Why none of your stuff lasts anymore

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings Nothing I’ve ever said to introduce one of these episodes has made me feel this old, but here we go. They really don’t make them like they used to. And surely you have noticed this. Have you ever replaced something that you had for a long time, only to find out you are quickly replacing the replacement? Have you ever purchased a brand new, shiny, next generation version of an item that could be simple and serviceable, like maybe a fridge with a touch screen or a smart blender? And you found that, as fancy as it is, it doesn’t actually do the thing it’s supposed to do that well. Or maybe you still have a handful of cool T shirts from the 1990s or early 2000s that go right through the wash, even as you are tossing out T shirts you bought online last year. See, I told you I was going to sound old and grumpy. But here’s the thing. I’m also right. Things don’t last as long anymore. They break more easily. They are harder to repair. They are designed to be obsolete, if not now, than soon. So, yeah, they really don’t make them like they used to. The question is, what are we going to do about it? I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Izzie Ramirez is the deputy editor of Future Perfect Vox’s section on the myriad challenges and efforts that go into making the world a better place. Only today we’re talking about how things are getting worse.

Izzie Ramirez Yeah. Yeah. So it’s funny, despite my title, this piece is for a section called The Goods. And, you know, for my day job, I really look into all of the ways the world is getting better. But I did have, like, this lingering question about why are the things that I buy seemingly worse? And it was just haunting me. So I was able to write this section for our sister vertical, and it was a ton of fun.

Jordan Fair enough. I’ve been having the same question, and when I read your piece, I recognized a lot of my own dilemmas. And this is potentially a very weird way to start an interview, but can you tell me about your bra?

Izzie Ramirez Yes. Okay, so I had this bra for, like, ten years, probably since high school. And I know that people who have breasts might have similar stories of this long lasting bra. You take it to college, you grow up with it, and mine gave out after a few years, and that’s very natural. It’d been abused very much throughout its life. But I did what anyone else would do when they really love something and it’s reliable is I bought the same exact thing from the same store, same brand, same model, and the new version wasn’t up to snuff, and it was, like, severely disappointing. So it kind of led me looking into researching, like, is this true for other stuff? Because I’ve heard anecdotally washing machines, kitchen tools, iPhones, whatever, and whether or not our goods are kind of experiencing some changes in production. But yeah, so that’s kind of how this bra kind of started this piece off.

Jordan I will tell you briefly as we get started about speaking of washing machines and dryers. When we lived in an apartment about three, four years ago, we lived there for four years. When we moved in, it had a brand new washer and dryer with those digital displays that lasted about two years. Then we got another brand new washer dryer with digital displays and by the time we moved out, it was dying. We moved into a house that came with a washer and dryer and they are Maytag washers and dryers. When you picture them, you’re picturing the ones that are in your grandparents house that have probably been there since the early 1980s. They’re gigantic and they’re super loud. And we’ve had zero problems with it over the past three and a half years. And when I read your piece, this is exactly what I thought of because we’ve bought new coffee makers that are just gone. Meanwhile, my parents have the same coffee maker that they’ve had for I don’t know, since I was still living at home. So how widespread when you started looking into this, you started with bras. I mentioned washers and dryers, but how widespread is this kind of qualitative decline that we’re going to discuss today?

Izzie Ramirez Yeah, so I’d like to kind of think that there’s like a few tracks that this can go depending on the good. Clothing has its own problems and that’s kind of related to just like the speed of consumerism and micro trend cycles and the fact that we’re facing climate crisis, we’re facing some labor problems. Supply problems, like materials are more expensive than they were previously. So companies are going to cut corners in the electronics space. What’s fascinating, especially for home goods, is we’re kind of trained societally, though, the newer thing is always going to be better or like more stuff is always going to be better and incremental upgrades, whether it’s like a touch screen blender. Do you really need the blender to be touchscreen? Probably not. And what happens when there’s more technology introduced into these utilitarian objects? You’re kind of introducing more ways that it can go wrong and especially since a lot of companies don’t really have the support systems to really help you when you come across a problem. So let’s say with your fancy washer dryers, if there were touchscreen, if they had other features, those are newer features and it gives more opportunity for breakage. And I think that’s super fascinating that it’s a selling point. You can think of self cleaning features and ovens and how they are also contributing to explosions in homes. You can think of how tractors now have all sorts of new techy selling features that don’t really work in the long run. And some of it comes down to support and some of it comes down to it’s just more stuff that can break you’re adding more that doesn’t really need to be there.

Jordan What does design of these products have to do with it? And maybe just explain what goes into design in this context. We’re not just talking about how these things look. And I’m glad that you brought that up.

Izzie Ramirez The first misconception that I want to address is that, yeah, design is not just aesthetics. There’s a utilitarian purpose right there’s. The manufacturability that goes into it. There’s also, of course, the looks of it. So you kind of have to like, balance these three goals. And when it comes to design, broadly speaking, you know, there’s there’s a need that has to be filled or a trend that needs to be chased or bottom lines that have to be met. So there are a lot of different motivations for designing a product in a certain way. But usually you want to make something that people like. And that can be kind of hard when you’re also coming up across the fact that manufacturing really quickly at the speed that we are producing goods comes with some downsides.

Jordan Let’s talk about the manufacturing process for a minute. And I’m not asking you to summarize 200 years of manufacturing, but maybe just everybody’s familiar with the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of assembly lines. But since then, how has that process changed to impact the kind of processes that are used to make these goods?

Izzie Ramirez Yeah, and I think that’s a difficult question depending on the good. But essentially the way that things have changed is truly just the speed. While you might have some more automation or more machines here and there, for your iPhone, for example, some pieces might be glued down or for some other technology processes versus like, with screws. And that’s definitely a little bit more recent. Trying to find ways that you can cut down the steps of assembly, because assembly is where most of the human labor is. And I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a change from the Industrial Revolution, but that it’s just like the speed and the scale is just so much bigger when it comes to manufacturing. There’s only so much that you can do with machines and with humans. And you’re going to have to make some design choices to save labor on the human side, and that will usually mean on the machine side or on the material side. Some changes there. And this is where we get to stuff like planned obsolescence, which is something that a lot of people talk about but maybe don’t know exactly what it means.

Jordan Can you just explain it a little bit? It’s a historical term, right?

Izzie Ramirez It was introduced around the Great Depression as a way to help motivate the economy. This idea of doing things in cycles and seasons but it wasn’t necessarily that these items were intended to break back then, right? It was more so you wanted to motivate or engineer the consumer to want the new item, want to purchase something new. And that’s kind of been the historical legacy in many ways. So we like to buy things in season and some of it’s obviously logical. You want like a warm sweater in the winter, but when there’s like a new iPhone, you’re going to want to buy it because it’s like the new shiny thing. When it comes to what I think a lot of people are thinking about with plant obsolescence is like, oh, are these companies intentionally making their products worse? And this is where I’m like the hedge a bit. I don’t think it’s always intentional when I’m thinking of fast fashion companies. These things are just like made out of bad materials. Those things are designed to break and that is designed to make you want to buy more fast fashion because it’s cheap and you want to look trendy. When it comes to tech, one of my sources is like, it’s kind of hard because the moment you buy a tech object, it’s already kind of obsolete the moment that you buy it. And it’s kind of hard to predict the needs of the future. But at another source who was talking about how a lot of tech companies make it really difficult to repair what you own or make it intentionally difficult. And so to help sell newer versions of the object. And I think that’s what a lot of people are thinking about, oh, if I download this update, it’s going to slow down my phone with Bloatware and then I’m going to be incentivized to want to get a new one. So I think that there’s a lot of nuance to the plan obsolescence question. But I think it’s really fascinating when we’re thinking of history and how things that happened almost 100 years ago are influencing the way that we shop and the way that we think about buying products.

Jordan Maybe this is a good time to talk about the right to repair, particularly when it comes to tech products. I will note just because you mentioned tractors earlier, that as we’re speaking a couple of days ago, john Deere owners won the right to repair. Can you explain what that is and where the fights for that are taking place, especially around tech?

Izzie Ramirez Because that’s the big one in the tech space. A lot of activists have been working on the so called right to repair. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that companies make it intentionally difficult to repair your own items. And that can be because they would have like, proprietary screws and those screws wouldn’t or the screwdrivers for them wouldn’t be available publicly. And so if you wanted to fix your item, you would usually be encouraged to go to that specific retailer or like a third party group and it’s been changing a lot. There’s fights with John Deere, there’s fights with Apple, there’s fights with all sorts of different corporations. And the thing that one of my sources said to me was like, this is kind of like if someone told you you can’t sew a button on a jacket, no one’s telling you you can’t fix your own clothes. But with tech objects or even household objects, some of it’s just intentionally made a lot harder. And right to Repair is really trying to make sure that anyone, any consumer can get the parts they need. So that’s one aspect that could improve the quality and lifespan of our products. It doesn’t quite explain stuff like the bra that we began with that’s theoretically the exact same bra.

Jordan And I know this, I’ve brought the exact same version of several things and found that they don’t match the same quality. I’m not talking about a newer or a better version. Why would the same bra be worse?

Izzie Ramirez Yeah. So one of my sources, Cora Harrington, was telling me the materials just aren’t the same. A lot of it comes down to, again, as I mentioned, the climate crisis stuff, we’re not going to be producing clothing that’s 100% cotton. It might be synthetics. And a lot of that is because it’s cheaper. The problem here is that these are all materials that are petroleum based, usually, and they fall apart in your clothing a lot faster. But they don’t really break down in the environment because again, it’s the same issue as plastics. Like plastics take forever to decompose. So not only are your products kind of not lasting as long as they should be in your wardrobe, they’re just like having this outsized economic and environmental impact. So in general here and you can take this to any sector you want, but I’m just looking for some advice at the end of all of this. Should I be resigned to things just continuing to get worse and worse? Or are there things that we can do to try to make sure either, A, that products in general have longer lifespans, or B, just things that we should know before we shop to try to maximize the lifespan of what we do buy? I wish I could say like, yeah, things are going to get better soon, but I don’t think corporations are really incentivized to make products that are more expensive for them to manufacture. But I would say there is a lot of hope. Like on the consumer side, I would say number one is just being a little bit more conscientious when you’re shopping, looking into the materials of what you’re buying. Another part is really trying to take care of your objects that you already have. And when they do break down, go to your local library or community. There’s often like some free repair nights. There’s some local shops that specialize in repairing objects. And then when it comes to the larger questions, call your local legislature. There are a lot of really great organizations at the federal level that are also working on this issue, so you’re not alone in feeling trapped by consumerism. And there are people who are really trying to make sure that the items that you buy last long. And if you ever want something new, always consider shopping secondhand. That’s a fantastic answer, even though I know I’m not going to follow some of it.

Jordan I know. Izzie, thank you so much for this. It’s fascinating.

Izzie Ramirez Awesome. Thank you.

Jordan Izzie Ramirez is the deputy editor of Future Perfect at Vox. That was the big story. I would love to hear your stories about all the crappy stuff you bought that’s already broken, especially if it has like, a touch screen or something that’s just totally gimmicky and doesn’t belong on whatever it is. If we get enough of them, we’ll make a little compilation and share them either on Social or at the end of one of these episodes, tell me about your crappy stuff. It’ll be fun. You can find the Big Story at The Big Storypodcast. CA. You can talk to us, of course, on Twitter at The bigstory FPN via email at hello at The Big Storypodcast CA or via Voicemail 416-935-5935. The Big Story is available in every single podcast player. It plays on everything that plays podcasts, and I know this. Speaking of old items that still work, because we got a couple of listens recently from a zoom. If you know what a Zoom is, you’re as old as me. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll talk Monday.