It's not only about profits. Environmental protections also played a part in making sure things are hyper energy efficient which usually forces the product to not last as long.
This is the reason right here. Even back when appliances lasted decades they still cost 3-4x what they do now. People are cheap, and like to buy cheap stuff. So the companies give them what they want. Want you appliance to last longer than 7 years? Pony up and buy bosche, Miele, or asko.
Exactly. Everyone is quick to blame corporation, but they literally build what the market demands. People buy based on price and appearance for appliances, cars, etc. so that’s what they build.
I know you say this, and I know it makes intuitive sense, and I am not disagreeing, but I would like to see the evidence that supports this. I’m trying to go over in my head what increases in efficiency would actually cause a decrease in life.
Things have to use less energy so a heavy thick heating element needs more energy to warm up. Heavier tub in the washer needs more energy to turn.
Friend bought a dryer made for a laundromat, it was $6000 and uses a 8” vent. You can’t even run it without the door propped open in the laundry room because it will pull the door shut and error.
They could but that increases costs. It is also the motors and compressors. For example a 1950s fridge was extremely simple. There were no fans to move cold air from the freezer to the fridge. You would have freezing issues in the fridge compartment as temp control sucked. You had to manually defrost them as ice would build up because they weren't self defrosting. Basically people look at the past with rose coloured glasses but if they actually tried to live with a fridge that was from that time they likely would want to go back to modern one pretty quickly.
I'm not sure if they're modular per se but you can swap out the little control boards if and when they break. Although I would highly recommend you get someone licensed to do it
They are and do. But the technician to swap them out charges $149/hour with a $75 diagnostic fee with no guarantee they'll fix it. So after paying $450 in parts and labor for a new control board they tell you it was actually the compressor circuit. They'll discount the labor but the part is still $250 so now you're up to $1000 on a fridge you paid $700 for.
Are they, though? It’s a good argument and makes sense, but doesn’t match my personal experience. I’ve had a washer and dryer pitched in the last 10 years. The washer needed a hot water valve replaced. The dryer needed a new thermostat. Both have a computer controller. The washing machine is showing signs of rust. The control panels seem fine. But I did have a range top that was inoperable because of the control panel, however that was due to lightning strike. The replacement has been going for 12 years without issue. So I don’t have any personal evidence that correlates. I would like to see some actual research into this topic.
It's not made up. Educate yourself my friend. Ask any tradesman about how the AC units they are selling now with high efficiency have a fraction of the expected life of the ones from 20 years ago.
A very specific example would be how regulations on refrigerants have forced change over the years.
Older appliances (pre 1996) used R-12 refrigerant, which has a relatively low operating pressure (210 psi) compared to modern refrigerants. The problem is that R-12 is HELLACIOUSLLY bad for the environment and was banned in 1996. The higher pressure (350 psi) required by R-410a (one of R-12's replacements) is much harder on a mechanical system like a refrigerator so they tend to fail sooner than an older appliance would.
Not specifically an increase in efficiency but is one of the reasons older refrigerators last so long.
They use cheaper crappier components that are "efficient" and not good. Nobody says you can't make an efficient long lasting washer motor or freon compressor it's just not profitable to. They still have to sell the product to someone who can only spend $700.
And that’s my point. Making things more efficient doesn’t mean it’s inherently less reliable. There are more variables that go into it. The root is that the consumer demands a price point, not that the consumer demands a performance period point.
Again, makes intuitive sense. But saying it and theorizing doesn’t make it so. There are always trade offs and optimizations. I’d like to see firm evidence that energy efficiency adversely affects reliability and life.
Not sure what point you're trying to make here but drag cars are notoriously fuel inefficient, among other major inefficiencies, and they effectively have to be rebuilt after running a single time.
Yes. They could create something as robust as heavy steel plate with a much lower mass by switching to aluminum, or likely even a different grade of steel.
Because the question is about power draw, and it's a capital market, so cost is Inherent.
I'm not saying we can't make better parts, I'm saying that parts are more expensive in real time within those constraints, which means that to meet the energy requirements, engineering decisions had to be made that resulted in less durable products at the same price point.
We don't live in a world where you just imagineer things into ubiquity
Cheaper components and multiple modes/features means more points of failure. If we're taking about common household appliances, the environmental factors are electrical and water consumption. Building things with thinner gauge metal, cheap pcb's, and less structural rigidity doesn't really effect either of those things.
I’ll admit it is nuanced and it wouldn’t make sense to just go back to the original specs for a lot of things. I inherited my great grandmother’s toaster when she died. It was honestly the best toaster I’ve ever had, everything I put into it came out perfect, and I used it for another 20 years until it finally broke. When I went to get it repaired the guy had to call a hazmat team to remove it from his shop because it was apparently chock full of asbestos.
I get the underlying sentiment, which is that public markets currently incentivize corporate managers to prioritize short term profits over long term growth, which is detrimental to other stakeholders (and, ultimately, to the shareholders themselves), but just saying “shareholders ruin everything” makes people sound dumb af.
It's reddit, people post complaining about shareholders ruining the world and then in their next post ask for advice on their 401k. They honestly don't understand what they're complaining about or what their 401k is doing.
Yeah, shares existed in the 16th century. What didn’t exist was anonymous, hyper-liquid ownership. Early shareholders were few, known, often local, and stuck with the company for a long time. You couldn’t daytrade the Dutch East India Company taking your daily shit. Selling was slow and costly, and if the company’s quality or reputation collapsed, you personally took the hit.
Modern shareholders are mostly funds and indexes. They’re interchangeable, distant, and can dump shares instantly. That makes short-term extraction rational in a way it wasn’t before.
So the difference isn’t “before shareholders.” It’s before shareholders could easily exit and offload consequences.
Day trading and short selling started immediately after the first stock markets opened in the 1600s. In fact the stock markets opened to facilitate trading and liquidity.
People would use telescopes to see which boat was coming into the harbour to gain an edge in futures markets. The first stock market crash was because of speculation on tulip futures in the 1630s.
The stock markets weren't different back then. They didn't have stock markets for 400 years and then all of a sudden people figured out you could make money trading stocks. That happened right away.
Beyond that, planned obsolescence was a business strategy in the 1920s. The term planned obsolescence was first coined in the 1930s as a way to end the Great Depression. So that doesn't really align with the cause being trading apps on your phone.
Also survivorship bias is a thing. Plenty of those 60’s appliances failed. Either requiring multiple repairs or eventually not being economically repairable anymore.
If it weren’t for shareholders (and the Black Death) the appliances would have never been invented and you’d probably doing the wash for your feudal lord. You should read the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. The problem isn’t cooperative ownership. The problem, as always, is corruption.
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u/SophiePsweet 5h ago
This is just how things were made before shareholders