reasonably low. It's cheaper to change out a lightbulb every 1000 hours than the electricity costs of a 10 000 hour lightbulb that emits the same amount of visible light. I don't have hard numbers for that, but it's my understanding.

Watch the youtube video linked by one of the grandparent comments. It's super informative and also contains some experiments to show the trade-offs.

[macNchz]

I really don't see this as a debunking of the idea that the cartel was set up primarily to increase profits among its members. The engineering tradeoffs make sense, but it doesn't follow that because of these tradeoffs, the companies manufacturing lightbulbs were compelled to set up an organization that fined its members for making bulbs that lasted too long. The tradeoffs explanation seems like a post-hoc justification for something that was clearly done with anti-competitive intent.

Ultimately which scenario makes the most sense: that these businesses went through the time and effort to set up this testing organization out of a desire to ensure they all made better products for consumers, or out of a realization that they could all stabilize their revenues if they all sold products that would need to be replaced on a regular basis?

This also strikes me as an area where consumer choice can be particularly effective: most of the attributes of a lightbulb aside from energy consumption are pretty tangible to the end user, and since they are fairly inexpensive and replaceable, the buyer is more able to evaluate them side by side than many other things. It makes total sense to me that the manufacturers would see this as a problem, and choose to limit consumer choice instead of competing to make better products.

[glenstein]

This is a both can be true situation. Its legacy was a cartel oriented around protecting profits, but the coordination nevertheless also reflected an array of engineering compromises that made sense. The situation we have now is that those compromises continued to have a rationale beyond the existence of the cartel.

[tpmoney]

If I remember right from the last time I looked into this, they also fined members for making bulbs that lasted shorter than 1000 hours. The goal was a standardized product, largely to protect regional sales agreements rather than any specific concerns about long bulb life vs sales.

[AnthonyMouse]

This sounds like classic corporate bamboozlery. Find some real trade off that actually exists and then exaggerate its importance or pretend that no other solutions can be found when in fact they don't want solutions because the problem is profitable.

Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency. But there will also be materials that last a long time and have high efficiency. Moreover, even if they want to use the filament material that emits whiter light and then burns up faster, they could then use more of it so it still doesn't burn out quickly. But they don't want to do that, because it would cost marginally more and more importantly then you wouldn't have to buy as many light bulbs.

It's no good to pretend this isn't possible. There isn't an inherent trade off between brightness and efficiency, because inefficiency is just the percentage of the electricity that goes to producing heat rather than light. At the same power consumption, a more efficient bulb is brighter. LEDs are rated as "100W equivalent" even though they consume ~20W. And the LEDs themselves last far longer than the equivalent incandescent light, but then they purposely combine them with a power converter that burns out much sooner. It's marketing, not physics.

[marcosdumay]

> Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency.

You seem to be out of your depth here, while accusing people of propaganda.

Anyway, no there aren't. The efficiency x longevity trade-off is inherent to the incandescent bulbs, you can't just wave all of Quantum Mechanics away. Material changes will increase or decrease the entire pair, and bulbs were already made with the best material that could possibly be used.

And leds, of course are different.

Anyway, nobody on the entire thread is denying that the cartel wanted to increase profits. What people are trying to say is that reality is more complex than looking at a single organization goals and deciding what happens.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The efficiency x longevity trade-off is inherent to the incandescent bulbs, you can't just wave all of Quantum Mechanics away. Material changes will increase or decrease the entire pair, and bulbs were already made with the best material that could possibly be used.

What you're ignoring is that although a different material would still have the trade off, the optimal point on the curve for that material could be in a different place. Material A lasts for 1000 hours at a given amount of light/watt, Material B only lasts for 500 hours at that amount of light/watt, but lasts for 3000 hours at only 15% less light/watt, which some people might want. As an example, there are some applications where the bulb is repeatedly being turned on for only short periods of time, which would tend to shorten lifespan from thermal stress but also implies that power efficiency is less important because the bulb isn't continuously on.

The optimal trade off would also be different for different people. If your light bulb is hard to reach, saving two bucks worth of electricity over its lifetime may not be worth having to drag out a ladder or disassemble a piece of equipment to change it more often. If you have electric heat in a cold climate, a bulb that generates a higher ratio of heat to light isn't costing you anything because you were only going to use a different kind of electric heater regardless. But the cartel took those peoples' options away, claiming that the trade off could only be made one way.

And even for a given material, the failure mode is that enough of the material evaporates for it to lose structural strength and snap. Implying that you could use more of the same material with the same efficiency but improve structural strength.

> And leds, of course are different.

They don't operate in a universe with different physical laws, proving that incumbent incandescent bulbs are nowhere near the limits physics imposes on efficiency.

You don't have to ban longer lifetimes unless you're afraid someone will find a way to do better.

[elzbardico]

I call this the "Prager-U law":

For every issue created by cartels or monopolies, there will be at least one "Akschually..." competitive explanation from libertarians that will either give a completely benign explanation of why this is actually good for your or blame the government/regulations for the issue.

Those explanations will become memes and every single time the subject is discussed they will be brandished by the faithful as axiomatic truths in ad nauseam fashion.

[AnthonyMouse]

The better way to understand libertarianism is to characterize regulation as something like "a rule anybody makes up and then punishes people for violating it even if they never agreed to follow it." Now you don't need to resort to weird contortions to handle cartels and things because they're just a form of government and therefore something to be limited in order to restore the benefits of free market competition.

[tomcam]

PragerU isn’t libertarian. This indicates you don’t understand their biases. The “Akschually” snark indicates both that you don’t observe HN guidelines and that you are not arguing in good faith.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

    Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

[elzbardico]

You assume too much stuff, man.

This is just an internet forum for us technology well paid proletarians, you shouldn't take it that seriously.

[tomcam]

Non-answer

[macNchz]

Well, without the cartel there could have presumably been bright white, 1000 hour bulbs on the shelf next to dim yellow 2500 hour bulbs, and people could have chosen accordingly.

Additionally, the companies set up a whole compliance regime with bulb testing and fines, not for bulbs being too dim, but for bulbs that lasted too long, which I think clarifies the intent more than anything else.

[ndiddy]

There were long-lasting bulbs on the shelf, but they were niche products because they produced poor quality light and were inefficient. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQpqyt3oeqk . Note that it consumes 40 watts but produces the same light output as a standard 25 watt bulb.

[HPsquared]

It's a question of temperature.

Hotter filament gives more efficient and whiter light (the black body radiation has more visible and less infrared), but the hotter filament doesn't last as long (faster evaporation rate).

It's perfectly possible for end users to use a dimmer switch to make incandescent lamps last much, much longer at the expense of less light and a "warmer" colour.

Lifespan is very, very sensitive to the temperature.

[aitchnyu]

Which cartel is making consumer bulbs and streetlights with advertised 50000 hour led but with 5000 hour drivers? Indian market BTW.

[notoverthere]

There's also the Centennial Light [1], a light bulb made in the late 1890s. It was first lit in 1901 and it's still alight today.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light

[kibwen]

The centennial bulb is less a lightbulb than it is a toaster oven. Planned obsolescence is real, but the centennial bulb is not evidence of it.

[Moldoteck]

i guess a lot of lights will work a lot longer if powered at such low voltage and not switched on/off like most ppl do, but this would reduce a lot nr of cases where such a light can be used

[Modified3019]

I love incandescent twinkly colored christmas mini-lights, so much that I use them for providing walkable light at night around the doors to the backyard for roommates. They have a warm glow that LED’s just don’t replicate yet, and the filament and glass make them more gem-like. And the twinkle bulbs are truly “random” and also create subtle and pleasing variations in brightness in the whole line, due to voltage fluctuations.

Not a single one has burned out in something like 4 years of runtime. Honestly the paint inside the bulbs is going to fade away completely before these things go out. The trick is 2 things:

1. Don’t move them

2. Use a dimmer and run them around 75% power

[afiori]

Which to be honest has the power efficiency of a dim campfire

[hoseja]

It barely glows. The "lightbulb cartel" was basically a consumer protection because barring major inventions, any deviation from the thousand hour lightbulb would have severe drawbacks in terms of power efficiency or light output.

[b112]

This, to me, is a red herring.

The free market is designed for this. If the bulb lasts 5000 hours, but burns 1/2 as bright, consumers can easily decide what they prefer.

And further, the cartel did not have exceptions for product enhancements, or improvements, which might have enabled > 1000 hrs without any drawbacks.

Why are people defending this cartel? Market collusion is generally frowned upon.

[tiberious726]

They absolutely sold long lasting lightbulbs. There were horrible and no one bought them except for specialty scenarios.

The standards were set around what could be sold as a standard lightbulb.

[Dylan16807]

There was, but also the hotter 1000-hour bulbs are more efficient, and the alternative of 2500 hours still gets you nowhere near a decade of use.

[afiori]

Planned obsolescence is very real, but the reality of incandescent light bulbs means that lifespan, efficiency, and luminosity are not independent.

The 1000 hours limit is in practice a lower bound to a combination of luminosity and efficiency

[Onavo]

LED diodes can theoretically last decades given the correct drivers (current and heat needs to be significantly limited), unfortunately they are the very definition of planned obsolescence.

https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quanda...

A stable DC current and temperature limited LED can easily last decades.

[fkyoureadthedoc]

I remember seeing a relevant video about Dubai and some bulb company working together to create a longer life led bulb.

Ok here it is --

The lamps you're not allowed to have. Exploring the Dubai lamps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4

> These fascinating lamps are a result of a collaboration between Philips Lighting and Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum - the ruler of Dubai. They are designed to be the most efficient available, matching high lumen output with very long life. Once you see the construction and circuitry you'll realise this isn't just marketing spin.

Now I want to actually look into and see if they're available elsewhere, because my LED bulbs really do seem to fail pretty frequently...

[afiori]

I agree that LED lights are a better example of planned obolescence.

[jajko]

Literally in that linked wiki article:

> "A longer life bulb of a given wattage puts out less light (and proportionally more heat) than a shorter life bulb of the same wattage"

As long as we can recycle (or at least safely get rid of) the burned out ones I'd say its a win from ecology perspective, and at least in some cases also for end users. But this wasnt the main driver of the change, it was the good ol' corporate greed as per the same wiki page.

[afiori]

I believe that the main drive was to stop a race to the bottom where everybody would advertize 1000000 hours lightbulbs but they all sucked and the technology would be considered worthless.

I seriously doubt you can recycle the tungsten as it literally evaporates and oxidize on the lightbulb.

[mratsim]

Reminded me of Bastiat's candlestick maker's petition:

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

[tiberious726]

The candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long. The converse is just as true of tungsten filaments as it is of candles.

I know this is a common pop-history thing to cite on the Internet, but I would think hackernews would understand the benefits of standardization.

If every brand's lightbulb has different luminousities how on earth would architects decide how to space fixtures?

This "cartel" is how we avoided a dimness war, like the loudness war we had in digital music a decade or so back