Your pick...

 

-So, with Justice Stephen Breyer retiring, who is your pick for  his SCOTUS replacement, and why?  Give as many details as possible.

-Do you foresee any interference by the Republicans on Biden's SCOTUS nomination?  If yes, in what way(s) and by whom?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Planned obsolescence: A short history

"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.

 

A fight over solar power: Capitalism and money vs. environmentalism and consumers

When money is at stake, deceptive propaganda, lies and smears is the go-to tactic for capitalists. Consumers get slaughtered in the crossfire because they have few or no big guns on their side, so they stand there with sticks and rocks while the opponents use more effective weaponry. In other words it is business as usual. This is about a huge fight over solar panels on rooftops here in California. Tens of billions of dollars are at stake. California skies have gone black with lobbyists carrying briefcases from capitalists on both sides parachuting in from squadrons of massive aircraft transports. 

A batch of lobbyists parachuting in to

fight for the cash

Getting another load of lobbyists ready for transport to 

do battle in California for huge piles of cash 

The New York Times lays out the battle lines and describes what’s at stake:

California has led the nation in setting ambitious climate change goals and policies. But the state’s progress is threatened by a nasty fight between rival camps in the energy industry that both consider themselves proponents of renewable energy.

The dispute is about who will get to build the green energy economy — utilities or smaller companies that install solar panels and batteries at homes — and reap billions of dollars in profits from those investments. At stake is whether the state can reach its goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2045.

For years, the rooftop solar business was ascendant in California, growing as much as 62 percent a year. That angered utilities and their labor unions, which long controlled the production, sale and distribution of electricity, and they lobbied state leaders to rein in the rooftop solar business — an effort that is on the cusp of success.

In addition to having about 12 percent of the U.S. population, California is widely considered a leader in energy and climate policy. Its decisions matter far beyond its territory because other states and the federal government often copy them.

The California Public Utilities Commission [CPUC] plans to vote in the next few weeks to reduce the growth of solar energy in the state, which has added more of it than any other. The commission has proposed slashing the incentives homeowners receive to install rooftop solar systems. Officials argue that the changes would help reduce utility bills for lower-income residents about $10 a month by forcing rooftop solar users to pay higher fees to support the electric grid.

The proposal would force California to rely more on large power installations, including solar and wind farms, and long-distance transmission lines operated by utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. Every watt of electricity not produced on the rooftop of a home will be produced and transmitted by a utility or wholesale power companies.

“You can understand why utilities don’t like distributive resources,” said David Feldman, a senior energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, using an industry term for small energy systems. “The more electricity they sell, the more money they make.”

Some energy experts say utilities would not be able to produce or buy enough renewable energy to replace what would be lost from the decline in rooftop solar panels — which supplied 9 percent of the state’s electricity in 2020, more than nuclear and coal put together. California would need to set aside about a quarter of its land for renewable energy to meet its climate goals without expanding rooftop solar, said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental energy at Stanford. As a result, utilities would have to turn to natural gas and other fossil fuels.

People who install solar panels on their roofs or property are still connected to the electrical grid, but they receive credit on their bills for power they produce beyond what they use [Consumers are proposed to get paid a paltry ~$0.04/KWh for excess energy their solar produces and the utility then sells it at market rates, ~$0.31/KWh here in San Diego (national average is ~0.11/KWh) -- a bad deal for consumers, but a freaking gold mine to the utility]. California’s proposal would cut the value of those credits, which are roughly equivalent to retail electricity rates, by about 87 percent. In addition, the measure would impose a new monthly fee on solar homeowners — about $56 for the typical rooftop system [about $672/year]. 

The monthly cost of solar and electricity for homeowners with an average rooftop system who are served by PG&E, the state’s largest utility, would jump to $215, from $133, according to the California Solar and Storage Association.

An intense campaign is underway to sway regulators. Rooftop solar companies, homeowners and activists on one side and utilities and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on the other are lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom to intervene. While the commission is independent of Mr. Newsom, he wields enormous influence. The governor recently told reporters that the regulators should change their proposal but didn’t specify how [Newsome is scared -- he’s between a capitalist-campaign contribution 

rock (special interest and rich people free speech) and a consumer-environmental hard place].

The electrical workers union, which did not respond to requests for comment [not surprisingly], is playing a central role. It represents linemen, electricians and other utility employees, who usually earn more than the mostly nonunion workers who install rooftop systems. Many union members, an important constituency for Democrats, fear being left behind in the transition to green energy. 

Californians carry the10th highest tax burden in the US, is one of the most heavily regulated states, and consumers here pay high utility costs. Adding a fee, proposed by the CPUC at $8/month/KWh of solar panels on roofs, would add another ~$600 in utility fees adds to the average consumer’s electric utility bills. For context, California utilities are usually solidly profitable -- 10.2% for our local SDG&E. For every dollar California utilities spend building electric or gas infrastructure, they are allowed to charge customers an additional ~10 cents in profits for their shareholders. 

Tax burden data

Source: WalletHub

Question: Which side are you on, the greedy company capitalists and their non-union labor or the greedy utility capitalists and their protected by law labor union, or the consumers and the environment (which are not represented in the arguments between the two elephants, but both elephants argue they are on the side of consumers and the environment), or no side because this is just too complicated and it makes your brain hurt?

Higher income may modestly positively affect child brain development

Distribution of brain wave activity (power)

High cash group got $333/month ($3996/year)

Low cash group got $20/month ($240/year)

In child development, more mid and high frequency (alpha, beta, gamma) wave activity and less low frequency (theta) correlates with improved language, memory, self-regulation, and social-emotional processing. Researchers postulated that children raised in poverty might have decreased mid and high frequency wave activity and increased low frequency activity compared to children not raised in poverty. A new study suggests this hypothesis could be true. The New York Times comments:

A study that provided poor mothers with cash stipends for the first year of their children’s lives appears to have changed the babies’ brain activity in ways associated with stronger cognitive development, a finding with potential implications for safety net policy.

The differences were modest — researchers likened them in statistical magnitude to moving to the 75th position in a line of 100 from the 81st — and it remains to be seen if changes in brain patterns will translate to higher skills, as other research offers reason to expect.  

“This is a big scientific finding,” said Martha J. Farah, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted a review of the study for the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, where it was published on Monday. “It’s proof that just giving the families more money, even a modest amount of more money, leads to better brain development.” [It’s evidence, not proof yet, because (i) this research would need to be repeated and verified, and (ii) the children would need to undergo cognitive testing to verify that the observed brain activity patterns correlate with expected cognitive function changes]

Evidence abounds that poor children on average start school with weaker cognitive skills, and neuroscientists have shown that the differences extend to brain structure and function. But it has not been clear if those differences come directly from the shortage of money or from related factors like parental education or neighborhood influences.

The study released on Monday offers evidence that poverty itself holds children back from their earliest moments.  

The question of whether cash aid helps or hurts children is central to social policy. Progressives argue that poor children need an income floor, citing research that shows even brief periods of childhood poverty can lead to lower adult earnings and worse health. Conservatives say unconditional payments erode work and marriage, increasing poverty in the long run.  

Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine, who was one of nine co-authors of the study, said he hoped the research would refocus the debate, which he said was “almost always about the risks that parents might work less or use the money frivolously” toward the question of “whether the payments are good for kids.” 

But a conservative welfare critic, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, argued that the study vindicated stringent welfare laws, which he credited with reducing child poverty by incentivizing parents to find and keep jobs. “If you actually believe that child poverty has these negative effects, then you should not be trying to restore unconditional cash aid,” he said. “You certainly don’t want to go in the business of reversing welfare reform.” [Once again, mindless, rigid anti-government ideology and culture war tends to poison rationality, data interpretation and open-mindedness -- the data isn’t in yet to draw firm conclusions, and even if it was, this blowhard ideologue would still find excuses to oppose cash payments, even if (i) the evidence showed the payouts returned more to the US Treasury than the taxpayer investment, and/or (ii) regardless of what public opinion on this issue was]

One of the complexities here is trying to show that poverty causes differences in brain activity patterns, instead of just correlating with such differences. This research hints at the possibility that poverty causes the observed differences.

The research paper comments: 

Early childhood poverty has long been associated with lower school achievement, educational attainment, and adult earnings (1⇓⇓–4). Moreover, from early childhood through adolescence, higher family income tends to be associated with higher scores on assessments of language, memory, self-regulation, and social-emotional processing (5⇓⇓–8). Furthermore, poverty has been correlated with the structural development and functional activity of brain regions that support these skills. For example, higher family income is associated with a larger surface area of the cerebral cortex, particularly in regions that support children’s language and executive functioning (9, 10). This association is strongest among the most economically disadvantaged families (9), suggesting that a given increase in family income may be linked with greater differences in brain structure among economically disadvantaged children compared with more advantaged peers (11).  

However, while it might be tempting to draw policy conclusions, we caution that the present findings pertain only to the first 12 mo of a multiyear unconditional cash transfer intervention. Recent legislation and policy proposals provide income supplements to low-income families in the form of Child Tax Credit payments with higher payments in early childhood, but none would limit assistance to the first year of life (54). For our part, we do not suggest that a 12-mo intervention alone would be likely to have lasting effects, nor that cash transfer policies obviate the need for direct service interventions, such as well-child pediatric visits, home visitation, or high-quality early childhood education. Nonetheless, by targeting families during children’s earliest years, BFY [Baby’s First Years] has found important evidence of the effects of increased income during a time when children’s brains are particularly sensitive to experience. Traditionally, debates over income transfer policies directed at low-income families in the United States have centered on maternal labor supply rather than child well-being. Our findings underscore the importance of shifting the conversation to focus more attention on whether or how income transfer policies promote children’s development. (emphasis added)