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Comment by Brakenshire | Hacker News Reader

Plastic itself isn’t the problem. However, there are a lot of manufactured items which are the right shape, but made of absurdly inappropriate materials, like toys. Spatulas that melt in contact with a frying pan, or chrome foil on plastic for the edge of a phone, which scratches and flakes at at the merest touch. That’s not to say that you can’t design a heat resistant spatula, or a phone with plastic edges which will be resilient and won’t mark. The problem is the temptation that plastic provides to sell something which looks just about right but doesn't work at all in the long run. If designed properly plastic materials can last for a long time.

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Plastic means you can design in obsolescence, if we take off the metal hinge support here then this bin will break in 24 months and we can sell a new one.

Look at something like the handle on a paint roller. A wooden handle will probably last a lifetime, plastic handle - with carefully measured amount of plastic - can be designed to break the second time you use it: At which point we go to the shop and buy another cheap piece of crap that will do the same.

Honestly I think a cm more metal in the handle, and a few grams more plastic and they'd last a lifetime ... but what capitalist company wants to make goods that last a lifetime, that harms profits.

I think there are very few cases of companies actually doing planned obsolescence intentionally. It's always about the price: if I can get a paint roller frame on the shelf for 50¢ less than my competitor's product, I'm going to capture some market-share—even if my product will last half the time as theirs.

The difference in cost cutting and planned obsolescence seems to be semantics. If you go the cheapest route its obvious you arent planning on the product lasting and you will get to sell another to replace it.

It still doesn't make sense though. You buy a spatula, it breaks immediately, and you go out and buy the same one again? Nah, I don't think so. You buy a better one, or if you're poor, you buy one from a charity shop. Not many people will be repeat customers of stuff that breaks.

First time you use it, sure you'll get a different one. Only lasts two years instead of a lifetime ... people just think "oh things break" and buy whatever the supermarket has.

Actually a spatula is one of my growing list of "there's no way that wasn't designed to break". Wooden-handled spatula with silicon head, the spatula handle looked like it went in to the silicon and provided a strong head. But instead the silicon was designed to look as if the wood continued in to it, but instead there was a very narrow wooden extension a couple of millimetres thick. This was an expensive branded spatula from a specialist store.

The spatula snapped at the interface of the head and handle; you could make it much stronger _and_ use less material.

It wasn't this one, https://cdn.cutleryandmore.com/products/large/35515.jpg, but same exterior appearance where the handle appears to extend in to the silicone.

I'm convinced that type of spatula isn't designed to last anyway. Even if they don't break, moisture gets into the joint between the wood and the spatula and develops mold. Sometimes I've discovered this when the mold spreads to the visible part of the handle; other times it's only been apparent when the moisture weakens the adhesive and the moldy black handle pulls out in the middle of being used. It's just a lousy design to begin with.

>that type of spatula isn't designed to last anyway

Hmm, same amount of material constructed in an equally difficult manner will last decades (until the silicone degrades) or last a couple of years if the wooden handle is designed with a super narrow breakable section conveniently hidden in the head ... I'm happy if the survive long enough to need scrubbing with bleach and putting in the microwave for a minute to kill any bacteria/mold on them.

I have a cast iron skillet that was my great grandmothers. I imagine a small herd of cows has been cooked on it as well as a large flock of chickens / eggs.

I have paid for and thrown away several cheaper skillets during my lifetime.

You tell me the difference in cheap and planned obsolescence ?

I have no doubt that both are large factors in the boardroom. Easy sale, easy repeat sale. It would be un-capitalistic to do anything else?! Consumers will probably choose the cheap option for the few jobs they have. Professionals will choose the high end option. How else would Harbor Freight exist?!

I think a good system of borrowing high end equipment within your local community would be far more environmentally friendly, but that doesn’t really fit the macho all American DIY persona very well.

FWIW, these exist in some places: https://localtools.org/find/

Though they don't necessarily have high-end stuff; the one here has mostly middle-of-the-road items.

There's an obvious cost/benefit analysis that people do when they purchase products. Unless you're a professional painter, chances are you don't need a roller that will last a lifetime...you just want to paint your kid's bedroom with the little money you have and then not think about painting for a few years until you get that promotion and move to a new place. It's not a conspiracy.

Hmm. Yes, but the alternative is you pass the roller on to your neighbor, or you use a roller from a tool bank, or sell it on second-hand, which things work better if the quality is better.

FWIW I inspected several rollers, not just the cheapest and they all appeared to have the flaw of very short metal "tang", and hollowed out plastic handle, just that bit too thin meaning it flexes too much. If the "tang" was a cm longer then they'd be fixable with a bit of old broom handle (drill hole, add epoxy, ...).

I'm not suggesting it's a conspiracy, just a natural part of the race to the bottom that Western Capitalism creates.

It's the same pressure that leads to reducing the food volume and keeping a packet the same size - "hey boss, we can reduce ingredient costs 2%".

So, "we want to reduce material volume", so the 'tang' is shortened until the thing just holds together, and the plastic is thinned so that as the plasticiser leeches out, and the extra pressure of the shortened tang acts on it, then it snaps. "If we reduce materials this much it'll break within 20 hours of use", which the boss thinks is perfect because they're optimising locally for profit and not globally for "keeping the planet livable".

Time is money. Nobody has time to go around finding someone who needs a paint roller when the roller costs $10. I just moved to a new apartment, I don't even know any of my neighbors.

The argument for some kind of business that provides this durable goods and tools swapping service is interesting. It might be worth tackling with a start up. But ultimately users would have to validate that idea. No idea if it's viable.

You're right that convenience is the antithesis of economy in most situations. That's why we oceans full of single-use plastics.

Would you not go to a tool library? You wouldn't need to talk to anyone, just like checking out a book, check out a tool, pay a hire/membership fee.

This is very true to me because I just painted over the weekend. I got the nice roller pads (purdy brand) and cheap rollers (Lowes), both of them snapped at the handle and rotate around 360 degrees now. This was the second room using them and eventually got the job done, but with lots of frustration. The worst part is this happened the last time I painted. The problem with things that last a lifetime is finding a place to store them.

Luxury brands (watches on the order of Omega, for example[0]) and makers of professional tools routinely use the longevity of their products as a marketing point.

[0]:"You never actually own a Patek Philippe – you merely look after it for the next generation."

Yes, but the longevity doesn't effect the market because they're things rich people collect. People buying them on the whole won't buy fewer because "this one still works", so the rarefied market changes the market forces considerably.

Another example is high-fashion, where things aren't necessarily made any better than low end goods, and it probably doesn't matter because rich people (women mainly, it seems) will wear an item once. So again longevity isn't really a factor as long as it appears to be well made.

I'm not sure what you intended, but I read that as helping make pbhjpbh's point about planned (or studiously not avoided) obsolescence, i.e.:

Longevity is a luxury. It is not to be expected in ordinary goods; they are expected to last for a short time and then get junked, soon to be replaced with new items.

>Look at something like the handle on a paint roller. A wooden handle will probably last a lifetime, plastic handle - with carefully measured amount of plastic - can be designed to break the second time you use it: At which point we go to the shop and buy another cheap piece of crap that will do the same.

I'm skeptical of this, at least to this extent. What company is going to invest the engineering resources to reliably design a particular failure mode in something as inconsequential and cheap as a paint roller?

It's probably far more mundane. Aim to reduce cost/increase profit > use less materials, or use cheaper materials, or use a cheaper-to-make design.

>but what capitalist company wants to make goods that last a lifetime

Serious question?

Rather than questioning its seriousness, one could have answered the question by providing an example of such a firm. To effectively question its seriousness, one could have provided many examples.

I've heard of a couple of examples of companies that will replace goods at any age, but they don't appear to be any good as capitalist entities as they're not profiting rich owners to the optimum extent.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/30sand40s/32-brands-with-lif...

for example. But then The North Face is on there, and I'd never heard that offered a lifetime warranty (my jacket lost its waterproofness and needed replacing), and they also only give 1 year warranty on several items (half the statutory warranty in the EU).

IIRC Dr.Martens limit their free repairs to a particular sub group of their boots?

Could you give examples of companies with lifetime warranties that you consider successful examples of capitalism? I'd guess to qualify they'd at a minimum have public share ownership.

You're putting a lot of strange qualifications on whether you consider a company to be a capitalist entity. Why must it be publicly traded? Why must "rich owners" profit to the optimum extent (and how do you quantify that)?

I don't agree with your criteria. And asking for "lifetime" warranties is not what you originally claimed.

But, looking around at some of the "highly durable" objects I have that were made by profit-seeking companies:

- books

- furniture (Møller teak chairs from the 60s)

- All-Clad pans, Le Creuset enamel dutch oven

- Wüsthof chef's knife

- Barbour waxed cotton jacket

- Iron Heart denim

- Good, repairable shoes (Crockett & Jones, Oakstreet Bootmakers)

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