Researchers Have Developed a New Kind of 'Unbreakable' Glass
interestingengineering.com
interestingengineering.com
Acrylic is easily scratchable. Is the above quote just an assumption of the author or something which the researchers claim?
You can practically just show it something with a higher shore rating and it'll scratch itself... .
However scratches are only aesthetic defect and can be prevented by foldable phone case. Cracked screens are much bigger practical issue.
2. This also burns off almost every other impurity (aka: the acrylic).
That's the thing about glass and metals for recycling. You "recycle" them almost identically to the mining process, except its way cheaper to "mine" partially refined glass rather than throwing sand into the furnace.
"Purifying" real-world sand into high-quality glass is simply going to be more difficult than using ready-made high quality glass and melting it back down: even if there are "impurities" like acrylic on it (still probably has fewer impurities as real-world sand anyway).
[1]: https://digitalcosmonaut.com/2020/superfest-ceverit-glass-dd...
From reading article it does break, but not that easy...
If they're too expensive and breaking is not really an issue/not fully solved then it's not a good fit for bars or homes.
It would need to find a market that needs such properties and doesn't already have better products. I'm struggling to think of one.
IOW, communist products were not planned for forced obsolescense?
Can you detail how forced obsolescence applies?
I detailed in comment above how this communist glass wasn't better at least for bars/pubs/homes.
- These glasses also broke, just a bit harder.
- Breaking isn't a big issue (it's not common at least in bars/pubs or homes). I can count on one hand the glasses I've broken in my life.
- it was more expensive to produce
As for other markets, there are better products (secured glass for cars/home windows, gorilla glass for phones, etc)
This is just the sort of idea that worked well during communist party meetings and got implemented... too bad it was a waste of money, but hey, can't argue with the party.
Ideology is a mind killer -- if this weren't attached to the word communist you'd probably be agreeing, yeah, too bad people won't use the durable glasses and waste energy replacing less durable ones.
What I'm saying is that there's a reason why these failed. I see you are very attached to these glasses and their benefits and capitalism failed them. So, let's dig into them a bit more:
First issue:
- These glasses are equivalent to tempered glass. (similar to gorilla glass)
- tempered glass shatters explosively when a more durable material touches it.
Would you keep glasses like this at home?, I wouldn't.
Second issue:
- It STILL breaks, so it still creates churn. Just a bit less. If the cost to create them is bigger then the delta in churn, they are a net NEGATIVE for society.
Third issue:
- These glasses still exist and can be bought - just search for tempered drinking glass, go wild and buy them.
As for your comment here:
> Ideology is a mind killer -- if this weren't attached to the word communist you'd probably be agreeing, yeah, too bad people won't use the durable glasses and waste energy replacing less durable ones.
Comment has nothing to do with ideology. I was making a point that Communism has a way to push forward ideas that aren't always great. In some places it did manage to make progress like the space race, but that was rare.
Also... how many glasses do you regularly break/replace?, seems like a problem on your side since I can't remember when I last broke a glass.
I'm not OP, btw, I just noticed your insistence that the commie glasses you heard about 5 seconds ago MUST be fatally flawed and wanted to point that out.
Just that it was a failed product that did not have proper market fit. It wasn't some conspiracy to do forced obsolescence.
Alas, I should not feed the troll anymore.
This internal stress helps the glass to resist being scratched or broken —- until it fails catastrophically. :-)
But when people say things like "capitalism has no need for X", what they are bemoaning is that the bulk of the market is choosing different tradeoffs.
You can still buy highly durable drinking glasses, it's just that the cost of producing these glasses isn't worth the additional durability for most people - so they are a niche product. You wont find them in the average restaurant, for example.
There is no need to make this about capitalism versus communism, it's about market-based solutions versus solutions by a party dictatorship. Anti-smoking campaigns and autobahns are fantastic, but we don't (I hope) ascribe good roads and public health to fascism. The point being, when you have a party dictatorship that controls the economy and can direct it by political aims, you can snap your fingers and say "I want unbreakable shot glasses", and you will get it done. That's the advantage of totalitarian control, and there are many, many people who are led by their inner totalitarian. These are the ones genuinely upset that their neighbors are making different trade-offs. For them, it's not that they can't buy durable glasses, but that someone, somewhere, is allowed to buy cheap glasses. That is what bothers them. These are the people who must never again be given power in society.
I hope that we all understand that when comparing totalitarian systems rather than market-driven systems, the yardstick of comparison should be the overall effects on efficiency and freedom, not whether people are free to make their own choices for glassware, or even free to make bad choices.
What I am bemoaning is planned obsolescence, under capitalism there is hardly any incentive to make things more durable unless absolutely necessary. Superfest glasses may or may not be an example of planned obsolescence winning over durability as I do not know the costs to produce them and it seems there are some downsides like breaking rather violently once their time has finally come.
Counterexample: gorilla glass on phones. Surely using it isn't "absolutely necessary" either?
Also, you can apply the same logic to planned economies. What are you going to do, buy it from the competitor?
I guess the reason why a lot of phones use gorilla glass is that the quality difference to regular glass is more noticeable and things like scratch resistance are a little more than just pure durability.
But I have to admit that my statement was of course somewhat hyperbole :)
Perhaps, but I doubt it. More often people object to others making choices that have externalized costs. For example, vaccine resistors say mandated vaccinations are tyranny and make comparisons like yours to totalitarian regimes and fascism. They are told innumerable times that no, vaccination is about preventing the spread of disease, because if your "freedom" leads to sickness, it will quite likely both spread to others and burden the healthcare system that others depend on. The resistors don't even acknowledge the argument. If you attribute the positions of others to their inner evil, and ignore the arguments they actually make, you've got an easy, unfalsifiable argument that makes you the hero and the other the devil. Really the argument comes down to "you ain't the boss of me!"
This pattern is repeated ad nauseam. You're opposed to plastic drinking straws? Inner fascism! You don't like PFAS in the drinking water? Inner fascism! You don't like fishing methods that kill right whales? Inner fascism! You don't like tall trucks with spiked grills? Inner fascism! (Yes, this last one is facetious, but not far off.)
There are a lot of Potemkin arguments out there, positions people hold because the actual motivation for their positions are too ugly to bear public scrutiny. You can recognize these when people abandon their arguments without ever abandoning their goals. This means arguing against what others actually say is fruitless. It's like a bull charging a red cape. Nevertheless, ignoring their public arguments and accusing them of hidden evil intentions can never be your first strategy. They have to first demonstrate that they are arguing in bad faith.