Comment by KiwiJohnno | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KiwiJohnno | Hacker News Reader

The light bulb conspiracy is, frankly, a load of shit.

What was really happening is the consumers were choosing which lightbulbs to buy primarily on their rated lifespan. So, because of this market pressure, manufacturers naturally started developing lightbulbs with longer and longer lifespan.

This is actually easy to do. Basically, the cooler the filament, the longer the lifespan of the bulb. This also had the side effect of reducing light output at a given wattage, so people also started buying higher-wattage lightbulbs to compensate.

Basically there was a tradeoff between light bulb longevity, and efficiency.

The manufacturers realized that this trend would waste huge amounts of electricity, and was unsustainable in the long term so they got together and decided to all standardize on set design lifespan that they thought was about the sweet-spot between lifespan, and efficiency.

This stopped everyone competing on lifespan, and instead shifted the focus of the marketplace competition to cost, and efficiency, which the manufacturers judged was more helpful to everyone.

In short, the "lightbulb conspiracy" was not an example of manufacturers colluding to screw the consumer for their own benefit - the intent was actually to help everyone in the long term, while sacrificing their own individual short-term profits.

Bull. A few simple standards did not require the kind of detailed record keeping that was taking place just a third party to test lifespan and common nomenclature. Instead, bulb lifespan keep decreasing and profits rose.

Top loading washing machines like blenders, toasters, and many other household items where more or less modern in form around 1960. My grand parents bought one around 1960 which with very minimal care outlived my grandfather in 2010.

Yes, relatively speaking things got much lighter, cheaper, and somewhat more efficient. However, when they often last less than 5 years it's often a poor trade off. What's the expected lifespan of a home blender that's regularly used these days? How about a TV, microwave...

I think people have a massively idolized view of home appliances from the 1950s and 60s. Most men knew how to fix their appliances, because those appliances regularly broke. My grandfather lived til his death with the washing machine he bought in 1968, and it required him to fix something about once a year.

To say they were somewhat less efficient than modern ones is an understatement - I replaced a late 1960s, 3.5ft fridge in this flat when I moved it. The old one would barely make ice. My new fridge is not only 7ft tall with a freezer that hits -32C, it does so with the same power draw as the old one. It's not perfect, I had to get it fixed once - the freezer coolant started leaking. But that was a $60 fix, and otherwise, it's been going strong for almost 15 years. It also cost $500 - which is similar to what it would have cost in 1970, with the caveat that these numbers are not adjusted for inflation. That $500 in 1970 is equivalent to $2300 in 2002, when I bought it.

I have a washing machine of similar vintage, and I'd like to get a new one... but I'm waiting for it to break. No luck. It's been going strong with a single repair, and it only cost $220, or a little more than the Kenmore washer I found in the 1970 Sears catalog for $190.

The truth is even if we accept that these goods are inferior, it's because we as consumers made them that way. We'd rather buy 3 appliances over 30 years than pay 3x as much up front, then hold on to it and service it for that time.

Refrigerators and arguably vacuums have actually improved quite a bit. However, if you look at say a modern toaster for example they use these wide but very thin heating elements made of Nichrome which are very easy to physically destroy if you stick something in there to remove a piece of stuck toast.

Sure, there are a few small advantages, but it does not save much energy or upfront cost and makes them really easy to destroy. Which is rather good for toaster manufactures and bad for US.

I think a decade or so ago a lot of the washing machine manufacturers screwed up and made them too reliable. They've apparently all since more or less simultaneously fixed this with sealed-in bearings that cannot be replaced and limit the lifespan of the machine to something more profitable.

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