[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.