Planned Obsolescence in Modern Homes [video] | Hacker News Reader

Planned Obsolescence in Modern Homes [video]

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It's not planned obsolescence, it's value engineering. Last century a refrigerator costs so much that people would take out loans to buy one. Today you can get a quality refrigerator for $400. Seriously the cost of the refrigerator is a central theme of the play Death of a Salesman. Today, probably, nobody is killing themselves in despair over the prices of refrigerators.

So it's not technological or economical progress, nor economies of scale, that are to be credited with cheap appliances today? It's cost-cutting that we should thank?

What if, instead of comparing it to prices from 70 years ago when Death of a Salesman was written (4 years after WWII ended), you compare it to the cost of a refrigerator today, that is designed to last 2-10x as long?

It is cost-cutting that was enabled by technological progress, so all of the above. They've traded repairability for cost, which was a good trade. The time and expertise of the refrigerator repair man are on an inexorable rising trend, just like all other human labor. By making the refrigerator cheap and disposable, they've avoided those costs for the average consumer.

If you want a refrigerator built to last forever, they are on the market. They cost $10k+ and require regular professional maintenance. Restaurants prefer these. You don't need one in your house.

> They've traded repairability for cost, which was a good trade.

Such a good trade that they publish mean time before breakdown figures, right? And please don't pretend that the only alternative to a fridge with a more durable compressor is one that costs $10k+ for restaurants. My fridge was a reasonably priced consumer model, and has been functional for about 10 years now without any maintenance, so clearly its possible to build one for under $10k and without requiring regular maintenance. It's just hard to distinguish those models for ones that will break after 2 years.

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