What is the refutation of such a claim?
It's a silly claim because if there is a real need in the marketplace there is always a provider that arises at a price. In situations where people want things that last, they get them. My teak garden furniture will last beyond my lifetime. Smith and Hawkins have a whole business designed around selling garden tools that will last a lifetime. Almost every John Deere tractor ever built is still out there chugging away.
I remember one particularly amusing article by a woman who claimed that she and all her friends were being held captive by their small ten year old Japanese cars that refused to die even though they had many many miles on the odometer. They wanted new cars but couldn't justify getting rid of the cars they had because the cars were almost worthless in terms of resale, yet they still ran well and had not given rise to large repair bills.
In Japan, a family will keep a car for twenty years. Twenty years in this country makes you eligible for historical plates.
What is interesting now, especially with electronic or computer equipment, is that the price of replacing something is far below that of justifing fixing it. What causes this obsolescence isn't companies plotting to have things wear out or break so you replace them (although there are certainly instances where whole businesses are based on the product needing to be bought over and over again), it's that the pace of technological change is so fast that the newer goods have far more bells and whistles with a price that is lower in comparison to the old.
Just take microwave ovens for one example. I picked up a microwave oven at a yard sale for $15. The couple that sold it to me bought a newer, smaller, quieter one with many more programable features and a built in turntable (the ovens always have cold and hot spots) for about a quarter of what they paid for the one they sold me. The one they sold me still works great and I bought it from them ten years ago (it was about five years old when I got it). If I hadn't bought it, they'd have thrown it out or given it to Goodwill. This example has an element of fashion, but it also shows that for that couple, the newer features were important enough to them to essentially give away a perfectly functional oven. The third world is full of stuff that we no longer consider fashionable here in the US. |
