The Light Bulb Conspiracy - The Corporate Scam to Make Everything Break (So You Can Buy it Again!)

Planned obselescence.

The same is for car parts and anything w/parts.

Either way they will get $$$$ out of us, the more durable the more you'd have to pay, $1000 lightbulbs maybe? The biggest impact would be on waste production, we could be better to the environment.

Thats why I wont buy an American car anymore. They are all peices of shit, made out of plastic.

A Japanese made car will last 3 times longer.

Last Edited by chris999 on 07/22/2012 07:48 PM

Edison's first light bulbs were forever.

But like other things where there is a profit to be made, they became disposable.

That's what was driving the economy after the industrial revolution. Industry, factories, processing plants...the beginning of our 'modern' age.

Nowadays, all this cheap crap falls apart and to repair some of those things costs more than buying another peice of crap to replace it !!

I try to buy NOTHING made in the US.......

Well, the new LED light bulbs may last for 20 years...

My mom has an old, old, old sewing machine manufactured in the USA in the early 1900's and the damn thing STILL WORKS!!!

There are light bulbs that still work to this day from back when they were invented.

Reminds me of a elderly neighbor I had as a young child (early 80's) who loved to drunkenly lament in his booming voice..."IT'S A THROWAWAY WORLD, BOYS!". Took many years to truly appreciate what he meant.

Yup, this business practice is definitely being seen in videogaming consoles.

Xbox 360's 54% failure rate.
[link to consumerist.com]

[link to blog.seattlepi.com]

Not any more, hate to say it, but the Koreans (Kia/Hyundai) are better value, and they have longer, better warranty. A lot more car for the money than American or Japanese.

i think they have built in timers to fail right before warranty expires. ive had computer parts fail either the day before or day of warranty expiration.

Anything from 20yrs ago was built to last,these days its about spending cash and plenty of it.

I used to work in a plant that made parts for both Dodge and Toyota. The Dodge parts were flimsy and were even allowed to leave the factory with flack (small slivers of plastic leftover after the molding process) attached.

But the Toyota parts were a whole other ballgame. Sturdy, dashboard components filled with reinforcing material, ect. A rep from the company even came freq. to inspect the facility and process too. We were even asked to give more attention to those components.

I think it's the whole "honor" thing in Japan that keeps companies there honest.

Yep. American used to make the best products in the world.

But greed destroyed the American industrial capacity. Now all of the good shit is made overseas, by companies that actually understand that if you spend a little exra money to make a good product, people will by your product again.

The only place that makes more wothless shit that the US is China.

Is there anyone that didn't already know this? I'm not against discussing this topic, but the OP is acting like this is big news lol. Been going on for a very long time. There's a reason why products worth thousands of dollars can crap out within a year, and if you break it yourself it is usually impossible to fix. I remember I stepped on my $200 headphones and they still worked fine, but the plastic went to hell. Had to use a ton of duct tape because you can't just replace plastic like you can with metal plates, screws, bolts, etc.

This is why capitalism is killing the planet. Profits over everything else.

Right on op. just last week while I was throwing out a "broken" box fan at work, my co-worker stopped me and said he'd fix it. 10 min later the 50 plus year old fan was working... The dude sprayed it down with WD-40 and whacked it with a hammer. Try that shit today and the cheap plastic would end up in pieces... I'm still shocked the damn thing was able to turn on.

Just thought I'd share.

That's a great point, Here is an example, Uniden. In the late 80's I bought my parents a Uniden cordless phone which my dad still uses in 2012. In the 90's they obviously decided that their product was too good quality wise. Ever since, every time I buy a Uniden cordless, they seem to die in 2-3 years.

that's why the dollar store became the store to shop at, nice and cheap so you can buy ten of the same thing, over and over and over again

Yeah, they love to be honest, except when there is a disaster in their hands..anyone fukushimad lately?

This is one conspiracy I definitely believe in. It's awful. There is a lightbulb in the Marland Mansion in Ponca City, OK that has been working for almost 100 years.

Just yesterday I had to bake my PS3's motherboard in the oven (second time) for about 15 minute so that the solder could "reflow" underneath the GPU and CPU. Had the thing for about five years, keep it clean, sucked out the dust on the inside with a vacuum cleaner attachment monthly, but still got the YLOD (yellow light of death).

I know having the mainboard "reballed" is an option, but the point is I shouldn't have to go through all that just to keep something working that I paid a decent chunk of money for. I read that this fragile lead-free solder they're using in electronics now is causing a lot of the failures, because it becomes brittle do to temperature fluctuations.

The LED's "may" last that long, but the electronic components, ie Capacitors, won't. So therefore the new LED bulbs probably will last 5 years.

I wouldn't call this a "conspiracy". It's a common business/production technique known more euphemistically as "quality". The business term of "quality" has little to do with how good/durable etc a product or service is - instead it's about producing something to a specification. Such a specification in the "consumer" market is generally very low to maximize profit and minimize material costs etc.

The popular solution is to 'boycott' the companies that produce low quality products/services however in today's competitive market that is often difficult or impossible due to limited incomes (cash flow based) that reward thrifty spending in addition to the dog-eat-dog world of business competition.

Whenever possible I favor more expensive but more durable products, especially if they are locally made. Over the years I have noticed that such products soon disappear from the shelves to be replaced by mediocre but higher selling items, so anecdotal evidence suggests to me that the public favor their pocket book over their conscious.

Last Edited by T_C on 07/22/2012 08:41 PM

I used to build and repair industrial x-ray equipment, and the x-ray tubes have tungsten filaments just like light bulbs, and ran on 2-8 volts and rarely ever burned out, because they were made of pure tungsten.
Light bulbs on the other hand are only 90% tungsten and 10% iron, and oxygen is left inside bulb to cause it to burn up the filament in a predicted amount of time.
The filaments in x-ray tubes have been known to last 40+ years, I have seen that myself when I acquired an old Philips panoramic x-ray machine made in 1957, that machine ran like new.

I've got 4 light bulbs (clear) which are still working today which came in my wall unit. I purchased this unit in 1986. Why do these lights still work but most bulbs burn out so soon?

^NAILED IT^

If you take good care of your shit it will last a long time. I still use obsolete devices still running fine. Obviously I'm not talking about light bulbs here. May people are very rough and wonder why something doesn't last.

it was said 40 years ago.

Last Edited by TTX8K82 on 07/22/2012 08:49 PM