I don’t like cars. The proposed bailout of the big three car manufacturers is utterly repugnant to me as a taxpayer, a consumer, a technologist, and simply because I think cars are a waste. To be fair, I like what cars can do, as far as transporting people and stuff relatively quickly and safely… my opposition is rooted in what I see as wasted potential and extortionist costs.
Planned obsolescence is a marketing strategy that attempts to force consumers to buy more stuff, specifically to replace stuff they already had. It’s at the heart of why I loathe the car industry, and cars as a product of their waste.
Cars are made of thousands of parts, and several of those are designed specifically to decay and break. That’s how the repair industry stays afloat, and why new cars keep getting built. (Conspicuous consumption can do only so much.) The blasted things are built to fail. We have materials technology capable of building cars that run clean, cheap, safely and for decades, but that would cost the manufacturers in the long run, so they don’t make them. The American Way is “consume and discard”… a mentality that is paying impressive dividends lately.
Software is similar, with some companies going so far as to intentionally omit backwards compatibility, despite being very easy to incorporate. It’s been argued before that the game industry is as shallow as it is because we don’t learn from our mistakes. We can’t, since games more than a few years old aren’t playable on new machines, and old machines break and can’t be fixed or replaced easily. We’re stuck in a treadmill of our own design, churning out happy little reruns for zombie lemming gamers. *coughEAcough*
What about people?
We certainly don’t last forever. We decay, fall apart, run down. (I hate dentistry, too, but that’s another rant.) But who is the consumer that replaces us, and with what? (No tangents here on trophy spouses, nope, not here.) Is God consuming us and discarding us when He’s done with the experiment? Hmm… I think not. Rather, I think that we are given time on this world to accomplish certain things, and to learn certain things. In a way, we are our own consumer in that context. We are given limited time so that we can appreciate choices and consequences, and learn how to think and decide. We have to learn to sieze the day and act, rather than be acted upon. We’re literally on the clock.
So how do we spend our precious, limited time, and what do we get out of it?
Hmm…
Appreciate what you have, because it may be gone tomorrow. Cherish your time, and be grateful for your possessions. Reduce, reuse, recycle, because you cannot keep consuming without producing something of value to offset it. Above all, let those you love know that they are valuable to you, even if it’s just by giving them your time. We’ve heard this before. It’s still good advice. That’s why we keep hearing it.
It feels good to turn something as repugnant as a concept borne in greed to the light side, even I had to run a tangent to get there. I know, bad little consumer lemming.
*grin*
2-3 months after warranty was over my Acer laptop developed serious issues. To the point where it was cheaper to buy a new one. I hope my new Samsung (I am amazed, it is definitely a step up in quality and i just love my new laptop!) does not break down after 2 years, too.
But even then, new hardware, new OS, new things to buy…
As a kid, I found that refreshing and exciting. Now that I have to pay the stuff myself it is exciting, too, but not in a positive way…
Right now, the clock is working against me. I am on vacation and do everything I want and nothing needs to be done. Besides the defective spigot. Grrr…
But when I am back at work again, time is running again in my favor, as the next vacation is getting closer. :>
Please do not make this an all-encompassing principle, the limited product life span of cars, computers and many other things is just annoying.
You are probably among the first to draw conclusions for their family life from that…
You should get drunk and stop thinking for a while!
))
Good post Tesh. I’ve struggled with the fact that a car made today has roughly the same life expectancy as a car made in 1970. Sure, we have new features like heated-leather seats, GPS, fuel injection, and anti-lock brakes, but those features do nothing to extend the life of the car, and in some cases actually add more working parts that will eventually break. All good things for the automotive repair shops.
The real world is very similar to the world of an MMO; or maybe it is the other way around
. We have a “player created economy” that is designed to keep us broke while simultaneously charging a monthly fee to exist -property taxes anyone? My biggest gripe right now with the world is the lack of qualilty control. Everything is outsourced to the lowest bidder from parts to labor, to sales staff training, to customer support ect. Cheap and efficient is the rule, not performance and durabililty. Lots of people seem to profit from this business model but I would say exponentially more people suffer from the same mode of thinking.
Property tax indeed.
This connects to your Vigilante Economics comment, in a way. The people “in charge” of the system are more concerned with milking the population rather than maintaining positive, sustainable relations. It’s a very amoral position, where everyone is a number, nothing more. At least, that’s what the businesswonks argue.
When you treat people as numbers, you dehumanize them, and step quickly into immoral territory. That’s why abuses like planned obsolescence come around; they make sense for the beancounters, but just under the cover, people are being abused.
The world is set for an awakening when it comes to the business and economic models that have prevailed in the last century. You can only take advantage of people for so long.
Perhaps the economy was also based on planned obsolecense.. at least it feels that way right now. Makes perfect sense.
Excuse me while I turn my backyard into a garden and start bartening for firewood with my neighbor with all the potatoes I planted.
This somewhat reminds me of the plot of Mass Effect (will try to phrase this with as little of spoiler as possible with vagueness) – a galactic reset every few thousands of years, when planned, can’t be a bad thing, can it?
Difference is we don’t learn from our “mistakes” and trot upon the same cycle, with the same impending “doom”, with a few different spins.
Sorry for being so negative today, I am back to work. Blargh.
Last I spoke with my Mum she was telling me about all the eggs her chickens are laying, and about how well the fruit and vegetables are coming along. She and my stepdad live on the outskirts of a tiny town (more of a hamlet, really) and are very self-sufficient. Their washing water comes from a bore while their drinking water comes from a tank. I doubt their neighbors will turn on them because Mum’s stepson lives over the back and they’re very, very good friends with their one other neighbor. If worst comes to worst I think they’ll be just fine.
But living in the concrete jungle that is Los Angeles, if push comes to shove and people realize the government not only cannot help them but actually helped cause the mess we’re in (not that we’re there, yet), I think I’m going to be glad I have a gun in the house (& numerous swords). And I’ll possibly be forced to shoot someone, but I’m prepared to do that. Better them than me and mine.
My biggest concern would be finding a pilot crazy enough to fly me across The Pond and home to Mum? I know Van Nuys and Burbank will have the planes, but I’d still need a pilot. Then we’d just need to get off the ground and out of the country and later violate Australia’s airspace, all without being shot down. And we’d probably need to touch down in New Zealand to refuel because the 747-400ER is one of the few planes that can go that distance in one hope and I doubt I could get one of them.
Failing that…I’ll need a yacht and a month’s supply of drinking water.
Yes, I’ve actually thought about this. It’s just one of the things I do when I’m not scoping out security and planning bank robberies
(I didn’t say committing, I said planning
Well, when the education system is more or less geared to make nice little round pegs rather than educated individuals, and the victors write the history books, it’s no surprise that most people just don’t understand history, money, or how easily they can be manipulated. When people don’t bother with honest introspection, and are instead content to satisfy their latest shopping want with a credit card, it’s no surprise that they overextend themselves. There’s plenty out there to distract people from learning how to avoid trotting on the same cycle.
I’d not call that negativity, Chris, I call it honesty. There are real mistakes being made. The only way to correct them is to correctly diagnose them. Negativity is saying that we can’t do anything about it.
Thanks, Tesh, I was wondering how I got off on such a tangent; it was in response to Chris’s statement re: bartering his vegetables for his neighbor’s fire wood.
I actually know a couple who currently does that, and it’s not my Mum & Stepdad
But like my Mum they, too, have a vegetable garden. They also own a share in a cow and participate in a local bartering group where they trade their excess vegetables for other goods/services. Apparently bartering has become a little more fashionable in their rural area, and no, they don’t belong to a cult or anything like that. Just as Hank Williams Jr. sings, “country folk can survive.”
Oh, absolutely. When the system breaks down, working locally is the only way to survive. I really wish we had some property to put together a garden in. We have a small bed-sized plot, but it’s not really enough for subsistence farming.
More than once I’ve considered teaching private lessons in art, math and science to make myself useful to our neighborhood. I’m no mechanic, but I know how to teach, so I can see trading labor that way.
There’s one school of survivalists who plan on complete self sufficiency, enforced with a shotgun. There’s another school that relies on friendships and a community that can fill gaps, like my lack of ability to repair my car. I sit somewhere in between, with a year’s worth of food storage (lessened lately thanks to a mouse and expiration dates), but a will to help my neighbors (even with said food storage, as necessary) and thoughts to trade labor.
In short, I’m all for cooperation over contention, but I’m not afraid to defend my family.
Such survival plans are a bit of a tangent, but a relevant one, as Chris rightly notes that there are macroeconomic concerns that are geared for an inevitable collapse, whether directly planned by a shadowy cabal or general idiocy. It’s vital to be informed and prepared for that… perhaps even more so than being prepared for a gasket or spark plug to blow.