A Facet of Late-State Capitalist Failure: Operational Breakage | naked capitalism

A Facet of Late-State Capitalist Failure: Operational Breakage | naked capitalism 02/02/22 Post by Yves Smith "Planned obsolescence, the bane of tech users, and more and more are being sucked into having hardware and software dictate product life than is necessary or desirable for users. Peak word processing was WordPerfect circa 1994. The NeXT's Improv (a Lotus product) ran rings around Excel. And don't get me started on IoT. What happens when the provider of XYZ system goes out of business and your locks or heating system gets bricked? What about the inclusion of way more chip-enabled features than are necessary in everything from washing machines to cars, leading to more costly service calls and faster product death due to key components often not available after ten years? One example is the phaseout of the 3G network affecting some car models from 2010 to even as recent as 2021 models. Admittedly, the affected systems are not critical to driving the car, but their not being updated would presumably hurt resale value. Most automakers are offering upgrades but some are curiously indifferent." JohnnySacks comments: "Why people so eagerly purchase things they don't need with money they don't have is a complete mystery and disappointment to me. Transportation appliances being a prime example. OK, I have Corolla/Civic as a fallback, notwithstanding their base models being full of useless and complicated appointments. The unavailable manual transmission in favor of basically a belt drive go-kart automatic transmission being one particular gripe. But I pity the farmer who needs a bare bones workhorse pickup with an interior they can clean with a garden hose walking into a GMC dealer looking at those $70k creature comfort monstrosities."