Planned Obsolescence

I was reading a friend's blog entry a few days ago, in which she discussed the issues she's having with her car and the difficulty of getting it repaired. As I read, something clicked in my memory and a phrase I first heard almost thirty years ago popped into my mind. Planned Obsolescence. Think about that for a minute.

Way back in 1980, I heard a very successful businessman from the local community lecture on an insidious trend in the American economy. He used the phrase "Planned Obsolescence" to describe an economy built on the foundation that every product we buy has a pre-determined "shelf life" of short duration. His premise was this: rather than using quality components to build everything from toasters to cars, manufacturers had begun a shift toward producing products of lesser quality and considerably less durability, believing that American consumers tended to prefer new and improved products over the tried and true. With this mind-set as a foundation, it was easy for manufacturers to push consumers toward the belief that "buying up" was preferable to repairing something broken. Accordingly, consumers performed true to those predictions and the result was a move toward a "throw-away society." Combining that shift in thinking with a marketing campaign that constantly touted "new and improved" products = a better, more satisfying life, consumers could conceivably be pushed toward making more purchases, more often. Consequently, instead of building a quality product that would not only last, but could also be repaired, thereby lengthening the "shelf life" of said product; there has indeed been a shift toward turning out "throw-away" products. The trend started with small household products - toasters, coffee makers, can openers, for example - and was so successful that it has now permeated every strata of the manufacturing industry, from electronics to furniture and even up to, and including, automobiles.

The American public, with its constant hunger for the newest, biggest, and best, has wholeheartedly embraced the concept of the "throw-away" society. If the toaster breaks, we don't repair it; We throw it out and go buy a new one. If a lamp quits working, it's time for new lamps. Two issues are at work here. Number one: the toaster and the lamp are designed and manufactured to wear out after a predetermined amount of time, having not been originally constructed to be durable or worth being repaired. And number two: have not small appliance repair shops met their demise, having been made obsolete by our obsession for newer and better "stuff" and by the impracticability of repairing a product that was manufactured to wear out in the first place?

Surely, there are still manufacturers that build a quality product with premium materials - products that are indeed made to last. But these products are in a class all their own now with a price tag that is inaccessible to the vast majority of the general public. As the concept of "throw-away" products has invaded the thinking of the American public, the phrase a quality product at a reasonable price has become as obsolete as have our two-year-old toasters and four-year-old computers.

In a society that assigns little value to the concept of permanence, newer is always better, old is obsolete and rampant consumerism is guaranteed, even in times of economic downturn. The throw-away society has created a vicious cycle that the American consumer is stuck in. We are caught inside a trap of our own making. If we were to even recognize the extent of our folly, how would we begin to turn the clock back? How does a country, a society, an economy turn back from the planned obsolescence train of thought and once again embrace the virtues of quality, craftsmanship and permanence? Is it even possible?