Very well put Valerie, go to the head of the class.

David

All very well, but who is at the forefront of planned obsolescence, the community drives the market, so we are to blame.

The raison d'etre of the Capitalist mode of (SOCIAL) Production, Distribution and Exchange is the expropriation and endless accumulation of the surplus value (profit) of SOCIALLY-produced goods and services, by a minority of greedy individuals and families driven by the ide(a)ologies of 'growth' and 'progress'.

An essential component for ensuring the 'success' of this anti-social, anti-democratic system is the obsolescence and waste endemic to Capitalism, without which it would collapse.

The obscene destruction resulting from modern warfare and the 're-construction' programs that follow are the other epitome of waste: however war IS 'good for business'; indeed it is simply another way of carrying on business for the giant, hugely-profitable arms manufacturers and the well-rewarded 'investors' and corporate executives who plan and 'manage' (control) their nefarious output.

Valerie you're not too strong on math are you. It is all about cost of production, where time is very big money.

Most modern manufacture is done in a series of sub assemblies. Working this way the labor in a car dropped from 50 hours to 15 hours. The car is so much cheaper due to this, that many more people can afford cars.

Motor bikes & side car did not disappear from our roads because we forgot how to make them, they went because those who once owned them can now afford a car. It's Not all good, this form of cost saving can mean more difficult & expensive servicing, like $100 to change a light bulb.

With many items manufacture is so efficient that the cost of packing & shipping to the point of sale can be often as much as 5 times the cost of the product. It can easily cost as much to send even a minor part out, as shipping a single item is more expensive per item, than a pallet load. Your spare part for your printer can cost almost as much delivered, as the printer.

Then again we find labour costs. An hour of a technicians time is often equal to the cost of a replacement printer. This is not likely to change until we get robot technicians, as we have robot assembly in the factory.

I'm not suggesting this is good, I come from an era when my leather school shoes would be half soled & healed a couple of times in their life, but today one such repair would cost more than the shoes.

When overseas phone calls were very expensive, there was no thought of overseas call centres, another undesirable effect, but we are not likely to stop these things now. Pity

Sowat,

If not for the greediness of consumers, the greediness of producers would not be rewarded.

Obsolescence makes us poor (and the environment too). While you may hate capitalism for various other reasons, is it really the culprit in this case? Were waste and environmental damage ever strangers to the socialist-republics' economies?

The root of the problem, is lack of self-discipline, mainly (but not only) on behalf of consumers.

Self-Discipline would lead to responsible consumers who demand products that will last for 100's of years, which one would not only use for the rest of their life, but even inherit to their children and grandchildren. Self-discipline would lead to producers more and more specialising in supporting this type of market and providing the necessary spare parts, even to more efficient methods of delivering them (See Hasbeen's comment). Self-discipline would lead government to stop colluding with swindler industries which pop up one day, grab their loot and tomorrow are gone in a puff.

Self-discipline will combat the desire born of existential discontent to look into material solutions for what is a spiritual problem.

Self-discipline, however, cannot be acquired without the foundations of a higher purpose - and one materialistic desire cannot uplift another, as they both stand at an equal level!

I agree with a lot of your sentiment. I've been involved in sustainability and green building for a long time (I authored some notes for engineers and contributed to the Green Building Bible). It seems to me that planned obsolescence is a form of waste.

However, what drew me to this site is something else entirely. You said:

"I have a fantasy that Stonehenge is all that remains today of an electronic civilisation. The rest is lost."

I have been helping to develop solar concentration systems (renewable energy) using fixed plate collectors (which use a form of geocentric mathematics). We've been discovering a number of unusual similarities between neolithic monuments and Geocentric systems (Geocentric being the idea that the world is fixed and everything else revolves around it):

A few examples (there are many):

http://heavenshenge.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-draw-universe.html
http://heavenshenge.blogspot.com/2011/11/origins-of-heavenshenge.html
http://heavenshenge.blogspot.com/2011/12/make-your-own-heavens-hinge-part-1.html

Maybe your idea isn't so far fetched?

jon