Also, the inflation adjusted cost of a fridge in the 50s was something like $10k. A $10k fridge today (e.g. Sub Zero) will easily last for many decades. A $1k Wal-Mart special will not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp9H0MO-qS8
Given a more than order of magnitude reduction in price, a shorter lifespan can be tolerated, and could even be a rational consumer choice.
In general, I think it's almost always the case that compared to historical offerings, you can get an order or so drop in price, without sacrificing core lifespan. Sacrificing lifespan can be done, but for such devices, such sacrifices lead to saving an additional $10-$20 rather than $100-$200 -- those come from access to cheaper materials.
It's like buying shoes for $20 that you'll have to replace every year, instead of an $80 pair that last 10 years. It's a trap, and the goal should be to lift people out of it, rather than make an even worse $15 shoe, and so on.
Maybe people wouldn't use Kurig if they could still make their cup of coffee in 5 minutes instead of 10.
Then I'm sure you were relieved to discover that the author didn't!
From the link:
"The very early (30's and 40's) ones were less consistent in their life spans. I've seen a document on this somewhere and will share it if I run across it again. They didn't have the automated and consistent manufacturing processes like we have today. Some of them did go out early. The ones we still have today from the early days are the ones which were especially good, and are still in the long flat bottom of the failure bathtub curve.
"What I foresee killing off many of the 2000's compressors are the lower engineering margins in the design. It takes less of an incident to go beyond that margin into the region of damage and failure; as compared to earlier compressors with a larger engineering margin.
It also does not evaluate reliability of units from the 50s through the 2000s, which is apparently when everything became unreliable junk.
In order to properly control for survivorship bias, you need to tabulate reliability figures for each year (and for each price point). The handwaving assertion about manufacturing consistency does not do that in the slightest.
Both effects are at play in the real world, obviously.
Reply to edits:
>It also does not evaluate reliability of units from the 50s through the 2000s
"This isn't a massive cross-brand longitudinal study" is a pretty low-hanging critique.
Who could afford such a study?
>In order to properly control for survivorship bias, you need to tabulate reliability figures for each year (and for each price point).
Does any party have access to these data, realistically?
No, I am not. A $10k fridge from a premium manufacturer that makes no budget models will last decades. A $1k fridge from a budget manufacturer that produces no premium fridges will last a few years.
There are very few manufacturers that make models spanning the entire reliability (and thus price) gamut.
>Does any party have access to these data, realistically?
Probably not. Which is why we cannot assert with any solid evidence that appliance reliability has declined over the years—we have no way of conclusively ruling out survivorship bias.
How does that relate to survivorship bias?
>Probably not. Which is why we cannot assert with any solid evidence...
...anything.
If you crank the standards for "solid" high enough, you can make literally anything become unknowable.
You can always ask for better evidence, in any situation! Historically this has been exploited in denial campaigns (tobacco, climate change, etc), so there should be some wariness surrounding this rhetoric.
That said, N=1 here. Let's not make more (or less) of it than there is.
>we have no way of conclusively ruling out survivorship bias.
Is the corollary that we have no way of detecting planned obsolescence?
I hope I'm misunderstanding. If not, it's the fox guarding the henhouse.
You said that inter vs. intra brand survivorship bias didn’t matter. I think it does, since the former likely has a much bigger effect (models from premium brands generally last longer overall due to higher reliability, whereas random units from cheaper brands last longer due to pure chance).
>...anything.
>If you crank the standards for "solid" high enough, you can make literally anything become unknowable.
This is arguing in bad faith. There is a high level of evidence required to support the extraordinary claim that modern appliances are generally less reliable than old appliances, after controlling for price point. I believe a reasonable amount of evidence to support this claim would require unbiased sampling of a statistically significant number of appliance service records over the years. Otherwise, we’re just idly conjecturing.
That said, I take back my claim that the requisite evidence is unobtainable. We unequivocally know that cars have gotten much more reliable over the years, based on purchase frequency and service records (remember, cars’ odometers used to top out at 99999 miles because they weren’t expected to last longer). There is no reason we couldn’t do similar surveys with appliances.
>Is the corollary that we have no way of detecting planned obsolescence?
No, the corollary is that it would be equally difficult to infer if planned obsolescence has gotten more frequent over the years. That’s very different from being unable to detect planned obsolescence at all. It’s easy to inspect a particular appliance (or line of appliances) and find evidence of premature failure points, as the linked article nicely did.
The other thing people forget is that older appliances and electronics were built to be easily serviced, and therefore the ones today that survive have been repaired at some point (most likely). Today, most of those dedicated repair shops are long gone and products are no longer designed to be serviceable.
I inherited a 12+ year old one one with my apartment and have been able to strip it down to its circuit boards to clean, maintain, and repair it when needed which I love.
The bad thing is the company treats itself like a luxury car brand so OEM parts are a fortune ($400 for a shelf!) and if you aren't interested in doing the work yourself the certified repair guy is going to rake you over the coals like a luxury German auto dealer's service department for simple repairs.
Luckily, like with luxury car brands, the resale value of all the parts is basically $0 so you can get used parts (or even entire used appliances) super cheap and there are lots of compatible parts out there on amazon for reasonable prices (I recently had to replace the compressor switch which took about 10 minutes and a $10 part but would have been $200+ to have a tech show up).
Net-net it's the best fridge I've ever owned but even so I'm not sure I would have chosen to shell out the $12k for it if I had been the original buyer.
A 70 year old fridge that cost the equivalent of $10k today when new, and is likely to last over a century, is still a better value than replacing a $1k model a dozen times in the same timespan.
They are a status symbols, that’s why they cost so much, not because they are top quality.
My guess is your friends aren’t maintaining them properly (they know they have to clean the condenser coils every couple months, right?) Either that, or they have those “integrated” models with no visible vent for the condenser, which of course will overheat the compressors and electronics.
It also is designed such that you absolutely cannot clean the inner layers of the fan-cooled condenser coil without major disassembly of the fridge. The service panel on the front can be removed, but there is a metal fan shroud that is difficult to remove and turns what ought to be routine maintenance into an ordeal involving taking things apart and taking the built in fridge out of the wall. Whether this was deliberate or just an oversight, I don't know. There would have been many other simple and cost-neutral ways to implement this cover.
i cant even imagine why you would downvote this. are you the one agreeing with OP's "no evidence" claim, or are you just some frothing idiot consumer who is upset that your little purchases arent being extolled as they usually are?
- fridge
- oven
- dishwasher
- freezer
- hairdryer
- vacuum cleaner
- mixer
- coffee machine
- and even a microwave oven that's been in use daily since 1984!
The notable exception being the toaster (thrown away when we learned it had asbestos in it very close to the bread) and the washing machines.
> A $10k fridge today (e.g. Sub Zero) will easily last for many decades.
I wouldn't take a bet on it. Especially because luxury stuff are targeting a wealthy audience who often change their still fully functional appliance after a few year to buy “better” ones (bigger, additional feature, or even just a design that isn't out of fashion), they have very limited incentive in making things that last several decades, it just needs not to die during the typical ownership duration. Related trivia: the most expensive Hermès handbags are really fragile because the crocodile skin is untreated, and if you carry them outside when it rains, every drop will leave a stain. That doesn't seem to negatively affect their business in any way.
That being said, it is true that household appliance used to cost much more back then, and people where willing to pay that much money. That's the tragedy of competitive markets for commodities: it's a race to the bottom.