You're being skrued and don't even know it.

The BBQ Pit
1

Has anyone noticed the latest scam being pulled on us by businesses, the ones who sell us food? I didn’t until I heard about it. You go and buy your favorite bag of candy for the normal price and go home happy. You don’t notice that it is now several ounces lighter.

You buy your small cans of vegetables, single serving type, for the normal price. At home you might notice when you open one up that A) there’s a bit less vegetable and more water or B) the contents don’t seem as full as they used to be. You probably won’t notice the decrease in weight on the can.

You buy your big box of macaroni for the normal price, however you never notice that it is now an ounce lighter.

You buy a box of your favorite candy bars and don’t realize that while the number of bars is the same, they are each slightly smaller and the box weight has dropped by an ounce.

Downsizing, is what the food companies call it. Screwing the public is what I claim it is. The companies say it is better than raising the cost of the item. Researchers say that if the companies raised the cost, people would by the same stuff elsewhere, from other, cheaper companies. People hate to be screwed. People fight back when they understand they are being screwed.

The companies know this and they also know that the average citizens do not keep track of weight on things they buy. Kids might notice the slight decrease in candy bar size, but the adults probably will not and the adults carry the cash. So they quietly downsize the product.
They chuckle to themselves as increased cash rolls in: the people are such suckers, ripe for the plucking. They’ll get caught eventually, but until then, the profits are great.

They learned the Tampex lesson well. The American woman got pissed.

You don’t piss off the American Woman. Especially not in the area of products designed for her.

Tampex dropped the contents of their product by 6 items. They did not drop the price. The American Woman caught on. The American Woman said ‘screw it!’ and stopped buying Tampex. Tampex nearly went into receivership. The board of directors put the company up for sale but no one wanted to buy it. Finally Tampex returned the 6 items to the boxes and made sure the American Woman knew about it.

The American Woman started buying the product again and Tampex came out, so to speak, of the red.

There has got to be a way to keep us from getting screwed by our businesses. You almost need a lawyer present to buy a new car, and if you buy a new house, you’d best have an accountant read over the mortgage options to decipher them. Plus, when you select a Bank, you have to learn of all of those hidden fees – like paying $15 for a resupply of bank checks, one style only, when you can get twice as many, select through 50 styles, for $20 from a mail in check company.

Then, the two free calls to the bank, and 25 cents for every other one. The 75 cent autoteller fee to get your own money from one of their machines fastened right onto the wall of the bank. The $25 bounced check charge. Then, if you run out of money in your checking account and don’t bounce a check, the $5 insufficient funds charge. The $2 bank money order charge. (The $4 walk in the door charge, the $1 leaning on the counter charge, the 50 cent handling your money in person charge, and the $2 service charge for keeping suckers in a basket for the kiddies.)

I once got rid of my bank accounts, then discovered that unless I had an account, I could not cash my pay check!

So, how can we convince businesses that finding ways to screw us is not a good thing?

2

where have you been? I noticed that the piece of chewing gum that in my youth cost a penny was smaller back 25 years ago when I was in college.

While I’m not an economist, some issues you need to understand are concepts like: supply and demand, and cost of living increases.

For example. Some one flipping burgers in my town is paid a minimum of $6 per hour nowdays. Now, 10 years ago, they’d be luck if they made $4.75. The costs for utilities and supplies to the manufactures increase as well. So, doesn’t it follow, since their costs have increased, that the prices will as well?

I’ll leave it to others to explain more fully.

3

I think what’s pissing Skribbler off isn’t that prices have gone up, but the companies try to disguise the price increases by giving less product for the same amount of money. I agree it’s pretty devious, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it’s a good idea to compare the net weights. Most grocery stores even have a tag on the shelf that flat-out tells you the price per ounce. If Brand A is .20 per ounce and Brand B is .24 per ounce, how difficult is it to pick the cheaper brand?

Since many companies repeatedly use this tactic, though, it must be profitable. So I guess there are people who are dumb enough to not read the labels.

It seems to me that if you’re careless enough to trust the manufacturer and don’t take a few extra seconds to compare each item you buy, then you deserve to get screwed.

4

One word:

Boycott

You’ve got to hit them where it hurts.

I recently bought a box of Andes brand after dinner chocolates. Remove the cellophane wrapper and voila, almost one quarter of the cardboard packaging volume was dead space that made you think that you were buying more than you actually got.

Do you think that I’ve ever bought a box of them again?

Make it hurt and they’ll see the light. Keeping buying and you’re a sucker. It’s that simple.

5

Well, apparently a lot of us are ‘too stupid to read the weight tags’ because the program showed up on one of the learning channels. I don’t know, but being rather busy, even if I do read the weight/volume tags, if my store has them, they’re right in order with all of the other weight/volume tags on the shelf, so I have no real comparison.

Plus, one of the vegetable makers has started giving less vegetable per can, but a little more water.

Guess what? The weight/volume tags don’t change.

Plus weight/volume tags change as the price goes up anyhow so you still don’t know if your getting a good deal or not.

Most grocery stores even have a tag on the shelf that flat-out tells you the price per ounce. If Brand A is .20 per ounce and Brand B is .24 per ounce, how difficult is it to pick the cheaper brand?

My Walmart and the local grocery store doesn’t. Besides, the grocery stores adjust the prices, so one can at Winn Dixie at .20 an ounce can be .24 an ounce at Publix for the same thing. Not to mention that most people buy brands they know and like. I buy Green Giant Corn because it’s better, whereas I’ve bought ‘Shure Fine’ corn and found fragments of the husk in it even though the product was 10 cents a can cheaper.

The companies research this stuff. You buy a bag of candy you’ve been buying for months. It’s the same size. The same price. You don’t count the bars nor look at the weight so you’ll not know that each bag is now 4 bars short. They know that the average consumer is not going to check everything in minute detail.

Besides, when it reaches the point that we have to be suspicious of everything we buy, then something is seriously wrong. We buy products assured to be safe, wholesome, reasonable and customer oriented, by the maker. We have laws against false advertising. Somehow, these laws get circumvented.

There are profits and there are profits. When a company already making a good profit on its product decides to get greedy, then that company screws the public.

That $14.00 CD you buy costs under $1.00 to make. With advertising, shipping, royalties to the artists, and all, it costs $3.00. It is sold to retailers for anywhere from $8.00 to $10.00. You buy it for $14.00. Record companies have already admitted that they could sell the CDs for the price of Vynal records, meaning that you could buy one for $8 to $10. However, they push the price to what the market will bare because people will pay the price. They find no reason to stop this practice.

They can also make singles, so you don’t have to buy a $14.00 CD full of songs you don’t want just to get one you do. However, they will not do it because they can charge more for a full CD. A single might sell for $2.00. A single will cost about 50 cents to make.

I have no problem with businesses making profit, but when they set out to make extreme profit at the cost of the public, then I get fried.

Excedrine Migraine Headache Pills = $8.75 for 100
Excedrine Xtra strength pills = $6.00 for 100.
Contents: Same. Milligrams: same. Difference: a wax coating on the tablet to delay absorption. Actual benefit for Migraine suffers: minimal if any.

But, you pay more for them.

Walmart Equate pain killers: $3.85 for 2 bottles of 100 tablets each. Contents: same as Excedrine Xtra. Milligrams: Same as Excedrine Xtra. Difference: Excedrine dissolves a bit faster in fluid than Equate.

You pay less for them. You’re not paying for the Brand Name.

Excedrine Migraine = rip-off.

These high prices are not always due to the cost of inflation, as some of the posters around here like to harp on. Beef prices have dropped tremendously on the hoof, but the slaughter houses and retailers know Americans love beef and are willing to pay for it.

We pay a fortune for tomatoes, while in many nations over seas, the vegetable is widely used and very cheap. In Italy, they have a festival where they throw several tons of tomatoes around at each other. Think if they were 89 cents a pound like here that they’d do that?

Every time we get a handle on being screwed by business, they go around us and find another way to do it.

Like planned obsoletence (sp) in your car. It’s designed to wear out. Do you know that a lawnmower engine is actually built much better than you cars? People fly single engine aircraft with what is basically an internal combustion engine and both engine and aircraft last for decades. Both are built better than your car.

I bought a $150 radio for a truck I drove. Installed it and enjoyed it every day. It lasted two years then failed. It turns out it was a good brand name, but cheaply made. The separate speakers I bough cheaply outlasted the radio.

We need to take a lesson from the Tampex incident. Maybe the American women need to take the lead again because it’s already been proven that if you screw with them, they’ll run you out of business. Gosh knows, the men won’t. They’ll justify it.

6

Skribbler, I am not even going to attempt to reason with you, just to correct you on something: The tomato fight is in the town of Buñol, in Spain, and the price of tomatoes in Spain is very comparable to the price of tomatoes in the US. I can guarantee they do not give away tomatoes in Spain, unless you are willing to be hit in the face with it, in which case, I might volunteer the tomato.

The rest of your post I will leave without comment.

7

Skribbler, you are doing something common to teens: Raging against ‘The Man’ by trying to ‘open our eyes’. Hint: We all know everyone wants profit. Trying to tell us this as a revelation is a cliche. Trying to tell us that we will be fucked over if we don’t read the labels is also old. This isn’t a debate, really, it’s your rants with the rest of us cleaning up factual errors and proposing arguments you neatly ignore. Here’s something for you: Planned obsolescence is perhaps the best thing to happen to us. Why? Because it gives people a reason to improve the design. Take the refrigerator. If every one of them was built to last fifty years with minimal repairs, why would you ever make them more efficient or less expensive? You know that your new designs are never going to see the light of day because the low attrittion rate of refrigerators means nobody, or next to nobody, is in the market for a replacement refrigerator. So you make refrigerators that last 10 years. People replace them more often, getting better ones as better ones are invented. This reduces energy consumption, which is generally a good thing. This also stimulates the economy. How? More spending for durable consumer goods means more spending for heavy manufacturing, an industry that directly employs thousands of people and indirectly employs thousands more by buying raw materials in the form of plastics, refrigerant, and metals. Stimulating one part of the economy has a stimulating effect on the entire economy, so everybody benefits.

8

Speaking as a committed capitalist and businessman let me just sing out with this fact:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD PROFIT!

I quote Dave Sim in “Cerebus”:

Michele:“If you could have any amount of money in the world, how much would you want?”
Cerebus:“All of it.”

I always want more profit because it enables me to do more things: more projects, more products,more hires, more research, whatever.

Call me silly but profit is good.

That said, there is a balance that must be reached. Yes, I can downsize the amount of whatever I’m shipping but I better not do it too often or too obviously or I’ll lose marketshare to the competition. And that’s bad. Or I could raise the price and hope the market tolerates it.

I quote Christopher Stasheff (not the best cite I know, but it’s a good line.) in “A Company of Stars”:

“Food was either going up in price or down in quality, depending on how one viewed the situation.”

9

In my youth, so long ago, I was lucky if I got 25K miles out of a set of tires–now I routinely get 50K minimum. Most automobiles were scrapped before reaching 100K miles–now we have automobiles that don’t even require tune-ups until 100K. Today’s automatic transmissions are very nearly trouble free—compare that to those of twenty years ago. Automobile bodies were very subject to rust and that problem is now greatly minimized. Fuel economy is better than ever and smog-producing emmisions are down–how are these things “planned obsolesence?” You might reflect that a lawnmower engine is used far less often and does far less work than an automobile engine and as a result should not wear out particularly fast–but that does not mean that a lawnmower engine is “better made” than an automobile engine.

I haven’t had to spend a weekend repairing a TV set in a very long time (seen a tube tester in a convenience store recently?) and our washer and dryer work flawlessly. The clothes that we wash last longer and look better than the ones I wore as a teenager. Our refrigerator is quiet, holds more, and is energy efficient to boot.

I like planned obsolesence.

10

Sailor:
You’re right. The tomato fight is in Spain. My error.

Planned obsolesence:

I don’t like it. Certainly, it provides improvements and style changes, but I don’t know if you’re old enough to recall the miles and miles of automobile junk yards across the nation and the environmental hazards they caused.

I find the style of cars from the last 20 years rather ugly and the new Mercedes with the ‘bug’ eyes even uglier. A great portion of the people just can’t run out and buy a new car every couple of years and after X number of miles, it starts getting expensive to keep the thing running.

Its a well known fact that the automobile industry started a big chunk of what was known as rampant consumerism by producing commercials encouraging people to buy new cars each year. This began mainly after WW2, when the US was entering the ‘good’ years.

There have been various speculations on what could be used to replace this disposable market which is a trade mark of the US, including up grades, biyearly new versions and so on.

We did not start getting much better gas mileage until the Japanese brought in cars that could - after the car makers were insisting they couldn’t. We did not have cars going past 60,000 miles very much until the Japanese brought in ones that did. Detroit insisted it was too costly to make better engines. We did not have real great lasting tires until the Japanese brought in the Toyo Tire, which seemed never to wear out. (I had a set on a truck for over 6 years! I drove that truck daily.)

Design improvements can go on. You exchange your old item, like a can opener or washer, get credit for it that goes towards the purchase of a new one and buy a new model.

New car. Better gas mileage. Of course. Fuel prices are high so Detroit put in better engines to sell pricier cars because everyone was heading for the imports. Safer? With air bags, yes, to a degree. I’ve been around a long time and I recall collisions with cars getting dents at low speeds which today would render the vehicle almost a total loss. You used to be able to push cars with your car, but several newer versions suggest to don’t and most have fiber bumpers which will crack if you do.

I recall people rolling forward and tapping the car in front of them by error, and the driver of the car never even getting out to check for damage because the steel bumper was designed to take impacts. Now, if you tap the car in front, they jump out and look for damage and often find it.

I also recall passenger cabs remaining basically intact after a wreck. That doesn’t happen a whole heck of a lot today. Some of the old, tough designs could have been incorporated into today’s cars, making them tougher and safer. Instead, durability has been lost, ‘crush’ zones installed, built in roll bars and passenger door impact reinforcements are gone, everything is plastic and people tool along thinking how much safer today’s cars are.

Improvements? Yes, of course. For the car industry, they were forced into it by rising fuel prices and dropping sales. People started holding onto cars longer as their income flattened out. Home appliance improvements? Yes. Higher energy costs forced those. Clothing - well that’s another subject. However, I have an aunt who still has some of the well made clothing she had from the 1940s. I was impressed to see how well they had lasted – and to see that they matched the old movie examples. The draw back is that the style is clunky, the materials heavy and the colors drab.

However, clothing doesn’t eat up a sizable chunk of your income. Aside from a house, a new car does.

You’ve gotten used to buying stuff and pitching old things out. Like a computer. The technology is moving unbelievably fast, so companies and people are dumping old systems in the trash, that still work. Not until recently has there been a couple of places start up that either salvage and resell the rare earth and valuable metals in the systems or upgrade and resell them.

For a time, there were problems because of the poisonous materials in computer circuitry seeping into dump sites.

America was known as the land of great waste for a long time. Buy it, use it, pitch it and buy a new one.

Business always has a way of gouging more money from the consumer. Without what laws we have, business would make it hard for people to even live. Libby Glass is an example. They produce tremendous amounts of pretty dinnerware. Not expensive either. However, the stuff breaks easily. It breaks in transport, breaks in stocking, and breaks in your home. Then you go buy more.

MacArthur butter milk. You pay a reasonable price for the half gallon, in comparison to today’s market, but you don’t actually get buttermilk. You get a conglomeration of ingredients, including tapioca, and milk by products. They take everything else out for use elsewhere. Your average consumer who ‘grew up on Mac - Authur’ doesn’t check and spot the change.

Now you have to be real alert, start recording weights of products, observing amounts in sealed containers and comparing them to the stuff you bought last week.

I don’t like it.

Obviously you do, which is probably why such things are allowed to flourish.

It reminds me of an old bartender trick. Take new bottles of top shelf booze, drain out a couple of shots into special bottles of the same brands, fill the rest with water and sell by the shot to drinkers. The consumer doesn’t notice the difference and the bar makes more money. The drinkers were content with being screwed. Businessmen thought it a great idea.

11

**

Oh, Skribbler, where to start. There has never been a time when you could just grab a goods off the shelf and be sure of getting a good deal without checking. Do you seriously think that the food companies provide food for your benefit? No, they provide food because they make money. The fact that you get food is just a side effect for them.

The laws against false advertising are not being circumvented. EVERY package must be labeled correctly. If you can show that the company is labeling their products falsely, you can get them in very very big trouble…millions of dollars worth. You can start by contacting the better business bureau, or your state attorney general. 99.99% of products are labeled correctly, there is too much liability to take the risk.

But what you’re complaining about is misleading packaging. You might as well complain that cereal boxes are tall and thin, rather than efficient cubes. How can you stop manufacturers from packaging their products attractively, whatever they feel that means? They cannot lie, they cannot cheat, they cannot steal. But every product clearly states the weight and the ingredients. It is definately worth your time to take a calculator grocery shopping and compare price per pound for every packaged item, if the store doesn’t do it for you. This is simply smart shopping, every housewife since the middle ages has to do this (except the calculator part! :-P).

This is absolutely not true. Have you ever been to Europe? Food is quite a bit more expensive there, perhaps 1.5 to 2 times. Depends on what you buy, of course. In some places what we consider cheap staples are specialty items and vice versa.

But the point is that there is not and has never been a place or time where you could just blindly pick products off the shelf and know you would get a good deal. It is not reasonable for you to expect that.

12

Skribbler, your posts lead me to believe you are very young. All I can say is that I think time will teach you more over the years than I can ever try to do here.

In the meanwhile, think of this: People live better today than ever before. Products are better, cars last longer and are more efficient (that you don’t like them is another thing, the world does not revolve around you), we have products and capabilities that were unthinkable just a few decades ago: computers, the Internet, VCRs etc.

Your rant on planned obsolescence is meaningless. Products are always replaced by better products which last longer. If your new product does not last as long I can assure you it cost a fraction of what the original one cost. You get more bang for your buck today than in any time in the past.

The advances of biology and medicine are staggering. The knowledge in these fields is increasing at an unthinkable pace.

Everywhere you look, in every aspect of your life, you see things have improved dramatically in the last 50 years. Life was NOT better before. Food was NOT better before.

YOU (and I) enjoy all this without having created it and we should be grateful. All this was achieved by people who were not perfect but they were here before you (or me) and they did their darned best to make a positive difference.

You sound like the world started out initially as a perfect place until someone came and spoiled it. The world was a much lousier place centuries ago and it has slowly improved due to the effort of past generations.

The world is not perfect and I can assure you you will never see a perfect world. But if you want to make a difference, quit complaining about what other people do and do something positive yourself. It is just too easy to criticize others when you are not contributing yourself.

When you yourself are trying to do something you will see how annoying it is to have others who are not even trying criticize everything you do.

you will feel much better if you accept the world as it is and then try to make a positive difference to make things better.

I, for one, feel extremely lucky to enjoy and have access to so many things that people just a few decades ago could not even dream of.

13

Skribbler:

A lawnmower engine also spews forth pollution, is run for an hour or two every week (not at all during the winter), and runs at a single speed.

Your car’s engine has all kinds of emission controls, is started and stopped and run for hours at a time on a daily basis, and has to perform well at many different speeds and temperatures. It also has a lot more work to do. I bet you find the 125 HP in your car a lot more useful than the 5 HP in your lawnmower.

They do make CD singles… any major record store will have a singles shelf. You can also buy them online at cdnow.com, among other places. They cost around $5 and include 4 or 5 songs.

14

In the meanwhile, think of this: People live better today than ever before. Products are better, cars last longer and are more efficient (that you don’t like them is another thing, the world does not revolve around you), we have products and capabilities that were unthinkable just a few decades ago: computers, the Internet, VCRs etc.

1952 was a very good year, because the world was graced with my arrival.

I agree with the above. I can cite hundreds of improvements, but we’re still getting screwed. Your new car is cheaply built, but has expensive stuff packed into it. You pay between $8,000 and $12,000 on the average for a new car which devaluates $1,000 when you drive it off of the lot. The boots on the front wheel drive are not made to last all that long. They rip. When they rip, they pick up road grit and that gets into the pin bearings and turns them into hash. Replacing even the boots is expensive, replacing one of those drive shafts is even more costly.

Yes, the boots can be made better.

The body of your car is made of thinner metal than before and is lighter. Some cars are made of plastic or fiberglass. Better gas mileage, less rust. However, they removed the passenger door impact reinforcements and the reinforcements in the roof that kept it from crushing in during a roll over. The car makers say it saves you money and its cheaper for them. They made a 3 billion dollar profit last year.

On some cars they removed the separate chassis, pressing the frame into the body as one piece. They claim it is safer and lighter. However, tests have shown that these cars now bend and warp upon impact. The old chassis of tube steel used to prevent this.

OK, padded dash air bags, safer seats, ‘crush’ zones. However, smaller interiors, thinner fire walls, less reinforcing in the fenders, bodies that will fracture and come apart, and the wonderful ability to obtain $3000 worth of damage in a 5 or 6 mph impact.

A/C blower motors that will not last the normal life of the car, but the heavier replacements will, plastic parts in the carburetor that break under the stress of engine heat – the replacements are metal, plastic parts on the body that break under slight impact and cost a fortune to replace – like head and taillight assemblies.

Interior things like seats, carpets and armrests that start showing wear after 2 years. The seats go the quickest no matter what you do.

Yeah. You have a better car, a better chance of getting seriously injured in it, a source of steady income for the mechanics and something that will all but crumple up in any impact over 10 mph.

I bought a VCR for $98. It worked fine for 2 years. It broke and to fix it would cost more than it was worth. I pitched it. There were still a lot of expensive components in it that worked, but no one wanted them. I bought another for $150. It lasted 3 years and the same thing happened. I now have one I bought for $100, on sale. It has lasted 5 years, and now it’s acting up. I don’t use VCRs that much. I rarely record or play films on them. Most of the time it sits inert. To me $100 is not pocket change.

I still have a well fired and well used rifle that I bought years and years ago for $80. I’ve been shaving with the same hand razor for 10 years. I have a rifle which the original owner got when he was a kid which is older than I am and it is in excellent shape. My aunt has a 1960s style globe radio and 8 track player that works very well, even the heavy plastic shell is intact. I’ve been using the same blow dryer for my hair for 10 years – after I noticed it’s flaw which would have burned it out (no good dust filter), and corrected it. My last girlfriend, who refused to let me ‘fix’ hers, has gone through 6 hair dryers in the same amount of time.

I bought a black and decker Kmart drill. B&D being a durable brand name. It burned out in a year. I opened it up to find the main shaft bearing was a plastic, unlubricated disk where the usual steel ball bearing used to be. The plastic wore out, knocked the main shaft out of alignment and it tore open the hole it went through in the bearing.

It was designed to wear out.

I bought power drivers, and then noticed that after so many charges, you threw them away. The head was the main part and was tough, but the batteries could not keep up. Sears made a type where you can remove the head and buy another base, but most people buy and pitch the cheaper one. That’s a lot of good metal and motors being tossed away.

I bought an adjustable drill instead.

I have tools from my father, which he used for ages, that still work well. Power tools. My Uncle has a belt sander he has had for probably 40 years and, after a little cleaning, it still works great. It’ll rip out of your hands if you don’t hold it tightly.

I bought a couple of box fans. Inexpensive. I had to run them on high most of the time to get good results. In time, the motors burned out. I dragged out my old, battered, 20 year old box fan that still works and compared the two. My old one had oil ports on the motor to make it last, new ones don’t. My old one had the blades angled slightly steeper to blow a greater breeze at lower speeds. The new ones have shallowly angled blades requiring you to run it faster, which burns out the motor quicker.

My old one looks like crap, being much battered and banged around, but it still works. The new ones are in the dump, still looking good but not running.

You people are just too complacent. We throw a tremendous amount of usable stuff away because it’s been designed to wear out.

15

Skribbler, I guess I was mistaken in assuming you were a teenager. Oh well, I guess I should not hope time will change your views in the future.

Maybe I am “too complacent” as you put it. I think we are all so lucky to live at a time when we have so many things previous generations could not dream of. I consider myself very fortunate.

I realize I have done nothing to deserve all this. I was just lucky enough to be born at a time when it was all there due to great effort on the part of millions of people I should be thankful to.

Other people, who were better than me, never enjoyed the things I enjoy just because they were born in a past century or in a poorer country. I count my blessings every day.

There are cars out there which you may not like. Nobody forces you to buy them. I have to disagree with you that they are bad quality. I think they are the best we know how to make today.

The truth is today you have more choice than anyone has ever had in history. The poorest person in America has access to many things that Kings did not have 100 years ago.

Maybe I am too complacent. Maybe I am a fool. I just don’t see how bitchin’ all day about the world around me would be any help in making things better for me or others. But if you enjoy your bitching, hey, by all means. It is a free country. Even in that you are lucky because in past times or in other places even today, you would have had your head chopped off and that would of put an end to it.

16

Obviously the end should read: would have put an end to it.

17

sailor: *The truth is today you have more choice than anyone has ever had in history. The poorest person in America has access to many things that Kings did not have 100 years ago. *

And will probably end up throwing away most of it, rather than handing it down or recycling it for parts. I agree that much of the stuff we have these days is wonderful, I just wish so much of it didn’t have to end up in landfills. I can live with a certain amount of planned obsolescence if it just means forking over a bit more money to the manufacturers. But I wish it didn’t involve so much material waste.

18

Planned obsolescence my foot! You are talking to the most frugal and recycling person you could find. I can’t help myself. I routinely pick up microwaves that I see dumped in the streets. I take them home, clean them and they work fine. People are dumping microwaves not because they are obsolete but because they want to have a newer one and cannot bother to clean the one they have when a brand new one costs under $100.

Being the way I am, I take them home, clean them and give them away. Right now I believe I have 6 of them. Last week I saw another one and I had to control myself so much not to take it. This is NOT a rich neigborhood and these people are dumping their microwaves because they can’t be bothered to clean them.

Now tell me how on earth is that to be blamed on the manufacturer. We are all looking for someone to blame when we should be looking at ourselves. I am very satisfied with the quality of the stuff that is available to us and i believe all this thing about “planned obsolescence” is just plain nonsense. If you throw it away, don’t blame the manufacturer.

Yes, My old computer was made obsolete by better computers. So what? I could have kept it, it still worked. But if I want to do more stuff I need the newer ones. Do you want them to invent the ultimate computer directly and skip all the middle stages?

19

Since you asked, yes. Yes, I do. Please have them deliver the ultimate computer to my office by Wednesday, I’ll tell the receptionist I’m expecting a package.

(Ask a silly question…:-P)

20

sailor: *This is NOT a rich neigborhood and these people are dumping their microwaves because they can’t be bothered to clean them.

Now tell me how on earth is that to be blamed on the manufacturer.*

It isn’t, and loud cheers for you for doing something about other people’s wastefulness. (I personally am a furniture salvager.) But there’s also lots of stuff that is thrown away because it’s made too cheap to last and designed too poorly to be recycled or reused. Consumers are indeed very wasteful, but manufacturers are not all sinless either.