People who still believe that free markets and competition incentivize the designing and production of better products must live on another planet. In capitalism the producers who make the most profits survive, and that's not necessarily the ones who make the best products, often it's quite the opposite.
Have you noticed how much of the products we use on a daily basis are junk? How electrical appliances break down just after the warranty-period has ended? How all toothbrushes are made out of non-degradable plastics and need to be replaced after only a couple of months? Do you believe that we are unable to produce bio-degradable toothbrushes that last for years? Or do you know what's really going on here? What's going on here is a direct result of capitalism's need to maximize profits and it's called planned obsolescence: "a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable." Yes, according to large parts of the population it's just "unfashionable" to not own the latest iPhone or Nike sneakers, a testament of how successful the advertisement industry's mental warfare has been. Let me tell you a story about teeth and brushes...
My grandmother on my father's side was a beautiful woman, with a skin so dark-brown it would be justified to call her black, and teeth so white that she would lend credence to the old racist joke about only being able to see black people in the dark when they smile... And here's the thing: she never owned a toothbrush in her life. How did she brush her teeth? With he index-finger, using the ashes of the cigar she smoked daily; for a few minutes every day her teeth and mouth were as black as those ashes, but the rest of the time her smile was so bright as to put the models used in modern toothpaste commercials to shame. And she smiled a lot. I really do miss her...
Where my grandmother only smoked one big cigar per day, I myself have been a heavy smoker of tobacco and weed since my high-school days, and since my early twenties I also drink far too much coffee. And no matter how often or how long I brushed my teeth, there was no preventing the yellow to brown discoloration of my teeth. Every six months my visit to the dentist always started with cleaning my teeth by a nurse, so the dentist could then properly see and judge the state of my teeth. This went on for years, until I finally had enough of it, stopped smoking tobacco and stopped smoking weed. That was about a year ago and I'm over 50 years old now, which should give you an idea of how long my teeth were battered by the staining of nicotine and all the other bad additives. Just before I stopped smoking (I only "vape" nowadays) I remembered how my dear grandmother used to take care of her teeth. I didn't want to use the ashes of the stuff I smoked, because I was already intending to stop that, so I went out to look for a product that could have the same whitening effect as the ashes my grandmother used. And I found it; you can see it in the picture above this post.
The black stuff in the container is "activated organic charcoal"; close enough to the ashes grandmother used. But that's not the important thing in the picture; the toothbrush that came with the package is the important thing. That toothbrush is more than one year old and has been used twice a day. As you can see, the bristles are still in pretty good shape, and the handle is made of wood. Now, I ask you; why aren't all toothbrushes made to endure and biodegradable like this one? If you understand capitalism, understand its driving principles, you need no further explanation. For profits' sake we instead fill our environment with the plastic waste. Realize that we started making plastic toothbrushes in the 1930s, and that they aren't degradable: all those toothbrushes still exist somewhere on the planet as waste. The average person replaces their toothbrush 300 times during their lifetime; I don't feel like doing mathematics right now, but I think you can imagine what we've given up for that fashionable white Colgate-smile.
I focused on just one tiny thing, the toothbrush, because it gave me a chance to share with you my personal experience with the subject of planned obsolescence and / or perceived obsolescence, but please remember that it is omnipresent in all aspects of our material lifes. Please watch this short video by Second Thought, and watch his other videos as well; I can recommend this channel wholeheartedly to anyone who's interested in learning some truth about our socioeconomic reality. This video also explores the other sides of planned obsolescence: it's not all negative, and there's also some possible good news for the future in there, but that would require a different perspective on "ownership", something I don't see happening as long as capitalism reigns...
The Truth about Planned Obsolescence
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