Cue the Little Rascals theme music. I remember a time when not everything sold was an overpriced disposable with a useful life of eighteen months or less. Did companies still make things that were cheap junk? Absolutely. The difference then was that there were more noticeable gradations of quality. User experience, the product’s general durability and support improved as you went up the ladder and spent a bit more. Those days are gone and have been gone for a while now.
Products on offer used to go up like steps on a staircase, not only in price but in quality and durability, as well as features. The lowest step was something that would last maybe a year or so. It would work pretty well at the start but over a short time would begin to fade, wear out and eventually die. Those models didn’t have much support and once they were kaput, they were essentially a paper weight. The next rung up was better built, made of better material, more durable parts and better support, both in the warranty and repair parts. These were items you could easily continue to keep alive with maintenance and replacement parts, as long as the company continued to supply them.
The top-of-the- line models had everything: best materials, best fit and finish, best features, longest warranty the company offered and premier level support. That top model was usually so good and durable that people handed them down as heirlooms. Whenever you see some hefty and solid chunk of something from the past, running smoothly and purring like a kitten sitting in your lap while getting the back of its neck rubbed, those are the past’s coveted top models.
Where are these models today? I know there are still luxury brands that only the filthiest of rich can afford that work flawlessly and are built to be bulletproof. I’m referring to products for people who don’t have servants starting their castle fireplaces by lighting cash bundles set under cedar logs. Products used to exist for the average working stiff to pay a premium and be rewarded. Now, whether it’s appliances, clothes, devices, equipment or some other category, there isn’t much of a build quality difference between the low-end and flagship model. Sure, the flagship has some flashier options and blingy finishes, but the durability is often not much better than the entry model. When it breaks, and it will break, either it is impossible for you to repair it, or designed so that any repair by anyone is impossible. I’ve had some variant of this discussion with quite a few friends and acquaintances. We all end up asking the same question: how much do you have to spend to not get stuck with junk?
I bought a foil shaver last year that wasn’t the most expensive one available but wasn’t the cheapest either. It was a competent middle of the road model that probably should have held up for about three years or so before I had to think of replacing it. At least, I thought it was a competent middle of the road model. About a month or so ago, it began to sound louder. I assumed it was because the blades and foil were worn and needed to be replaced.
I ordered replacements, installed them and tried it out. I started the shaver but was disappointed to discover that it was still loud. About halfway through shaving, I heard a sharp crack and the motor hum changed. When I shut it off, removed the cap and inspected the shaver head, I discovered that a coupling that connects the cutting blades to move in unison snapped. Without it, only one shaver blade moves. I replaced the cap, set it down and proceeded to finish shaving with a blade razor I luckily had left over. That coupling? A cheap plastic yoke shaped like a flattened beetle with its legs stretched out in an angular U-shape on either end.
The part isn’t bigger than 6mm long and 1mm thick, yet is absolutely crucial to the shaver’s operation. Making it out of metal instead couldn’t be much more expensive. If the plastic piece was, say, $10 per 100 of them, would metal couplings have been more than $15 per 100? More than $20 per 100? Broken down by piece, would that price increase make the shaver too expensive for buyers to purchase? Wouldn’t the manufacturer be buying way more than 100 couplings at a time and probably get a volume discount that would bring the per 100 cost closer to $12? Let’s say that change made it so that the MSRP went up $10 for the shaver. Wouldn’t a customer gladly pay that additional $10 to have a shaver that worked for a few years, instead of giving up the ghost after just one? I’d say that the answers in order are, no, no, no yes and yes.
Yet you see engineering choices rooted in the lowest possible material cost everywhere. Remember the faulty ignition switch parts that GM did not replace because it saved $1 per car? Their choice came to light because people’s cars shut off, crashed into things, no airbags deployed since the car was off and those people died. Other companies aren’t much better than GM and most, if not all, are doing the same thing. They are making the same choice but it goes unmentioned because it, thankfully, isn’t lethal.
If it isn’t cheap parts, it is design choices. Remember when the appeal of an Android phone was that you could remove the back and replace the battery yourself? Then it became absolutely necessary that all phones sold were “premium”, a phrase Apple fanatics use to refer to the sealed and seamless spaceship aesthetic of iPhone. In my opinion, it’s semantics for sleek, smooth, slim and eminently unrepairable. Now, what does it take to replace an Android battery? If you choose to have a shop do it, it will cost about as much as your phone is worth. You can try to do it yourself. I’ve seen some tutorials online with guys wearing nitrile gloves, doing their best to set up their kitchen to mimic a clean room. They break out heat guns or heating pads to loosen glues, specialized non-marring plastic pry tools to pull them open, gingerly try not to break any of the glass-coated panels or biometric sensors and then rig up a way to seal the thing back together to try and maintain the water resistance it had from the factory. This is a valiant effort but is it really how anybody wants to spend a Saturday afternoon? Uh-uh, no.
In some instances, you may try to bring your item to a place for service and they simply turn you away. I have a Seiko Kinetic watch that I’ve had for a while that still keeps accurate time. The bracelet is still in decent shape but the face has a few scratches from years of use. Yes, the watch is a butterface. The Kinetic models use your movement to move a friction plate inside the watch case. That friction creates an electrostatic charge that powers up a capacitor, essentially a rechargeable battery, inside the case.
Capacitors wear out over time and eventually cannot hold a charge. Mine was shot, so I took it to a local watch shop that services Seiko. I hoped to drop it off for them to do the repair but the man in the shop looked it over and gave me a spiel instead. He claimed that Seiko recommends that not only the capacitor be replaced but that the entire movement needed replacement along with it. The movement is all of the gears and mechanical bits that turn and keep the big and little hands showing the correct time. He said he could do so if I wanted to but the price he quoted was essentially most of a new watch. Coincidentally, they also happen to sell brand new Seiko watches from that very same shop. I thanked him for his time, collected my watch and left. I ordered the replacement parts, got an inexpensive case back removal tool, watched a YouTube tutorial and fixed it myself. Cost, including the tools, was under $50 and the watch keeps time like Buddy Rich.
A couple of days ago I saw the Substack Note below posted by Judd Legum at Popular Information.
I jokingly replied that this OG’s setup was the beginning of a tide turn away from filling our planet with e-waste. Afterwards, I started to chew it over some more. The longer I considered it, the more my respect grew for this mature and wise maverick. Is his setup clunky? Yes. Is that whole thing cumbersome and he likely needs a shopping cart to lug it back to his car to bring home? Possibly. Does he look like he cares what you, I, or anyone walking into or out of that coffee shop thinks? Seems to me as though he gave his last eff away years ago.
He has a perfectly working set up, he’s willing to make it mobile, even if that wasn’t the original design and as he winds down his travels on this planet, he’s packing that much lighter for it. I wonder what other things he’s choosing to make due with? What else does he have serving in ways, or beyond the useful lives initially imagined for them? Are there things in our own lives that have been set aside, unloved but still have more to give? Does every new thing we get make life better, and if it does, is it a difference that is notably better beyond a month? Those are all questions each one of us can only answer for ourselves.
We probably won’t do a Marie Kondo on every single thing we own to ensure it is still usefully sparking joy in our lives. There are also times where the new model just plainly makes more sense than nursing along an old and beaten one. It may even be more efficient to replace it with a new one. However, not every new thing is better, nor does everything new make life better. The saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The problem now, though, is that when it does break the product is often made so that you cannot fix it.
Planned obsolescence existed before but the useful lives now are comparatively measured in gnat lifespans. Our planet is warming. Pollution is choking it. Sea animals are getting filled by plastic faster than by seaweed or krill. Landfills in many places are the size of foothills. Developing nations are being blanketed by our disposed obsolete devices. In light of all of these facts, we continue to be offered products that get abandoned by their manufacturers and become single-use. Cell phones that haven’t broken, cannot have batteries easily replaced. Outside of Apple products, upgrades to operating systems to keep working phones functioning and hardened to attack, are generally stopped after 2 years or so.
We get sold things that are infuriatingly difficult to repair even if we want to choose to keep them longer. Those companies designing these malignant products make sweeping and sentimental declarations of how important sustainability is. Then they return to shilling to sell more junk with slick commercials of beautiful people accompanied by catchy tunes. Many of the captains of these industries are building their own space ships and regaling audiences with aspirational dreams of terraforming dead worlds for people to live on. Others are going full Star Trek, discussing the potential for propulsion similar to a warp drive to spirit humans to some, as yet undiscovered, pristine world in a galaxy mankind hasn’t gone to before.
Well, I’ve already found a world that is amazing. It has awesome natural beauty, with the bluest seas, constantly shifting deserts and snowcapped mountaintops. It has animals that can strain oxygen out of liquid water, massive felines that can creep so silently through tall grasses and rainforest that they are mere feet away from their prey before striking. Rivers that rush, languid lakes, plants that can turn light into food and energy, forests with so many varieties of that plant life that many are still unknown and unnamed. That world is planet earth, she’s home, she supports life and she’s the only one we know of that can provide the conditions we need. I’m imperfect and prone to consumerism and fossil fuel burning too. But it does seem that if we all, myself included, make a concerted effort to do less of both wherever we can, it could help ensure that we have more good years on this sparkling, blue marble hanging in space.
Jay Kay and the gang can take us out this time.
Loved the Buddy Rich comment. Wonder how many had to Google his name? We are such a disposal society, and retailers/manufacturers are taking advantage of that fact. And our “old” junk is piling up in landfills, along side country roads, etc. Also, I have a self-winding Seiko that’s 52 years old. My granny bought it for me when I was 9. And it keeps time much like Buddy did!