"By the mid-1920s [1], just about every American who needed a car had one. It had been hard enough to convince Americans that this new-fangled invention was a necessary investment, but now automakers had a new problem. How the hell were they going to sell more cars? How were they going to make any money?"
The program Throughline, which is broadcast by NPR, looks at the historical origins of various aspects of modern society, politics and life (link here). This program is devoted to the origins and modern manifestations of planned obsolescence is instructive. Not surprisingly, planned obsolescence is designed by capitalists to increase profits by decreasing the durability and/or repairability of products that consumers and businesses have to buy more frequently than if those products had been designed to last and be more easily repairable.
Maybe less known, but also no surprise once it is known is the fact that modern planned obsolescence marketing and rhetoric is grounded in modern cutting edge propaganda technology, which is grounded in cutting edge cognitive biology and social behavior science research.
A couple of points merit mention:
- One of the first known examples of planned obsolescence was hatched by a global organization of businesses called the Phoebus Cartel. In December of 1924, the cartel hatched and initiated a secret plan to increase sales of light bulbs by bringing the average bulb's lifespan from 2,500 hours down to 1,000 hours. It took several years of engineering and testing to finally build light bulbs that reliably burned out at about 1,000 hours, but the plan finally succeeded. Giant businesses such as General Electric participated in this plan to boost profits by selling light bulbs intentionally designed to fail sooner.
- Under the guidance of the brilliant engineer and master marketer Alfred P. Sloan, General Motors (president, chairman and/or CEO from the 1920s through the 1950s), along with designer Harley J. Earl, pioneered the concept of psychological obsolescence, e.g., by inventing annual car and truck model changes. That was do to make last and previous year's vehicles look and feel obsolete or shabby compared to newer year models. One tactic that GM used was to flog a new car sales as hard as the GM sales force could, but then the instant a new car was sold, the sales people would instantly pivot to a ruthless psychological campaign to instill regret in the new car buyer by shifting the consumer's focus from their brand new car. The focus changed from how great this new car is to how great the new and improved model that will come out next year compared to the one you just bought. This sales tactic started even before the buyer had driven a new car off the lot. Psychological obsolescence was worth billions is sales to GM over the decades. From what I can tell, GM marketing worked so well that most Americans actually came to believe the propaganda that what is good for GM is good for America.
- Modern products are obsolescence planned. The Throughline program discusses the iPhone as a prime example. Batteries were built to fail and not be replaceable until enough consumer complaints forced just enough changes to mostly blunt the complaints. The overall iPhone strategy is to force customers to replace their designed-to-fail iPhones as soon as psychologically acceptable to consumers.
One way to see this more broadly
Stepping back and looking broadly, essentially all American political, religious and business elites are well-grounded in cutting edge propaganda technology, which includes planned obsolescence. It arguably amounts to a propaganda movement. Most of the public is mostly unaware of how pervasive and effective it is, maybe because, like fish in water, most people can't see it because it is everywhere and therefore nowhere. That is no accident. The elites use propaganda technology ruthlessly and relentlessly on average citizens to get what they want, often or usually by deceit, flawed reasoning, irrational emotional appeals, and irrationally fomented social division and polarization. The latter tactic applies to all three of modern American politics, American Christian religion and American business.
What do the elites want? For the most part, and regardless of what they say to the contrary or how hard or often they say it, the elites in America want and are getting wealth and power concentrated among themselves at the expense of the masses (the mob as they see us, or as Trump has called us, "disgusting people"). In general, two kinds of ideology or mindset drives the wealth and power trickle up in modern America, laissez-faire capitalism and radical fundamentalist Christian theocracy.
That is the real us vs. them fight that is now underway in America, and liberal democracies elsewhere. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of the bigger picture.
When an apologist for hard core capitalism tells you that capitalism works because it is based on selling the best products at the lowest cost to maximize benefit to all people, it is fair and balanced to tell them they are full of crap and either ignorant or lying. Yes, some businesses are exceptions, but most or all of the big ones are not.
As discussed in footnote 1, early on Ford and GMN operated on different principles. Ford build vehicles to last a long time. GM built them to not last. The economic success of GM's sales and marketing propaganda forced Ford to adopt the same tactics. That is why I assert that that most of all big corporations have the same mindset, which is maximize profit over all other concerns, including social, personal and environmental risk or harm. That is what it means to have profit as the one and only overriding moral value in most of capitalism and most capitalists. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of that general rule.
Footnote:
1. That article, A Primer on Planned Obsolescence – How to Avoid Self-Destructing Goods, includes these comments:
Henry Ford, despite his white supremacist leanings, had an engineer’s integrity—and didn’t see any point in altering the Model T. It worked well, it came in one color (black) and they lasted as long as their owners maintained them.
His competitors at General Motors, however, didn’t have the same scruples. The head of GM, Alfred Sloan Jr., suggested a campaign that his critics would later label “planned obsolescence,” he would introduce new models each year, in new colors, styles, and with more powerful engines. In so doing, he would create demand for new cars, even before his customers had worn out their first one.
If you’re reading this article on your phone or computer (or even if you’re a psycho and printed it out), you’re familiar to some degree with planned obsolescence. Notice how your devices don’t hold a charge like they used to? Or how your printer cartridges seem to run out of ink before they ought to? That’s planned obsolescence, baby.
Though we attribute the first modern application of planned obsolescence to Alfred Sloan of GM, the philosophy thereof was developed by another man: Bernard London. London’s 1932 pamphlet, Ending The Depression Through Obsolescence, espoused the theory that creating products with an artificially shortened lifespan could boost the economy and lift the nation out of the Great Depression. He explains,
In a word, people generally, in a frightened and hysterical mood, are using everything that they own longer than was their custom before the depression. In the earlier period of prosperity, the American people did not wait until the last possible bit of use had been extracted from every commodity. They replaced old articles with new for reasons of fashion and up-to-dateness. They gave up old homes and old automobiles long before they were worn out, merely because they were obsolete. All business, transportation, and labor had adjusted themselves to the prevailing habits of the American people. Perhaps, prior to the panic, people were too extravagant; if so, they have now gone to the other extreme and have become retrenchment-mad.
London goes on to suggest a government program whereby old goods that had been deemed “useless” would be bought up by the government and destroyed so that consumers could go out and buy newer versions of the same products and stimulate the economy and get people back to work in manufacturing jobs (*cough cough* Cash for Clunkers *cough cough*) .
NOTE: As noted above, the Phoebus Cartel to control light bulbs was launched in 1922 and London wrote in 1932. Thus, the article above gets the origins of planned obsolescence wrong, but it's there for some historical context and commentary, e.g., Henry Ford really was a rabid White supremacist.
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