Hopefully I’ve worded the question right.

I was once told (I could never verify if it was true) that a crocs company once almost went bankrupt after they made their crocs practically indestructible. Whilst the story was most likely bullshit, it makes me wonder: if a company can make a product that is practically indestructible, is it ethical for them not to make them indestructible, so people will buy more from them?

The way I look at it is, on one hand, I feel like they should make products to the highest quality if they can so that the consumer has to spend less money and that less is wasted, but at the same time if it leads to the company going bankrupt, what of the workers and their families? So I can’t decide, what do you think?

There are companies that went broke by making their product indestructible, a notable example being the maker of the wildly popular Instant Pot. They made a product that just didn't break. This is called planned obsolescence failure and has happened to other companies too.

That being said, making flimsy shit on purpose is shady at best.

Yeah it’s a right dilemma. Because on one hand, I feel like they should make products to the highest quality if they can so that the consumer has to spend less money, but at the same time if it leads to the company going bankrupt, what of the workers and their families?

That's a toughie. Go broke with morals or get rich being unethical.

If you started a business and was faced with the same situation, what do you think you would do?
Personally, I think I would focus on the money over time

This is why capitalism is stupid at its core. It doesn't promote anything good. It only promotes greed and enriching the top. Make the shittiest product you possibly can that people will buy, buy out every other maker of product, repopulate the sector with fake brands to give people illusion of choice.

Oldest trick in the book. And literally not 1 person I know can see through this trickery.

In capitalism making a long lasting good product is not viable at all, it makes no sense. Who gives a shit if your great grandkid is still using your oven 60 years later, the shareholders dont benefit then. Out of business. Its an idiotic system kept alive only by propaganda.

What’s your opinion then?

It really depends on the product Id think. For an extreme example, a packaging company making packaging that does not degrade after a reasonable time contributes to landfill waste in a way that a packaging that eventually breaks down would be less responsible for.

If a product's useful life is limited by some other fundamental reason to the thing simply breaking (I don't mean planned obsolescence here, but more objects only needs for a certain period of time and which customers are almost certain to throw out afterwards), then making the product last longer than needed just turns the extra material needed to get that robustness into extra waste.

If we are talking planned obsolescence, that reasoning flips around to making longer lasting stuff cause less waste obviously, though nothing is truly needed for or able to last forever so there is always going to be a point where making the thing tougher is not going to help the end user any further.

this is a failure of consumerism, materialism and greed. not capitalism.

Think about all the waste that cheap products create. I can buy a cheap pair of work boots twice a year or a good pair every 2/3 years. I believe it's unethical for preying on the poor while also creating more waste.

True that waste is also a factor in this.

Yes, particularly if you're the company creating the "In case of emergency, break glass" boxes.

I’m not sure tbh. That’s kind of why I asked the question, and hopefully other’s views may shed light on this ‘issue’

If everyone built them at the highest quality, then every product would be at the highest price point.

Each reduction in quality makes that product available to more people who couldn't afford it otherwise.

Eventually, the only way to put the product in everybody's hands is to make it so cheap that it only works once, if you're lucky.

Short, sweet and to the point. I like it. I also like more detailed answers also.

Edit: I clearly also like overusing the word also, also.

If everyone built them at the highest quality, then every product would be at the highest price point

I’ll be honest, I didn’t even think of that point. Thanks for sharing, interesting perspective.

Won't any one think of the shareholders!!

Those are all byproducts of unregulated capitalism.

The real reason was private equity

Private equity made things a lot worse. In 2019, Instant Brands was acquired by Cornell Capital and unceremoniously merged with Corelle Brands, a housewares company that includes Pyrex. An acquisition by a private equity firm brings certain expectations with it—namely: lots and lots of fast growth.

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/instant-pot-bankrupt

It’s always private equity.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

Huh

Not too long ago, TVs were so expensive that most people rented them.

Right. Like I also hate capitalism as it exists today, but it is definitely possible to make a living making GOOD products. You just can't make billions doing it. Even if the product was LITERALLY indestructible, people will lose them, plus they're always making new people. It's just a lot slower than if you make a shit product people have to keep replacing

Corelle/Pyrex is its own story of going from the best product to "good enough". Simple point, if you find yourself some old stuff of theirs, hang on to it because you can't find anything comparable anymore. Same can probably be true of other old brands of products. I found an old Whirlpool dryer that I won't ever let go of for the same reason. What will eventually fail on it I can either fix or buy a new, cheap part.

Haha the first thing I thought of. The finest literary example of representing economics with boots!

lower quality products are not always cheaper to produce.

no.

Can you provide an example please?

sneakers of all kinds. the materials and manufacture is essentially the same. its all marketing bs.

"True capitalism has never been tried" heeheehee :p

I said it's a toughie. Gun to my head, I'd probs say it depends on what the product was and it's overall impact.

Furniture designed to break after a year = shitty.

Fast fashion = much shittier considering its larger environmental footprint.

The highest price points for many items are luxury brands that sell for hundreds to thousands of times the actual cost of manufacture.

Eventually, the only way to put the product in everybody's hands is to make it so cheap that it only works once, if you're lucky.

And yet everybody (or close enough) in the world today has a smartphone that generally will last at least a year or two. (Set aside countries that are screwed up because of their govt, that's another issue entirely). There are lots of things that could be supplied to every person on earth if capitalism wasn't fucked.

Welcome to end stage capitalism, where the only rule is line go up. Line go up when you use fewer materials. That's why everything is shitty now.

I was thinking about getting better quality shorts this year, but I’ve got a two year old. I decided I’ll get old navy shorts for 2 more years, because the risk of getting a stain I can’t remove on them is pretty high still

Just engineering something to be garbage for no other reason than so that people will buy more is unethical. That said, there are always trade offs and durability has to be weighed against other priorities.

For example, cars used to have much bigger bumpers which were expected to protect against damage in low speed impacts. Those went away because the requirements changed, the low speed crash test was out, and fuel efficiency requirements were in.

Or there's incandescent bulbs. They were ubiquitous for over a century, and yet they were constantly burning out and changing them was just a fact of life. Manufacturers could have easily made a more robust filament so the bulb would last longer, but doing so would have dramatically decreased the output of the bulb.

Morals don't put dinner on the table.

That's not to say they're not important, but that business is important too.

So where do you stand on the debate then? Do you believe there’s a ‘trade off’, so to speak?

Genuinely, I don't really think this is an ethical or moral issue.

With that said, the first thing that jumps out to me is the question intimates that there may be a duty to manufacture "less breakable" products. I'm assuming that's to protect the money spent by the consumer. If it is, then that's pretty weird.

It would be so easy to fix, too.

the longer your shit lasts, the more your line goes up

I’m sure someone has the Vimes Principle of Economic Unfairness on hand.

I’m also sure that there’s a slope for every product showing the durability and the price required to achieve it. Then there’s the reputation cost of making a cheap version and expensive version of something. If you make something flimsy for $5, it’s unlikely that someone would buy the indestructible version for $100, even if the cheap version was intended to function as an example of what the expensive product can do. Given an ethical vacuum, I think there’s great incentive to do the mediumest you can, even if you have a monopoly.

The ethics are going to be different for every product and every person. If you care about whales, indestructible fishing nets will seem evil. If you make something biodegradable, it will necessarily be flimsy, and that limits its long term usefulness. When the owner of an indestructible item dies, what’s to be done with it, and by whom? I think society would need to be radically different to even begin to answer this question.

Perhaps it's interesting to flip the problem. What if you made a product that lasted say 10x as long as the competition with a small margin and accepted the market would saturate? Then pivot to the next product, and the next?

I would expect, given the current state of 'capitalism', you would be sued, IP'd and regulated out of existence very quickly. Criminal contempt of business model.

No. A good example is phones. They are intentionally designed to be breakable and difficult to repair. Even ignoring the repairabilty standpoint: the glass backs for wireless charging (a feature that a minority use), not giving consumers a phone case, the lack of innovation for "water proofing" the phone; just using glue everywhere (more annoying to recycle existing phones).

That is unethical. The sheer amount of human life wasted needlessly spent repairing and paying to fix these phones, and polluting the environment is unethical. The default should be more repairable, if not more durable, but no.

Companies are not people. They need people, sure. And it isnt automatically a good thing when they lose. But they are NOT people. 1000s of companies could crumble tommorow with no loss significant loss to anyone. They can find new jobs, create new companies. A company failing because they prioritised the consumer isn't "good", but it isnt "bad" either. However, if a company relies on the pollution of people's time, money, and environment? That is unethical.

It's worse than that. They use shitty materials deliberately even when they aren't cheaper to manufacture in order to make the product last less long so you have to re-buy a replacement sooner. It's called "planned obsolescence" and it's egregiously unethical.

Samsung washing machines, for instance, use the "spider arm" (the bracket connecting the drum to the motor) as a sacrificial anode in order to ensure that the machine will break just out of warranty. Everything else in the machine will be stainless steel and still in pristine condition when the zinc spider arm has corroded to the point of literally cracking into pieces.

(Yes, this happened to me, and I will never stop warning people away from Samsung because of it.)

Samsung washing machines. Even if it's top-of-the-line they'll still sabotage it by using the spider arm as the sacrificial anode so that it breaks just out of warranty. Doesn't matter if you paid $2000 for it; it's still shit.

Obviously not, thats literally the opposite of what ethics are about....

Cell phones should last a decade, and could.

It's also untrue, see my other statement.

In many cases, especially technology and machinery, extra effort is put into making sure they break down on time, just out of warranty. They'd be arguably cheaper without that extra effort.

"Low end margin, high volume" markets.

https://www.okoone.com/spark/marketing-growth/high-value-vs-high-volume-customers-where-should-your-focus-be/

Agreed. Mine generally last at least 5 years, usually more.