Appliances, electronics, lawnmowers... and planned obsolescence

Back in the eighties, my jerk-off brother-in-law gifted me a used lawnmower. It was a cheapo he'd bought at Canadian Tire sometime in the early seventies. I used it for another ten years before the deck rusted through to the point of making it unusable.

I'm recalling this because the Farm Manager was just on a rant about appliances. 

"Why can't they make anything that lasts even five years?"

And as we all know, if you're on five year old technology, well.... what's wrong with you?

On the one hand, you'd think that if fifty years ago we could build a lawnmower that could actually cut grass for twenty-five years, we'd be building life-time mowers by now.

But no. In fact, things have gone drastically in the other direction. In the barn I've got a Sears mower, top of the line with the exception of the self-driving feature, that didn't quite make it five years. There's also another $400+ mower with a Honda engine that died after three years (and half the price of that mower was for the Honda name!), and a couple of low-budget made-in-China pieces of shit, because if even the supposedly "quality" brands can't give you five years, what's the point?

Same goes with any household appliance. I remember my mother getting a new kitchen range about '62. It was working great well into the 80s, and was only forsaken for remodelling reasons. It still worked great after 25 years.

Tech has an even more insidious agenda, because the tech gods have the advantage of the semi-legit argument of "new technology" which the lawnmower and appliance builders don't. Their game is to get everybody on the planet addicted to smart phones and, in a perfect world (at least for the tech gods), replace them every two years or even sooner. The very idea of building a phone or tablet that can be upgraded instead of replaced is anathema to the industry.

Sure thing, and billions of "obsolete" devices are discarded every year, with scarcely a thought for the environmental impact of either the electronic garbage or the scale of rare-earth mining required to keep this tsunami of toxic waste growing.

"Planned obsolescence" has corrupted the economy to its core. The best and brightest minds no longer work to engineer products that offer long-term performance and sound value for the dollar. Instead, the best and brightest minds are hard at work to ensure the shitty shit they sell us gets even shittier going forward.

After all, what kind of capitalist with a brain in his head would build a lawnmower that lasts 25 years, when the suckers will be grateful if they find one that lasts five years?

Here's a conspiracy theory for you

I call it the Intelligent Dandelion theory.

I figure the grass-seed cartel, in cahoots with Monsanto and the Chinese lawnmower manufacturers, have developed an intelligent dandelion. When it senses the lawnmower approaching, the intelligent dandelion will lie down. Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a day or two.

But then they get up again!

Yup, within a day or two of cutting the grass, your lawn looks like you don't even own a mower.

This insight came to me whilst I was fiddling with assorted lawnmower parts on the front stoop. My piece-of-shit mower, barely into its third season of grass-cutting, puked out the string you pull to start it.

Now, we all know about planned obsolescence...

What, you got two full years out of that thing? Excellent!

Buy a new one!

Well, I'm not falling for that crap. How hard can it be to replace a piece of pull-cord?

As it turns out, a lot harder than you'd think. They've got the tiniest springs and gizmos and whatsits in there. Half of them are held in place by gravity, which is fine till you take things apart and turn them upside down. Then you've got a random rainshower of mechanical miscellany falling to the ground.

But I persevered! Took an hour and a half, but I can start that piece of shit again, and that recoil spring pulls the string in far enough that I can restart it - not as far as it used to, but what the hell.

The lawnmower starts!

Before planned obsolescence

That's a 1948 Farmall tractor with a mower deck, and guess what, it's still cutting grass today, almost seventy years after it left the factory! Any piece of crap you buy today will be lucky to last seven years, never mind seventy.

That gem belongs to the folks at Chilligo Creek Farms, an organic market gardening operation about an hour down the road. They've got two more of a similar vintage. Why? Because they're in business for the long haul, and they want stuff that lasts. What a sad state of affairs it is when a seventy year old machine offers better prospects for longevity than a new one!

That society tolerates the scam of planned obsolescence is a mystery to me. At this point in our evolution we don't even have a choice about it anymore. Pretty much any consumer product we buy is engineered to be replaced in five years or less.

But I sense a different attitude among a lot of the young folks coming up. They've grown up inside the consumerist bubble of disposable everything, and you know what? They want to go in a different direction.

They're turning their backs on industrial agriculture, factory farming, rampant consumerism, and planned obsolescence. They're about growing real food without toxic inputs. They're about raising animals in a humane way.

They're about embracing the 1948 Farmall tractor.

They are the future of farming.

If you're not buying your kid a new laptop every year, you're obviously a negligent parent

That's my take-away from this headline at USA Today; Back to school: picking the right laptop.

Hey, if you picked the right laptop last year, you don't need a new one this year! In fact, if you pick the right laptop, it should pretty much see Junior through a four year degree!

If it doesn't, I'd say you picked the wrong laptop.

Funny how this kind of presumed acceptance of planned obsolescence is now taken for granted by the folks who are planning the obsolescence.

Of course the most important back-to-school purchase is that new laptop!

Do you want your kid to be the only one in the class with last year's laptop?

What kind of negligent parent are you anyway?

What will their friends think?

What's gonna happen to Junior's self-esteem?

Hell, once they see what a loser parent you are, what are your friends gonna think?

This USA Today story is a perfect example of industry propaganda being passed off as "news."

It's propaganda for the industry in general and for Apple in particular.

It's bullshit from top to bottom and end to end.