WEBVTT - Rerun: Planned Obsolescence and the Right to Repair 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:14.840 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.560 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:23.360 And how the tech are you. Well, it's Thanksgiving here 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.160 in the United States, which means we are actually off 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.840 work today, but we thought we'd bring you a rerun episode. 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:35.440 This episode published last year March nine, two thousand twenty one, 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.720 with the title Planned Obsolescence and the Right to Repair. 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.200 I thought this would be an appropriate topic to bring 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:47.160 back up because we are in the heart of holiday 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:50.960 gift buying season. You know, tomorrow is Black Friday, which 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.240 is traditionally a big shopping day, but we all know 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.480 that those shopping days have been expanded both before and 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:01.240 after Black Friday. But one of the big things people 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:05.639 like to get our tech gifts for their loved ones. 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.720 And one of the downsides to tech is that it 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:14.760 can go obsolete pretty quickly, and sometimes when stuff goes wrong, 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.280 there's not necessarily an easy way to fix it, and 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:22.039 that brings us to the right to Repair movement. So 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:25.160 sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode from last year, 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:31.679 Planned Obsolescence and the Right to Repair. I recently did 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.080 a series of episodes about General Motors, and one of 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.319 the many things I talked about in those episodes was 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.600 how Alfred Sloan, who was an absolutely critical leader of 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:48.600 GM early on, established a practice of planned obsolescence. That 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:53.400 is part of Sloan's market strategy was creating a company 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:57.760 that every year would release cars that had updated styling 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:02.000 and features in order to entire not just first time 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.280 car buyers, but people who had already, you know, purchased 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.000 a car in the past. And that got me to 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.160 thinking that I should really talk about planned obsolescence in 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.880 general and examine the facts and consider the myths, and 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.120 also chat a bit about the right to repair movement 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:23.440 and recycling, because all of this is kind of connected together. 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:29.360 We're talking about casual consumption of electronic goods, almost a 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:34.760 disposable approach to them, and electronic goods are not necessarily 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.720 the best thing in the world to treat as disposable. 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:41.320 So let's just start off by defining what planned obsolescence 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:45.120 is really all about. Now. Generally, people talk about planned 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:49.119 obsolescence as a strategy in which the maker of a thing, 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.600 whether it's a physical good or an app or whatever, 0:02:54.240 --> 0:03:00.399 builds into that thing a predetermined end of life. Other words, 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.320 you've already determined how long this thing is supposed to last. 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.880 And the purpose of planned obsolescens is to not just 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.560 sell one thing to each customer one time, but to 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:17.400 sell many of that same thing to every customer over time. 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:20.440 It's the same reason why a lot of software companies 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:25.040 will migrate toward a subscription based revenue model, because it's 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:29.519 more profitable to get customers to regularly give you money 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:32.840 than to bank on selling them a lot of the 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:36.640 same thing to a huge customer base. Like if I'm 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:40.080 selling a software package for two hundred dollars, I'm going 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.120 to get you know, X number of customers, and chances 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:45.320 are they're not going to buy another product for me 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:49.000 for a while. If I offer a subscription fee for 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.280 a much lower monthly plan, I might get people locked 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:55.680 into that system for years and thus make way more 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.000 money off of them in the long run than I 0:03:58.000 --> 0:03:59.920 would if I had gone with the big ticket i'd 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:05.480 up front. This can actually manifest in lots of different ways. Now, typically, 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.480 I get the sense that the popular perception of you know, 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.840 planned ups lessons is that companies make stuff that's just 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:16.839 designed to stop working after a certain number of hours 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:20.599 of operation. So, in other words, the manufacturer isn't making 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.560 products that are meant to stand the test of time. Rather, 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.800 these are products that will at some point break down 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:31.640 and either require repairs or a replacement. Now, repairs were 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:35.800 great if you happen to be the not only the 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:39.000 company that's selling the thing, but you're also the company 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:43.960 that provides maintenance and repair services. Car dealerships often fall 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.120 into this category. You can purchase a car at a dealership, 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:51.480 and then most dealerships have service centers as well, or 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.480 they have, you know, an agreement with a service center, 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.800 so the dealership can continue to make money off of 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.960 a sale if the salesperson can and convince the customer 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.040 to bring the car back to the dealership's service center 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:08.640 for regular maintenance or repair work. But not all technology 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.160 has the value of a car. Obviously, there's a lot 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.200 of tech out there that's fairly inexpensive to make, and 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:19.160 companies might price that technology it's such a relatively low 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:23.000 cost that a repair might set you back the same 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:26.480 amount or more than buying just a new version of 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.120 whatever that tech is. For a lot of us, I 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:32.040 figure the reaction to that as well, I might as 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:33.800 well buy a new one if I'm going to be 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:36.840 spending that kind of money. Heck, the new thing of 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:39.240 a jig might have more features than the old one, 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.800 or it might look a little different, you know, more stylish, 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.640 and so we toss aside whatever old thing of a 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:48.320 jig we have and then we go out and buy 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:51.680 a new one. Or maybe you would actually like to 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.640 do repairs yourself. That's something we're going to chat about 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.479 more towards the end of this episode. But some companies 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:01.960 have been known to make it challenge or maybe even impossible, 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:05.479 for the end customer to really repair the technology they purchase, 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.960 whether it's through using proprietary screws that need a specific 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:14.880 tool to remove them, or actually sealing components into compartments 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:19.000 with glue and rivets and solder or other fasteners, making 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.239 it impossible to open without risk of causing further damage. 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:25.960 Companies have used a few different ways to obscure or 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:33.479 impede repairs mm apple. Or you could also get to 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.360 a point with stuff like cars where it just becomes 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:39.480 harder to make repairs because it's hard to even determine 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:43.720 what is wrong with the thing without a special diagnostic 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.200 device like a computer. This is the case with a 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:48.880 lot of modern cars. You might be able to lift 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:51.240 the hood and look around a little bit, but some 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.520 vehicles have various covers or engine configurations that make it 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:59.560 really challenging for the average person to access specific parts 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.440 of the motor, let alone do any work on it. Again, 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.039 this limits what you can do with tech once it 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.960 starts to fail, and all tech does fail over time, 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:15.480 because well, entropy is something we just can't avoid. It's 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.160 it's a fundamental law of the universe, particularly when it 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.440 comes to cheap technology. The sort of disposable approach has 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:28.160 a lot of negative drawbacks, including what to do with 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:30.840 old tech that no longer works. I mean, a lot 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:35.280 of technology contains stuff that's pretty toxic, so throwing it 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:37.880 out in the garbage could lead to it ending up 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.800 in a landfill somewhere, and then harmful stuff like lead 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.680 or mercury could leach into the environment. Because of that, 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:48.080 that's not great. So we'll touch a tiny bit on 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.040 electronics recycling in this episode two, but I have done 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:54.040 full episodes about e waste recycling, so I'm not going 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:56.800 to spend too much time on it, and there are 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:02.280 often ways to make older tech obsle elite that are 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:04.720 not necessarily obvious on the face of it. So let's 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:08.440 talk about smartphones, for example. That's an easy one. One 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:11.080 of the big trends we see in technology is that 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:16.640 as devices or components within devices get more powerful, the 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.880 software developers end up making software that eats up that 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:25.840 extra power. Nicholas Worth wrote about this pro problem back 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:28.800 in the ninety nineties. He wrote a paper titled a 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:33.960 Plea for Lean Software, and his point has essentially boiled 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:37.160 down into what we now call Worth's law, which is 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:41.800 that software is getting slower. That is, it's getting more 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:46.599 resource hungry at a rate that's faster than hardware is 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.760 getting faster. So while subsequent generations of hardware are getting 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:56.040 more powerful, the requirements of software are outpacing that progress, 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:58.520 and the end result is that we often feel our 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.200 shiny new devices just aren't keeping up as much as 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:04.920 we expected them to. We're basing our perception on what 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:07.679 the new device should be able to do based on 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.520 what we have right now, and that's just not how 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.320 stuff works. Unfortunately, gamers who want to be on the 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:18.560 bleeding edge of computing capability experience this a lot. A 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.680 top gaming rig would cost thousands of dollars. It requires 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.720 a powerful central processor or CPU, and quite likely multiple 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:32.440 powerful graphics processing units or GPUs. Plus you need a 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.520 power supply that's capable of providing the juice that these 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.880 components need, and you need a killer cooling system to 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.840 make sure the whole thing doesn't overheat. And just as 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.960 you get all of this stuff set up and running 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.200 the latest games, developers start making games that are so 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.720 resource hungry that even with your killer rig you might 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:55.120 have to knock a few of the game's settings down 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.160 a couple of notches just to make it run smoothly. Meanwhile, 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.800 you're already anticipating the next big development and hardware that 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:05.160 will let you move all those sliders all the way 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:07.320 to the top. That's going to set you back a 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:11.240 few more thousand dollars, which is brutal. With smartphones, we 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.200 see this happen a lot as newer models use better processors, 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:20.199 and typically new processors are usually more powerful and hopefully 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.760 more efficient, so in other words, you're not seeing battery 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:27.040 life just plummet from one generation to the next, or 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:31.120 phones get way bigger because you need a bigger battery 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:34.400 in order to make them last long enough. Processor technologies 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:38.319 follow pretty close to Moore's law, and we typically interpret 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:42.880 that as meaning that a processor's capabilities effectively double every 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:45.800 two years or so. Not the same processor, but rather 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:49.400 new processors on the market end up being twice as 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.280 powerful as the processors that came out two years earlier. 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:57.400 That's generally what we mean. More's laws more subtle than that, 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.720 but we won't go into it. Battery life does not 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:05.840 follow this same trajectory. It's again a law of physics. 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:09.200 We're talking about electrochemical reactions, and so there's not a 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.480 magic way to make batteries just last longer. It requires 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.880 more incremental improvement. So if we only concentrated on making 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.480 processors more powerful, they would just pull more juice per 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.800 hour than older processors, and soon we would have smartphones. 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.240 They would only have a couple of hours of useful 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:30.679 battery life. So there is a balance to be made here. Meanwhile, 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:35.120 smartphone apps still follow Worth's law. The apps drawn more 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.800 processor power, or they interact with more components, and smartphones 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:43.319 like GPS receivers or accelerometers or the camera or microphone, 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.480 or some combination of all of these and more, and 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:51.280 the smartphone operating systems themselves evolved to support these apps 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:56.040 and provide more functionality. Well, older smartphones just can't keep 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:58.960 up with this all the time, and so you will 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.960 often see companies make a cut off for operating system updates. 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.800 Older phones might stall out at a certain OS version 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.040 and be unable to install more recent updates of the 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:13.760 operating system. So you could have an Android smartphone that's 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.520 maybe a few years old, and it's running a version 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:20.280 of Android that's several generations old at this point because 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.840 Google has determined that the hardware you're using simply cannot 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:29.280 meet the needs of later operating systems. Meanwhile, the app 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:31.760 developers are focusing on what they can do with the 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.400 most recent OS version, which means you might not be 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:38.959 able to run a new app with all of its features, 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:40.360 or you might not even be able to run the 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.440 app at all if you're using an older phone. And 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.920 since apps are what makes smartphones smart, that ends up 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:50.719 being a big problem. And so now the incentive is 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.280 there for you to upgrade your phone, even if your 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:56.280 old phone still works, so that you can, you know, 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:59.120 just use your smartphone the way you want to. And 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.439 you're not stuck older versions of apps. And that's particularly 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:06.520 important because sometimes these older versions of apps end up 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.880 being tied to servers that could go offline, or they 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:12.920 might swap over to a new process, and then you 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:15.520 have an outdated smartphone that has a bunch of inactive 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:20.320 apps stored on it and it becomes practically useless. On 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:24.400 a related note, battery life decreases over time and use, 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.080 so older batteries just don't hold as much of a 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.839 charge as newer batteries, and they drain faster, which means 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:36.040 that your older battery operated devices will need recharging more frequently. 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:40.959 Apple famously tried to address this problem by purposefully throttling 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:45.160 the processing speed of older iPhones. The processors would work 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:48.920 more slowly so that they would consume less battery power, 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:51.840 thus extending the usefulness of a battery at the cost 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:57.400 of smartphone performance. But Apple didn't, you know, tell anyone 0:13:57.440 --> 0:13:59.680 about it, and a lot of users figured out that 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.960 there too, vices were slowing down due to age. That's 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.480 what they assumed. It's just, oh, this is older, that's 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:08.439 why it's getting slower. And in a way that was 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:10.560 kind of true, but not in the same way that 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:13.320 these users thought. They just thought, this thing is getting old, 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:15.720 I need a new one, so they opted to buy 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:21.200 a new, later generation iPhone. But in iPhone, users figured 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:23.840 out that their phones were being throttled and they had 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:26.000 no choice in the matter, and that led to a 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:29.680 big class action lawsuit. As users said, had they known 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.840 what was going on, they would have opted to replace 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.720 the battery in their old iPhone rather than buy a 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.480 brand new iPhone. And I should add that Apple does 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:41.880 not make it easy for you to do this. You 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:45.960 you really can't replace a battery in your iPhone, at 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:51.120 least not without violating your warranty. But under certain circumstances, 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:55.120 like if you enroll in Apple Care Plus, then Apple 0:14:55.240 --> 0:15:00.520 actually will replace an iPhone battery free of charge. I say, 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.800 for your charge. Really, I should say that prices included 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:08.040 in your enrollment into Apple Care Plus. So for those users, 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:10.760 the people who had enrolled in Apple Care Plus, they 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:13.120 could have chosen to have a new battery put into 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.120 their older iPhone and it would have extended the life 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:19.440 of that device, but they weren't told about what was 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.160 going on, so instead they opted to buy a brand 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:26.520 new phone, which was way more expensive. In Apple reached 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.120 a settlement agreement, actually to settlement agreements for two different 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:34.240 class action lawsuits brought against the company about this very issue. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:38.080 The first settlement was for five hundred million dollars a 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:42.280 princely some, and the second was for another one thirteen 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.720 million dollars. In both cases, prosecution argued that Apple was 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.920 deliberately hiding the fact that it was throttling processing output 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.600 and that the battery was degrading over time, and they 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:57.760 knew that most users would opt to upgrade to a 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.680 newer iPhone as long as they didn't realize that there 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.960 was an alternative path they could have taken. Now, that 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:07.840 pretty much hits the planned obsolescence definition right on the nose. 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:10.960 So it turns out there are a lot of different 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:15.080 approaches to planned obsolescence. While the phrase might make you 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.040 think that the company is purposefully making stuff that just 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.920 won't stand the test of time, as in the company 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:25.320 is choosing to create substandard products knowing that these products 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.000 will break down and the customer is likely to come 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:30.800 back and buy another one. Really, that's just the tip 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.520 of the iceberg, and it's usually not even the case. 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:37.120 If a company's reputation gets tied to the idea that 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:41.440 the stuff they make breaks easily. That's not good for business. 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:43.840 And the rest of this episode, we're going to take 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.880 a closer look at some historical examples of planned obsolescence 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.520 and what was going on from different perspectives, and we'll 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.320 also get into the right to Repair movement and what 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.120 it might mean to the tech industry moving forward, assuming 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:02.160 the movement actually achieves its goal. But first let's take 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:14.200 a quick break. We're back and on December twenty three, 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:19.159 nineteen twenty four, a group of elite entrepreneurs met to 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:24.280 establish some shady guidelines, which was pretty ironic because they 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:27.919 were all in the lightbulb business. That's sort of a 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:33.240 pun I guess anyway. The leaders represented some of the 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:37.840 largest light bulb manufacturers in the world. There was General Electric, 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:41.000 the grand daddy of big tech companies in the United States. 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.240 There was the company Phillips from the Netherlands, as Rum, 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.560 a company from Germany had a representative present, and the 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.720 French had their place too, with executives from the company 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:56.760 De Lump And together they created a powerful idea, which 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:00.439 we can represent as a very large lightbulb turning on 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:02.919 behind their heads or at least we could if this 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.399 were a video and not an audio podcast. Their idea 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.840 was to form a new company, an organization that would 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.919 coordinate how lightbulbs should work, as in how bright they 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.880 should be and how long they should last, as well 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.840 as which company would be allowed to sell its products 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:24.480 in certain specific regions. It was collusion of the highest order, 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.920 and it violated pretty much every antitrust law you can 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:31.480 think of. And it became known as the Phoebus Cartel. 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:35.720 Cute huh, because Phoebus is another name for Apollo, the 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.080 god of the sun. Before the cartel, manufacturers were making 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.600 lightbulbs that could last between fifteen hundred and two thousand 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:48.600 hours of operation. But the cartel collectively decided that their 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.879 light bulbs should have a life expectancy of one thousand 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:55.680 hours of use. A ha. These companies were producing a 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.879 technology that already had a limited lifespan just because of 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.879 how it works. You know, the filaments and light bulbs, 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:06.000 the part that actually gives off light, they eventually burned 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:10.600 through and break, and that's what makes incandescent lightbulbs die. Clearly, 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:13.719 this group of people were all agreeing to a worldwide 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.520 limit on the useful number of hours a light bulb 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.479 would operate in in order to sell more light bulbs. Right, 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:24.320 they were making a predetermined end of life cycle for 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:27.680 light bulbs, and by making everyone agree to this limitation, 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.080 no manufacturer would be able to defy the others and 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:35.040 start selling bulbs that had longer lifespans, which would ruin 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:38.200 it for everybody else. Now you can see the appeal 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:42.840 of that narrative, right, rich fat cats are cynically limiting 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.920 a technology just to sell more light bulbs, while simultaneously 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:52.159 creating pressure to prevent any other company from offering up 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:56.760 a superior product. You could just hear the thumbs twiddling, 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:02.680 you know, the mustaches waxing, and the chore as shortling. Heck, 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:06.600 the cartel would even test light bulbs from each manufacturer, 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:09.199 and if any of those light bulbs proved to have 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.320 a lifespan that was well beyond those one thousand hours 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:18.200 of operation, the cartel would find the responsible manufacturer keep 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:22.719 those light bulbs lives shorter or else. But if we 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.360 want to be a little more fair, we should take 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:29.680 into consideration another factor. As light bulbs age, they would 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:35.720 give off less light. Incandescent bulbs they are less luminously efficient, 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:39.000 in other words, and so the counter argument was made 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.439 that by limiting the lifespan to one thousand hours, it 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:47.520 was more about maximizing luminous efficiency. It was to make 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:50.920 certain that the light bulbs were providing enough light throughout 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:55.840 their lifespans and not just turning into increasingly dim light sources. 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:59.040 So there was an argument being made that the restriction 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:02.480 of the life span was more about improving the quality 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:06.320 of the performance of light bulbs rather than speeding up 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:09.560 the need to replace those light bulbs. It was a 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:12.720 compelling enough argument to lead the u K's Monopolies and 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:16.840 Restrictive Practices Commission to give the companies some slack with 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.440 that regard. Though there were many other things the Phoebus 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:23.280 Cartel did that did not get a free pass, but 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:27.160 those are more market focused than tech focused, so I'm 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.560 not going to go into them. The cartel itself, by 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.119 the way, dissolved in the late nineteen thirties, not because 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:36.199 of government pressure, or at least not the kind of 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:39.760 regulation pressure, but because of a little thing called World 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:44.359 War Two. Now, I suspect that the decision to arrive 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:48.240 at one thousand hours of useful life was guided both 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:53.000 by practical considerations and good old fashioned greed. So I 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:56.359 suspect there is some truth to both of the scenarios 0:21:56.400 --> 0:22:01.520 I mentioned, or if you listen to ridiculous history scenarios 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:05.520 and considering that some of the other moves that the 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:10.600 cartel made, like namely price fixing, you definitely cannot count 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:14.600 greed out because that was the primary motivator for those decisions. 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:16.800 But there are at least some people who are a 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:20.600 little more charitable toward the idea of limiting bulb lifespan 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:25.400 in an effort to favor better luminous efficiency. So we'll 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:28.639 move on. The next big example is the one that 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:30.919 I mentioned earlier and talked about a little bit in 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:34.680 my episodes about General Motors. This was the GM under 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:37.879 Alfred B. Sloan, the man who took a big mess 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:41.920 of companies that were acquired by GM founder William C. Durant, 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:46.560 and then he organized all of this mishmash into individual 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:51.040 business units looking over specific makes of car, and each 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:54.080 of those units had a great deal of autonomy between them. 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:58.080 He was also a consummate capitalist, and I don't necessarily 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:01.280 mean that in a flattering way. He had a habit 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:05.879 of focusing on profits and ignoring people. But you can 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.199 learn more about that in the GM episodes. One of 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:13.600 Sloan's many contributions to the automotive industry was the introduction 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:18.560 of stylistic changes to various car models year over year. 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:22.879 In the early days of automobiles, the dominating manufacturer was 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:27.400 the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford's company produced the famous 0:23:27.440 --> 0:23:31.040 Model T. Ford and first introduced that Model T in 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:35.240 nineteen o eight, and it remained in production until nineteen 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:40.560 twenty seven. By nine, this was a mass produced cars, 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:44.960 so on a huge scale, Ford dominated car sales in 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:50.080 the United States for like decades now. Allegedly, Ford himself 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:53.000 once said that there was no use in overtaking and 0:23:53.080 --> 0:23:56.600 passing a Model T on the road because you would 0:23:56.600 --> 0:24:00.440 just find yourself behind a different Model T. That's how 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:05.120 commonplace they were. He also reportedly said that a customer 0:24:05.160 --> 0:24:07.600 could get a Model T and whatever color they wanted 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:10.680 as long as it was black. While the company would 0:24:10.680 --> 0:24:14.160 offer Model T s and other colors up to nineteen fourteen, 0:24:14.600 --> 0:24:20.040 between nineteen fourteen and nineteen Ford only churned out black 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:24.679 Model T cars. This meant that Ford's factories could build 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:27.960 nearly identical cars, one right after the other, using mass 0:24:27.960 --> 0:24:33.199 production techniques, thus increasing efficiency and keeping costs down. And 0:24:33.240 --> 0:24:36.000 it also meant that Ford could sell these cars at 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:41.080 affordable prices. They were meant to be practical, durable, and reliable, 0:24:41.240 --> 0:24:44.160 and that's how he made so many early sales. Now 0:24:44.160 --> 0:24:47.600 there was a big emphasis on uniformity and consistency, in 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:50.480 other words, because those are things that make it easier 0:24:50.520 --> 0:24:54.920 to mass produce something. And Alfred Sloan saw an opportunity 0:24:55.000 --> 0:24:58.120 to appeal to people on a different level over at 0:24:58.160 --> 0:25:01.119 General Motors. He thought it would be a good idea 0:25:01.160 --> 0:25:03.840 to change up the style of a model of car 0:25:04.119 --> 0:25:07.480 on a regular basis. At a glance, you would be 0:25:07.520 --> 0:25:11.159 able to give a ballpark estimate of the year when 0:25:11.200 --> 0:25:15.119