Adding up the "time cost" of the first 5 major appliances in the list, I figure the real cost of major appliances has gone down by a factor of 5 between 1959 and 2013. And by a factor of 3 between 1973 and 2013.
Interesting this roughly corresponds to the decrease in lifespan alleged by the linked article. So one could surmise that the quality has been reduced in order to to keep the per capita revenue up.
Whether or not this is a free market "preference" effect is highly debatable, since it amounts to customers getting basically none of the economic returns of better technology. There are also an awful lot of people out there who will tell you they do value reliability and dislike the trend.
Also, I think your view that "it's not a conspiracy" should possibly be tempered by the fact that several such "conspiracies", better known as cartels in market terms, have been revealed in great detail to history. And in all those actual cases, there were people beforehand who said it couldn't be so.
Adding up the "time cost" of the first 5 major appliances in the list, I figure the real cost of major appliances has gone down by a factor of 5 between 1959 and 2013. And by a factor of 3 between 1973 and 2013.
Interesting this roughly corresponds to the decrease in lifespan alleged by the linked article. So one could surmise that the quality has been reduced in order to to keep the per capita revenue up.
Whether or not this is a free market "preference" effect is highly debatable, since it amounts to customers getting basically none of the economic returns of better technology. There are also an awful lot of people out there who will tell you they do value reliability and dislike the trend.
Also, I think your view that "it's not a conspiracy" should possibly be tempered by the fact that several such "conspiracies", better known as cartels in market terms, have been revealed in great detail to history. And in all those actual cases, there were people beforehand who said it couldn't be so.