They Literally Don't Make Things Like They Used To – SOME MORE NEWS

Hi. In today's episode, we look at Planned Obsolescence, the resulting mountains of e-waste, and why companies don't want you to be able to fix their crummy products.

Executive Producer - Katy Stoll
Hosted by Cody Johnston
Directed by Will Gordh
Written by Erik Barnes
Edited by Gregg Meller
Produced by Jonathan Harris
Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker
Post-Production Supervisor - John Conway
Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales
Graphics by Clint DeNisco
Head Writer - David Christopher Bell

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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:18 - How Planned Obsolescence Worked And Works
12:06 - Apple Is One Of The Worst Offenders
18:10 - Shouldn't You Be Able To Fix The Stuff You Buy?
34:20 - This System Results In Tons Of Toxic Garbage
38:55 - The Growth Problem
42:37 - Some Good News

[HisVirusness]

This is why open hardware, open software and right-to-repair are so important.

[breadpilled]

This reminds me when i found out my wheelchair couldnt be repaired and i HAD to buy a new one because they didnt make the part anymore specifically bc they were trying to force insurance companies and consumers to buy new wheelchairs. Disabled people feel this pressure a lot.

[BambiTrout]

Fun fact: I was once banned from using the full cartridge of ink in my always online printer because I stopped paying the £10 a month subscription to HP. I had the ink. I had the printer. I had permission to use neither unless I kept paying for things that I had already bought.

[armandoacevedo]

If they can make our products obsolete, then they should be responsible for recycling 100 percent of said products, when they are fully obsolete.

[Trafoder]

Planned Obsolescence was a game changer because it meant manufacturers no longer had to go into people’s homes to break appliances by hand to force repeat customers.

[anathematic]

If planned obsolescence is the kind of 'innovation' capitalism has to offer humanity, those insufferable 'job creators' can keep it.

[allanjmcpherson]

For farmers it's not just about wanting to be self-reliant. Farmers are subject to the weather, so work often has to happen on a very tight schedule. If equipment breaks down, they don't necessarily have time to get it to the nearest dealership (which might be a decent distance away) to have it fixed. They either need to be able to fix it right then and there or at least take it to a nearby technician to have it fixed.

[amybutcher]

I have an Instapot. I love my Instapot. They are very good at providing extra parts for things that might easily break, like the rubber seal around the lid. I even dropped the inner pot and bent it, and the thing still works. Their bankruptcy is a travesty.

[Aury]

The fact that planned obsolescence is legal is one of the strongest indicators of how captured our politics are by capitalists.

[rossmanngroup]

I tried to make people aware of this, and get them excited to push back against it. I think I lost though.

[amethystdawn]

I had an iphone for a while in 2014. It broke after about a year and a half. The screen just stopped working. Took it to an Apple store and got quoted a rediculous amount to fix it. They guy literally told me, "thats a pretty good run for an iPhone, might be time to just buy a new one" I was so shocked and upset that I have never bought another Apple product ever again after that.

[broname]

Literally tried telling my mom about this last Saturday and they were like 'but that's pretty smart of the company"
Like bitch, do you not care that you are being screwed over!?

[JLocke]

Subscription based software is one of the things I hate most in the tech world.

[MandaMalice]

As someone who is disabled, Planned Obsolescence is making my life complete unlivable.

[kmodo]

Interestingly enough the guy in that Apple repair news story is one of the leading voices on right to repair in the US. And has his own Youtube channel where he's got plenty of videos of basically going up against John Deere and Apple over it along with stuff involving his electronics repair buisness.

[CatHasOpinions]

I had no idea some people associated "right to repair" with the right. Hanging out with IT people who try to help out friends where they can, one of the earliest things I noticed was that, when a friend asks "is this something you can help with?", they'll start by describing what's going wrong, when what we really need to know first is what brand it is.

[miguelconamor]

Fun Fact: Planned obsolescence is also why your local McDonald's ice cream machine never works - because "Taylor", the company that exclusively makes the ice cream machines, makes more money by sending their private mechanics to fix it than by selling their own products

[idontwantahandlethough]

When I went to college in Iowa, I found out that a lot of farmers "jailbreak" their tractors so they can do repairs and whatnot.. a bizarre problem with a bizarre solution: hacking a tractor 😂
It almost feels TOO on the nose; like something you'd find in some severely satirical, _severely British_ novel about a dystopian future

[josephparrotta]

We went over this when I went to school for mechanical engineering. Since politics wasn't really the goal of the course, the teacher basically said "This is the world we live in" and moved on.

[markfairbanks]

modern refrigerators use two metals that react with each other to fail after about 6 years. Fun fact: You can't solder the metals either to repair it. Old refrigerators are all copper that doesn't react with itself, and is very easy to solder if it does have a problem.