[ExI] I Miss The King of Extropia

[William Flynn Wallace]

dave  There's an interesting article in The New Yorker about LED "light
bulbs" and planned obsolescence:

​It was, oh, about 30 years ago or so that my local electronics fixit guy
told me to hang on the my electronic products like my microwave, and fix
them as long as they can be fixed because they were putting cheaper parts
into even the top of the line models.  I have a power amp whose transformer
weighs more than several new receivers  - about 40 pounds.  It will live a
lot longer than I will.​  McIntosh.  Pay for what you get works at times.
At premium levels.

But what can you do?  My B and D dustbuster battery gave out (my second and
reconditioned one) and it will cost me $35 to replace it, more than several
B and D new dustbuster models.  How to decide?

For products like TVs, why put quality parts in them when new technology
will replace it in a few years?  You'll want the newer model - bigger,
better resolution, more features, and cheaper!  (BTW, Murdoch's prediction
about the cost of DVDs turned out wrong.  He said that next year (which was
about 2005) they would cost nothing.)  Close.  Sell the players at cost so
you can sell them the software, he said.

I wonder what a car would cost if every part were the best that it could
be?  Right now we've got 'Good enough for who and what it's for.'

​bill w​



On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:10 AM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 10:39 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> >
> >>> There is another factor here: we always assume growth.
> >
> > A pretty good long tern assumption if technological progress doesn't
> stop dead in its tracks.
>
> There's an interesting article in The New Yorker about LED "light bulbs"
> and planned obsolescence:
>
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quandary-why-theres-no-such-thing-as-built-to-last
>
> I'm not sure it's safe to equate technological progress with economic
> growth.
>
> -Dave
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160721/0dd9a397/attachment.html>