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0 pointstheamk9y ago0 comments

Here is a much simpler explanation: people want to buy cheap stuff. If given a choice between $1200 appliance which lasts 25 years, and $1000 appliance which last 15 years, and no infomation about the actual lifetimes, most people would choose the cheaper model. The people feel good, the sales rise, and who cares what happens in 15 years -- the company will have different execs by that time. And once people get used to 15 years life, the company can introduce even cheaper mode which lasts 10 years only!

See -- no conspiracy theories required, just general greed and irresponsibility. :)

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pcurve9y ago

I think the problem is more complex.

It's not that people 'want' to buy cheap stuff.

That's the mistake PC laptop makers made for 20 years, collective racing to the bottom until they figured out ways to produce $300 laptop. But they eventually learned that a large consumer base had no problem paying $1200 for a MacBook. It turns out, people were willing to pay substantially more for a better product. Now, PC makers are dishing out laptops that are comparable to Apple's.

In my view, main problem is this; when you make washing machine ranging from $500-$2000, inevitably they will share significant number of parts. And the weakest link will most likely be the shared parts engineered to cost, so that they can be profitable in the $500 model.

So why use not bespoke, higher quality parts for the $2000 one? Because it will end up costing more like $4,000-$5,000.

Overall reliability of appliance would shoot up, if a company stopped making their cheapest model so dirt cheap.

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