1This is a video about things like cars, phones, and light bulbs
2and an actual conspiracy that made them worse.
3I am outside Livermore Fire Station, number six.
4And in here, they have the longest, continuously on light bulb in the world.
5It has been on for 120 years since 1901.
6It's not even connected to a light switch
7but it does have a backup battery and generator.
8So the big question is, how has this light bulb lasted so long?
9It was manufactured by hand not long after commercial light bulbs were first invented.
10And yet, it has been running for over a million hours,
11way longer than any light bulb today is meant to last.
12Awhile back, a friend of mine told me this story,
13that someone had invented a light bulb that would last forever years ago,
14but they never sold it because an everlasting light bulb makes for a terrible business model.
15I mean, you would never have any repeat customers
16and eventually you would run out of people to sell light bulbs to.
17I thought this story sounded ridiculous.
18If you could make an everlasting light bulb,
19then everyone would buy your light bulb over the competitors.
20And so you could charge really high prices, make a lot of money, even if demand would eventually dry up.
21I just couldn't imagine that we had better light bulbs in the past
22and then intentionally made them worse,
23but it turns out I was wrong.
24At least, sort of.
25Inventing a viable electric light was hard,
26I mean, this is the typical incandescent design, which just involves passing electric current through a material
27making it so hot that it glows,
28you know, less than 5% of the electrical energy comes out as light.
29The other 95% is released as heat.
30So these are really heat bulbs, which give off a little bit of light as a by-product.
31Y'know, the temperature of the filament can get up to 2,800 Kelvin.
32That is half as hot as the surface of the sun.
33At temperatures like those, most materials melt.
34And if they don't melt, they burn.
35Which is why in the 1840s, Warren De la Rue came up with the idea of putting the filament in a vacuum bulb,
36so there's no oxygen to react with.
37By 1879, Thomas Edison had made a bulb with a cotton thread filament that lasted 14 hours.
38Other inventors created bulbs with platinum filaments or other carbonized materials.
39And gradually, the lifespan of bulbs increased.
40The filaments changed from carbon to tungsten, which has a very high melting point.
41And by the early 1920s, average bulb lifetimes were approaching 2,000 hours with some lasting 2,500 hours.
42But this is when lifetimes stopped getting longer and started getting shorter.
43In Geneva, Switzerland just before Christmas, 1924,
44there was a secret meeting of top executives from the world's leading light bulb companies,
45Phillips, International General Electric, Tokyo Electric,
46OSRAM from Germany, and the UK's Associated Electric among others.
47They formed what became known as the Phoebus Cartel
48named after Phoebus, the Greek God of light.
49There, all these companies agreed to work together to help each other
50by controlling the world supply of light bulbs.
51In the early days of the electrical industry, there had been lots of different small light bulb manufacturers,
52but by now they had largely been consolidated into these big corporations, each dominant in a particular part of the world.
53The biggest threat they all faced was from longer lasting light bulbs.
54For example, in 1923, OSRAM sold 63 million light bulbs,
55but the following year they sold only 28 million.
56Light bulbs were lasting too long, eating into sales.
57So all the companies in the cartel agreed to reduce the lifespan of their bulbs to 1,000 hours
58cutting the existing average almost in half.
59But how could each company ensure that the other companies would actually follow the rules
60and make shorter lasting light bulbs.
61After all, it would be in each of their individual interests to make a better product to outsell the others?
62Well, to enforce the 1,000 hour limit, each of the manufacturers have to send in sample bulbs from their factories
63and they were tested on big test stands like this one.
64If a bulb lasted significantly longer than a thousand hours,
65well, then the company was fined.
66If a bulb lasted longer than 3000 hours,
67well, the fine was 200 Swiss Francs for every thousand bulbs sold.
68And there are records of these fines being issued to companies.
69But how do you make a worse light bulb in the first place?
70Well, the same engineers who'd previously been tasked with extending the lifespan
71now had to find ways to decrease it.
72So they tried different materials, different shaped filaments, and thinner connections.
73And if you look at the data, they were successful.
74Ever since the formation of the cartel,
75the lifespan of light bulbs steadily decreased.
76So that by 1934, the average lifespan was just 1,205 hours.
77And just as they had planned,
78sales increased for cartel members by 25% in the four years after 1926.
79And even though the cost of components came down,
80the cartel kept prices virtually unchanged,
81so they increased their profit margins.
82So did people know that the light bulb companies were conspiring together to make their products worse?
83No.
84The Phoebus Cartel claimed that its purpose was to increase standardization and efficiency of light bulbs.
85I mean, they did establish this screw thread as standard. You can find it on virtually all light bulbs around the world now.
86But all evidence points to the cartels being motivated by profits and increased sales,
87not by what was best for consumers.
88So one of the reasons this light bulb has lasted so long is because it was made before the cartel era.
89Another reason is because the filament has always been run at low power, just four or five watts.
90It was meant to be a nightlight for the fire station
91to provide just enough light so that firemen wouldn't run into things at night.
92And the fact that it was always on reduced the thermal cycling of the filament and components
93limiting the stress caused by thermal expansion and contraction.
94The Phoebus Cartel was initially planned to last at least until 1955,
95but it fell apart in the 1930s.
96It was already struggling due to outside competition and non-compliance amongst some of its members,
97but the outbreak of World War II is really what finished it off.
98So this cartel was dead,
99but its methods survived to this day.
100There are lots of companies out there that intentionally shortened the lifespan of their products.
101It's a tactic known now as planned obsolescence.
102This was actually the subject of Casey Neistat's first viral video
103all the way back in 2003.
104- Thank you for calling Apple, my name is Ryan. May I have your first name please?
105- Casey.
106- All right, and what seems to be the issue today?
107- I have an iPod that I bought about 18 months ago and the battery is dead on it.
108- 18 months, okay, it's past its year, which basically means there'll be a charge of $255
109plus a mailing fee to send it to us to refurbish, to correct it.
110But at that price, you know, you might as well go get a new one.
111This video got millions of views in a time before YouTube or social media.
112And it spawned a class action lawsuit, which Apple settled out of court,
113but it didn't stop the company from practicing planned obsolescence.
114After an iOS update in 2017,
115users of older iPhones found apps loading significantly slower or the device shutting down altogether.
116Apple said they throttled performance to protect the battery of older devices and increase their longevity.
117Of course, that wouldn't be an issue if the battery were replaceable.
118In a series of lawsuits that concluded in 2020,
119Apple was fined or reached settlements to pay hundreds of millions of dollars,
120undoubtedly, this amount pales in comparison to the extra revenue they generate by limiting the lifespan of their products.
121But some would argue that planned obsolescence isn't just about greed,
122but that it's also good for everyone.
123During the great depression in the 1930s
124when as much as a quarter of Americans were out of work
125an American real estate broker Bernard London proposed
126mandatory planned obsolescence as a way to get people back to work and lift America out of the depression.
127He wrote, "I would have the government assign a lease of life to shoes, and homes, and machines when they are first created
128and they would be sold and used within the term of their existence, definitely known by the consumer.
129After the allotted time had expired, these things would be legally dead
130and would be controlled by the duly appointed governmental agency and destroyed if there is widespread unemployment."
131Now, this might sound like a wild fringe idea,
132but people were clearly afraid of being put out of work by technological progress and products that were too good.
133There was even a popular Oscar nominated film about it.
134"This is the man in the white suit from 1951."
135It's about a scientist who invents the perfect fiber.
136It won't stain or break, or fray.
137The Academy award nomination was for best screenplay, I kid you not.
138Anyway, everyone is initially excited about our hero's scientific discovery.
139He makes a suit out of the thread
140and it has to be white because the fiber is so stain resistant, it can't even be dyed,
141but this is when trouble strikes,
142the factory owners realize they won't be able to sell as much of this thread because it's so durable.
143And the workers worry it'll put them out of a job.
144- Why can't you scientists leave things alone?
145What about my bit of washing when there's no washing to do?
146This is when you get the climactic scene where factory workers and factory owners
147team up to chase down the scientist to destroy him and his invention.
148And believe it or not, this movie may have been inspired by real events.
149In the 1940s, the synthetic fiber nylon replaced silk in stockings,
150and it was so durable that the products became an overnight sensation.
151There were literal riots when women tried to get their hands on them.
152When the manufacturers realized they had made the product too good,
153they didn't destroy the fiber,
154but they did follow the example of the Phoebus Cartel.
155They instructed their engineers and scientists to find ways to weaken the product
156to shorten its lifespan, so people would have to buy more.
157Now, it seems like consumers are finally fighting back against planned obsolescence.
158In the European union and in over 25 states in the US,
159there's proposed legislation to enshrine the right to repair.
160And these laws would force manufacturers to make it easier to repair their products.
161They would have to provide information and access to parts.
162So you could replace a battery or fix a cracked screen at a third-party repair shop without voiding your warranty.
163So, if the right to repair does become law,
164does that mean artificial obsolescence will be gone for good?
165Sadly, no,
166because there is one last thing manufacturers can use to make their products obsolete,
167which is you.
168Henry Ford released the first mass market car, the model T in 1908.
169And he envisioned it like a workhorse, an affordable tool that wouldn't wear out,
170a bit like the everlasting light bulb.
171In 1922 Ford said,
172"We want the man who buys one of our cars never to have to buy another,
173we never make an improvement that renders any previous model obsolete."
174But by 1920, 55% of American families already owned a car.
175Nearly everyone that could afford one had one.
176And that same year, there was a small economic downturn driving down sales for both Ford and General Motors.
177In 1921, DuPont, the chemical and paint company
178took over the controlling share in General Motors.
179And they started experimenting with painting cars different colors,
180up until then, Henry Ford had said, you could have whatever color you like so long as it's black.
181It took a couple of years of testing, but in 1924,
182GM released their first cars in different colors.
183And soon after, they introduced a trick that feels very familiar now.
184Each new year, they would introduce cars in different colors.
185The goal wasn't just to make Ford's model T look outdated,
186but to make their own cars feel outdated every year
187encouraging customers to trade in their old cars for shiny new ones.
188Years later, GM's head of design, Harley Earl, candidly discussed his role in creating what he called dynamic obsolescence.
189"Our big job is to hasten obsolescence.
190In 1934, the average car ownership span was five years.
191Now, which was 1955, it is two years.
192When it is one year, we will have a perfect score."
193By the time he said this, General Motors was the most valuable company in the world
194and it's sold half of all vehicles purchased in the US every year.
195These days, the world's most valuable company, Apple, seems to have copied directly out of this playbook.
196I mean, new styles every year, check,
197new special colors every year, check,
198marginal technological improvement, check.
199I mean, is this useful innovation or just a gimmick?
200The inspiration for General Motors and hence for Apple comes from fashion
201where real innovation is all but impossible.
202So the only way to make people feel the urgency to get out there and buy
203is to create styles that last but one season.
204The trouble then is you run through these styles too quickly, and then what are you supposed to do?
205Well, just recycle the styles from a few decades ago.
206The iPhone also shows this recycling trend.
207I mean, just look at the way the edges were initially rounded
208and then they were squared off
209and then they were rounded again
210and now, they're squared off.
211And how much do you want to bet that the iPhone 14 has rounded edges?
212I think the point is that with design and styling, there is no best, there's only different,
213which is apparently enough to remind us that we don't have the latest and greatest,
214and so we have to rush out and keep buying.
215The only type of obsolescence we should support is technological,
216which brings us back to the light bulb.
217You know, in the last 20 years, light bulbs have gone from incandescent,
218which was basically unchanged for 100 years
219to compact fluorescent, and now, to LED.
220These use just a 10th of the energy and can last anywhere from 10 to 50 times longer.
221Yeah, that's pretty bright.
222So you're more likely to sell your house than to have to replace an LED bulb that you've installed inside it.
223So we finally reached the point of what is essentially an everlasting light bulb?