WI: Planned Obsolescence Severely Curtailed?

Planned obsolescence, or built-in obsolescence, in industrial design and economics is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete (that is, unfashionable or no longer functional) after a certain period of time. The rationale behind the strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle").

What if large-scale initiatives to regulate and limit planned obsolescence appeared early in the 20th century?

At the minimum, something like France's legislation requiring that appliance manufacturers and vendors declare the intended product lifespans, and to inform consumers how long spare parts for a given product will be produced.

One option would be to loosen trade barriers and have more competition, or have a single state-owned enterprise in a non monopolistic industry build long-lasting products causing competition for durable products in that industry.

At the most extreme strawmannish example, something like a communist government mandating that all products should last for 100 years.

How would economy, technology, standard of living, etc. differ if more regulation existed in favor of products built to last/be continuously repairable, or against the strategy of planned obsolescence?
 
Banning planned obsolescence will unfortunately lead to unplanned obsolescence (that nobody notices). That's great that your family heirloom, $3000 record player and your sturdy Western Electric wall-mounted telephone will last a century: but the necessary R&D and overengineering means nobody has the money or business case to develop the CD player or smartphones.
 
I have no idea how this would be achieved though maybe planned obsolescence could be declared similar to some sort of morally ambiguous scheme. Sure it’s messed up, but not explicitly terrible. Though if it’s ruled that it does cause damage (say like environmental damage or part of financial chicanery), could be possible.

It all depends on the when and the details.

The economy would take a massive shift (either abrupt or gradual, depending on the when) of going from physical consumption to a more immaterial one. Rather than buying things, you buy experiences, like going to a theme park.

As for technology, it’s an iffy thing. I don’t think this would stop CDs from replacing tapes because they are such a massive step, but it does become tricky given how technology quickly evolves.

Granted, it all depends on steps and so on. Each model of an iPhone for example would have a longer lifetime between each model.
 

xsampa

Banned
Banning planned obsolescence will unfortunately lead to unplanned obsolescence (that nobody notices). That's great that your family heirloom, $3000 record player and your sturdy Western Electric wall-mounted telephone will last a century: but the necessary R&D and overengineering means nobody has the money or business case to develop the CD player or smartphones.
Maybe a traditionalist regime decides that maintaining traditional technologies and preventing social disruption from the innovation of new technologies is more important than the benefits that accrue to countries that create or adopt new technologies, and so decides to go with banning planned obsolescence. Failure to develop technologies at a fast pace would be a feature, not a bug. As a poster mentioned above, a shift towards no-planned-obsolescence and no-consumerism would lead towards greater focus on experiences, and a traditionalist regime would value shared experiences as building community, and preventing individualism from gaining ground ,which opens a whole can of worms. The absence of consumerism could further be used as an ideological tool to showcase "traditional frugality and immaterialism" as opposed to modern greed. Thus, a traditionalist state would eagerly ban planned obsolecence.
 
Maybe a traditionalist regime decides that maintaining traditional technologies and preventing social disruption from the innovation of new technologies is more important than the benefits that accrue to countries that create or adopt new technologies, and so decides to go with banning planned obsolescence..

We have exactly such a culture: the Amish. They are extremely wary of technological change, and strongly value hard work and craftsmanship, not maximizing profits -- hence the durability and high quality of furniture and other export goods they produce. Deliberately making goods to wear out sooner than necessary, in order to sell more, would be considered very immoral and wrong.
 
We have exactly such a culture: the Amish. They are extremely wary of technological change, and strongly value hard work and craftsmanship, not maximizing profits -- hence the durability and high quality of furniture and other export goods they produce. Deliberately making goods to wear out sooner than necessary, in order to sell more, would be considered very immoral and wrong.

Yeah, though they also pretty much admit that they rely on their mroe cosmopolitan counterparts to serve as their guinea pigs.

And technological change is not the thing with planned obsolescence. Planed obsolesence is an economical tool. Technology can still grow and be developed, but it's not like where there's a new iPhone every year. More like... one every three years. Granted, this would require companies having to sync with service providers.

Alternately, products may be designed to be more modular so people could easier "update" it themselves. It would be something of a work-around from the restrictions or pay people to upgrade the thing. This would be something of a happy medium here.

For things like computers and smartphones, the modular design could work and for some appliances, it could spring a new hobby industry of sorts, people buying parts or people willing to update.
 
Three points:

First many first-generation production runs should be allowed to die an early death because they are too crude.

Secondly, you could use nationalism - “made in Ruralia” - as a marketing tool linked to nationalism and quality.

Thirdly, much of what we now see as built-in-insolescence is among products that no one used 20 years ago (e.g. smart phones). So you could promote
Durability in major purchases like houses and cars while slowing rapid chamges of fashion in short-lived consumer goods like clothes and music. Consider that every generation wants its own genre of “angry young man music” to differentiate them from their parents’ music.
 
Three points:

First many first-generation production runs should be allowed to die an early death because they are too crude.

Secondly, you could use nationalism - “made in Ruralia” - as a marketing tool linked to nationalism and quality.

Thirdly, much of what we now see as built-in-insolescence is among products that no one used 20 years ago (e.g. smart phones). So you could promote
Durability in major purchases like houses and cars while slowing rapid chamges of fashion in short-lived consumer goods like clothes and music. Consider that every generation wants its own genre of “angry young man music” to differentiate them from their parents’ music.

1- Yeah I don't think they would be able to get away with planned obsolescence back then or even try to.

2- That would not stop planned obsolescence and nationalism marketing is not gonna stop people in the long-run and may even cause larger suspicions.

3- I can see it in cars. Houses do not have planned obsolescence (their problem being a different thing). Clothes I do not know in regards about planned obsolescence and music is an art, I do not think one can plan for styles of mysic to become obsolete (maybe a couple of performers if they understood one hit wonders, but no.) The big thing that appears to be issue with it (least that I can think of) are consumer electronics.

Granted, it all depends on what approaches specifically the reforms and bylaws target or if it is in general
 
And then your neighbor builds a better mousetrap. There's a lot of products that don't so much suffer from planned obsolescence as from being built to a price point.
 
Good old capitalism, ... love it or hate it. Out with the old, in with the new. Good old global warfare. If you do not have a nationalistic new models of war machines or implements every 3 months when the enemy is producing the same every 4 months, you will end up losing the war ... and your nation. Pretty much everything today has a service life.

Might be the same as evolution? Born ... live ... die. Make way for the improved product. Perhaps planned obsolescence is a natural outgrowth of life on Earth? Dunno that.
 
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. . . At the minimum, something like France's legislation requiring that appliance manufacturers and vendors declare the intended product lifespans, and to inform consumers how long spare parts for a given product will be produced. . .
This might actually dovetail nicely with capitalism.

The sweet spot might be picking the right amount to follow up on consumer complaints, small claims courts, fines, etc, so there’s enough of a club for the company to get it right, but not too much of a club.
 
Good old capitalism, ... love it or hate it. Out with the old, in with the new. Good old global warfare. If you do not have a nationalistic new models of war machines or implements every 3 months when the enemy is producing the same every 4 months, you will end up losing the war ... and your nation. Pretty much everything today as a service life.

Might be the same as evolution? Born ... live ... die. Make way for the improved product. Perhaps planned obsolescence is a natural outgrowth of life on Earth? Dunno that.

Not really. Planned obsolesacence is a strategy where basically something is made to be useless after a certain point so your target buys a new one. Why do you think Japanese cars became popular a couple decades ago? They lasted longer than their American coutnerparts.
 
No. The Japanese products began very shoddy. Consider the first imported to the USA Honda Cars. Absolute junk. Nobody bought them. Then over competition and time the Honda automobile because one of if not the bes automobile in the world. The first Japanese products were shoddy and cheap. That changed.
 
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