this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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Is it only ornamental? And why are they usually webbed feet (or at least they are in my experience)?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

What about it?

All I said is that they build what people will buy. Sometimes, people are short-sighted about what they buy. And maybe more importantly, landfilling is totally free in most cities, and externalities are not something markets handle well. That's also why we're making one-use containers out of our most permanent materials.

People absolutely did that stuff way back when, too. Incandescent lightbulbs are a debated but famous example.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They had to literally turn off Edison's incandescent bulb. That was before planned obsolescence (see Vance Packard's The Waste Makers) https://www.remodelormove.com/is-the-original-edison-bulb-still-working/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, exactly. The early ones lasted a really long time. The debate is about how necessary making them shorter lived was exactly. It definitely happened though, and definitely did so before any of us were born.

There's probably an even older example, but commercial history before 1850 is pretty niche.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Bob Robertson explains my point better than I feel like typing at this time lol. He’s spot on. Also, I worked as a project manager for the product owners that make these types of decisions. Everything I relayed was from experience. Edit: I will add, look at people like musk that proudly proclaim “i do no market research” and then look at the cybertruck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Eh, it was a bit too detailed honestly. I doubt that was deliberate, though, and I did respond in full.

Musk is an outlier. He also bought Twitter and basically put it through a woodchipper, including getting rid of the very well-recognised brand and executing a domain transition that left it semi-broken for months. Most CEOs and most boards have some semblance of sanity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We must have worked for different boards and CEOs then . I have watched boards and CEOs get recommendations for customer protecting cybersecurity investments, then deny them, even after previous loss of customer data.

Because it was cheaper to deal with the fallout in the event that something happened again. Spoiler alert: it always does

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

That sounds completely sane, if cynical. Back in the day your salami had rats in it. Now software is the sausage you don't want to see made.

Regulation is an option, right? And in the EU they're actually doing it. Because the consumers are dumb, not because someone has a free money bug, let alone one that's leading to some kind of Platonic inevitable decay of society, which is kind of what feels like the picture being pushed here.