Hopefully I’ve worded the question right.
I was once told (I could never verify if it was true) that a crocs company once almost went bankrupt after they made their crocs practically indestructible. Whilst the story was most likely bullshit, it makes me wonder: if a company can make a product that is practically indestructible, is it ethical for them not to make them indestructible, so people will buy more from them?
The way I look at it is, on one hand, I feel like they should make products to the highest quality if they can so that the consumer has to spend less money and that less is wasted, but at the same time if it leads to the company going bankrupt, what of the workers and their families? So I can’t decide, what do you think?
Is it ethical for you as a consumer to buy low quality stuff that you know will break?
But most times you don’t know it the first time.
Hmm… never thought of that…
Every company does it. It even has a name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
No, it isn’t ethical.
I think that’s a slightly different thing, albeit with a similar outcome depending on intent.
You can make “indestructible” versions of lots of things, but that doesn’t mean they’re remotely affordable or even desirable (due to weight or materials used).
A company deliberately making something bad so it breaks is what you’re describing, but a company making something lower quality so it’s cheaper isn’t necessarily the same.
Maybe not every company.
I think it’s okay to have different levels of quality at different price points so people can have options that fit their budget. A personal anecdote is measuring spoons. When I was young and just starting out, I just bought the cheapest set that would get the job done for a while. They were simply rounded plastic and the markings quickly started to wear off. Years later, when I was a bit more settled down, I decided to splurge on some nice stainless steel spoons in a rectangular shape that lets them fit inside spice jars better.
is this engagement bait? the phrasing of this question answers itself.
No, I genuinely don’t know how I feel about it for the reasons I outlined in the post above. I’m simply asking people for their views to get a clearer idea of the bigger picture. Plus, if you read all of the comments here, some people do make interesting points on why it could be considered ethical, like affordability for example, points that I never even thought of.
You should read about planned obsolescence.
I will
There are companies that went broke by making their product indestructible, a notable example being the maker of the wildly popular Instant Pot. They made a product that just didn’t break. This is called planned obsolescence failure and has happened to other companies too.
That being said, making flimsy shit on purpose is shady at best.
This is why capitalism is stupid at its core. It doesn’t promote anything good. It only promotes greed and enriching the top. Make the shittiest product you possibly can that people will buy, buy out every other maker of product, repopulate the sector with fake brands to give people illusion of choice.
Oldest trick in the book. And literally not 1 person I know can see through this trickery.
In capitalism making a long lasting good product is not viable at all, it makes no sense. Who gives a shit if your great grandkid is still using your oven 60 years later, the shareholders dont benefit then. Out of business. Its an idiotic system kept alive only by propaganda.
It would be so easy to fix, too.
the longer your shit lasts, the more your line goes up
Good idea
Won’t any one think of the shareholders!!
this is a failure of consumerism, materialism and greed. not capitalism.
Those are all byproducts of unregulated capitalism.
also true
“True capitalism has never been tried” heeheehee :p
lolol
The real reason was private equity
Private equity made things a lot worse. In 2019, Instant Brands was acquired by Cornell Capital and unceremoniously merged with Corelle Brands, a housewares company that includes Pyrex. An acquisition by a private equity firm brings certain expectations with it—namely: lots and lots of fast growth.
The poor growth that private equity didn’t find attractive could have been due to lack of repeat purchases tho.
Corelle/Pyrex is its own story of going from the best product to “good enough”. Simple point, if you find yourself some old stuff of theirs, hang on to it because you can’t find anything comparable anymore. Same can probably be true of other old brands of products. I found an old Whirlpool dryer that I won’t ever let go of for the same reason. What will eventually fail on it I can either fix or buy a new, cheap part.
Right. Like I also hate capitalism as it exists today, but it is definitely possible to make a living making GOOD products. You just can’t make billions doing it. Even if the product was LITERALLY indestructible, people will lose them, plus they’re always making new people. It’s just a lot slower than if you make a shit product people have to keep replacing
agree 100%. It’s only impossible if you saturate the market, which means you’re a huge player.
The company that made instant pot actually went bankrupt because it was acquired by private equity via leveraged buyout.
What you’re telling is the story the evil assholes that profit from that kind of thing want you to believe.
private equity could have slashed the product due to poor growth (due to ppl not buying repeatedly).
I agree it’s what evil assholes want us to believe, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a false claim.
Huh
Yeah it’s a right dilemma. Because on one hand, I feel like they should make products to the highest quality if they can so that the consumer has to spend less money, but at the same time if it leads to the company going bankrupt, what of the workers and their families?
It won’t in socialism. China is doing rather well, overall.
Are you implying that china is socialist?
Think about all the waste that cheap products create. I can buy a cheap pair of work boots twice a year or a good pair every 2/3 years. I believe it’s unethical for preying on the poor while also creating more waste.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
Haha the first thing I thought of. The finest literary example of representing economics with boots!
I just paid about $200 (including taxes and shipping) for a pair of leather work sneakers that should last about a year, if I take good care of them, but sketchers usually break down inside about 3 months of wear. I didn’t want to spend it, because gestures at everything, but I had to make the hard decision.
To be fair, a year is pretty pathetic performance even for work books unless you step on landmines for living.
“Low
endmargin, high volume” markets.True that waste is also a factor in this.
You mean… Apple? Create a new version and say the others are obsolete… Adobe?
I’m not a fan of Apple but to suggest their products aren’t of exceptionally high quality is a bit ridiculous. They’re not exactly known for cheaping out on stuff. I have an 11 year old MacBook still in daily use because it refuses to die. I plugged in my iPad too the other day and it fired right up. This one is from 2012.
Welcome to end stage capitalism, where the only rule is line go up. Line go up when you use fewer materials. That’s why everything is shitty now.
It’s worse than that. They use shitty materials deliberately even when they aren’t cheaper to manufacture in order to make the product last less long so you have to re-buy a replacement sooner. It’s called “planned obsolescence” and it’s egregiously unethical.
Samsung washing machines, for instance, use the “spider arm” (the bracket connecting the drum to the motor) as a sacrificial anode in order to ensure that the machine will break just out of warranty. Everything else in the machine will be stainless steel and still in pristine condition when the zinc spider arm has corroded to the point of literally cracking into pieces.
(Yes, this happened to me, and I will never stop warning people away from Samsung because of it.)
Gross. I bought Samsung washer and dryer and they fucking suck. Now I see.
Obviously not, thats literally the opposite of what ethics are about…
No. A good example is phones. They are intentionally designed to be breakable and difficult to repair. Even ignoring the repairabilty standpoint: the glass backs for wireless charging (a feature that a minority use), not giving consumers a phone case, the lack of innovation for “water proofing” the phone; just using glue everywhere (more annoying to recycle existing phones).
That is unethical. The sheer amount of human life wasted needlessly spent repairing and paying to fix these phones, and polluting the environment is unethical. The default should be more repairable, if not more durable, but no.
Companies are not people. They need people, sure. And it isnt automatically a good thing when they lose. But they are NOT people. 1000s of companies could crumble tommorow with no loss significant loss to anyone. They can find new jobs, create new companies. A company failing because they prioritised the consumer isn’t “good”, but it isnt “bad” either. However, if a company relies on the pollution of people’s time, money, and environment? That is unethical.
My brother in Christ, proofread
Apple is a perfect example of this, yet, I bet plenty of people reading this post, are using an apple product, iphone, tablets, macbooks, whatever. 🥴
Just engineering something to be garbage for no other reason than so that people will buy more is unethical. That said, there are always trade offs and durability has to be weighed against other priorities.
For example, cars used to have much bigger bumpers which were expected to protect against damage in low speed impacts. Those went away because the requirements changed, the low speed crash test was out, and fuel efficiency requirements were in.
Or there’s incandescent bulbs. They were ubiquitous for over a century, and yet they were constantly burning out and changing them was just a fact of life. Manufacturers could have easily made a more robust filament so the bulb would last longer, but doing so would have dramatically decreased the output of the bulb.
If everyone built them at the highest quality, then every product would be at the highest price point.
Each reduction in quality makes that product available to more people who couldn’t afford it otherwise.
Eventually, the only way to put the product in everybody’s hands is to make it so cheap that it only works once, if you’re lucky.
lower quality products are not always cheaper to produce.
Can you provide an example please?
Samsung washing machines. Even if it’s top-of-the-line they’ll still sabotage it by using the spider arm as the sacrificial anode so that it breaks just out of warranty. Doesn’t matter if you paid $2000 for it; it’s still shit.
sneakers of all kinds. the materials and manufacture is essentially the same. its all marketing bs.
The highest price points for many items are luxury brands that sell for hundreds to thousands of times the actual cost of manufacture.
Eventually, the only way to put the product in everybody’s hands is to make it so cheap that it only works once, if you’re lucky.
And yet everybody (or close enough) in the world today has a smartphone that generally will last at least a year or two. (Set aside countries that are screwed up because of their govt, that’s another issue entirely). There are lots of things that could be supplied to every person on earth if capitalism wasn’t fucked.
Cell phones should last a decade, and could.
Agreed. Mine generally last at least 5 years, usually more.
If everyone built them at the highest quality, then every product would be at the highest price point
I’ll be honest, I didn’t even think of that point. Thanks for sharing, interesting perspective.
It’s also untrue, see my other statement.
In many cases, especially technology and machinery, extra effort is put into making sure they break down on time, just out of warranty. They’d be arguably cheaper without that extra effort.
Not too long ago, TVs were so expensive that most people rented them.
This might depend on where you live? I don’t remember seeing any sort of rental TV services in any area I’ve lived in or any advertisements for such. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking for one, but I also haven’t heard of this as a common thing.
Yes, particularly if you’re the company creating the “In case of emergency, break glass” boxes.
I’m sure someone has the Vimes Principle of Economic Unfairness on hand.
I’m also sure that there’s a slope for every product showing the durability and the price required to achieve it. Then there’s the reputation cost of making a cheap version and expensive version of something. If you make something flimsy for $5, it’s unlikely that someone would buy the indestructible version for $100, even if the cheap version was intended to function as an example of what the expensive product can do. Given an ethical vacuum, I think there’s great incentive to do the mediumest you can, even if you have a monopoly.
The ethics are going to be different for every product and every person. If you care about whales, indestructible fishing nets will seem evil. If you make something biodegradable, it will necessarily be flimsy, and that limits its long term usefulness. When the owner of an indestructible item dies, what’s to be done with it, and by whom? I think society would need to be radically different to even begin to answer this question.
