This is why we can't have nice things
This video is about stuff: light bulbs, printers, phones and why they aren't better. Go to NordVPN.com/veritasium and use code VERITASIUM to get a 2-year plan plus 1 additional month with a huge discount. It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!
References:
The Man in the White Suit - ve42.co/Suit
London, B. (1932). Ending the depression through planned obsolescence. - ve42.co/London32
Slade, G. (2009). Made to break: Technology and obsolescence in America. Harvard University Press - ve42.co/madetobreak
Krajewski, M. (2014). The great lightbulb conspiracy. IEEE spectrum, 51(10), 56-61. - ve42.co/Phoebus
Planet Money, The Phoebus Cartel - ve42.co/PMobs
The Light Bulb Conspiracy - eeworld.info/chat/xm6ooKBpa2urrpU/video
Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Mac Malkawi, Oleksii Leonov, Michael Schneider, Jim Osmun, Tyson McDowell, Ludovic Robillard, jim buckmaster, fanime96, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Lyvann Ferrusca, Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Joar Wandborg, Clayton Greenwell, Pindex, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal
Written by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
Animation by Ivan Tello
Filmed by Derek Muller and Raquel Nuno
Edited by Derek Muller
Video supplied by Getty Images
Music by Jonny Hyman and from epidemicsound.com"Aquatic Planet", "Rhythm of Dreams", "Tread Lightly", "Unexpected Visitors", "Curved Mirrors" "Drunken Lullaby" "Fluorescent Lights"
Thumbnail by Raquel Nuno and Karri Denise
If Someone makes a perfect something that lasts forever they can move on and try it on another bussiness branch, the same way when one learns a subject and moves to learn another or to go deeper in complexity on it. Obsolence is not only a problem of ever ending consuming behavior which could be ideologicaly aproved or not, it implies that threre are infinite resources to build infinite things Which a false statement, a real physical limitation and the Main reason behind climate change and massive extintions of species. We need to change greed as being the wheel of the world to another more usefull idea.
Right to repair laws could bring back the small appliance repair shops and those guys able to fix anything. That'd be plus.
Welcome to earth, we are the humans.
so having the lights on used to indeed raise the room temp lol
I'd recommend my ISP to buy NORD VPN
Everyday... I hate apple even more Because they sell and spit on the pockets of their costumers for those who say.... all do it I'd say I hate the enemy.... who i have to see the most
Veritasium, PLease Pin this Comment and I will Be in Shock and know that you love your Subs, and Likers... 🙏🙏🥺
Nice that the crappy Dyson cleaner ad appears to me in the middle of the video 😏. Never again I will buy a product of the arrogant Brexshitter.
Now I really want to be extremely rich so i can start selling eternal lightbulbs and such things
Capitalism as it finest, i hate you all so much.
I love your Channel.
Okay this video's title telling me Taylor Swift song 😅
1- Naivety is a belief that there are people out there who are not your close friends or relatives who care about you. 2- Conspiracy is an integral part of human interaction and every single one of us have committed it on numerous occasions in our lives. Only the scale is different.
great anticapitalist rhetoric. i love it.
oh it cant be real, but watch its real. INSTEAD look at these cars.
5:38 can also be applied to resolutions and display manufacturers 😷
Very cool topic to cover, thanks.
Apple is the perfect example of planned obsolescence.
9/11
Why do people accept that companies are capable of these mass conspiracies, but not politicians? They can make investments too, like in Big Pharma for example...
Oh how badly I want movies to go back to switching between scientists bickering in a lab and a monster destroying the city/world.
lol capitalism
Capitalism sure is great
I thought his view of profit-making was his real motivation in making this video?
Well for the LED light, they don't last as long as advertised, yeah the LED itself can last but not the circuitry. I had many of these LED Light ceasing working well before the advertised 10000h. Maybe just after a year.
Excellent video
Nothing everlasts because if it would it would be plastics and we know that they also do not last
The funny thing is that this also applicable to medicine products, the manufacturers don't need you to get cured completely, they need you to stay sick to a certain level even if they already found a way to cure. Like diabetes for example, let's say they found a way to cure it completely will they announce it or even sell it ? Or they will keep the patients live on insulin and use their supportive medicines for years with thousands of dollars spent?
just wanted to let this out there: LED lights can be repaired easily.
They produce tons of heat though, at least their components do. The benefits of LED lights is their luminosity and size. I assembled Hollywood stage lights for a few years and the test racks were a furnace...granted each unit had hundreds to over a thousand LED nodes with dozens of units running at once.
uh, the phone edges is a bad example, it's provable that a rounded edge makes it easier to lose your grip and drop a device, a sharp edge and flat side is easier to grip.
keep up the good work, both you and Louis
so what i'm hearing is with communism planned obsolescence wouldn't be a thing
I don't buy trending things including apple, iphone, ipad etc, also I don't buy clothing from trending brands and people always say that I'm classy. My house has this 1" wide, 100 year old oak flooring, it's pretty beat up but looks so stylish always. May the new owner preserve that flooring, it bears history and time.
The eventuality is inevitable.
You wore not sorta wrong you are completely wrong. An oven or a stove part will break so you will need to buy a new part, most things are made so only parts break, the same way phones are slowed down on purpose and cars need overpriced maintenance. This is so good for the economy in fact making things un-breakable in 1,2 or more human life spans catastrophical to companies and entire economys. No one would ever buy any thing, companies would close factories for years millions would gain and lose their jobs every century. Companies wont be able to promote for so long without a cash flow so they would rely on word of mouth, competing only with their warranties spaning centuries.
Why didn’t the antitrust laws stop this?
veritasium is so based
This video is why we have such a stuffed planet. It's called greed. Many things were made before the 1930s that would've lasted right the way through to the 21st-century. I can remember when they made a few that only cost cents to produce. I remember the family that run the car on it and disappeared that's the whole family never seen again. The house stood for decades an used. I suppose when you see these billionaires giving a lot of their money to the pool maybe their conscience is pricked. How many million iPhones are thrown away because of dishonesty. And iPhone with the technology they have should last for at least 10 to 15 years. Most people have no idea how to use all the technology in the average phone. You can stop a car rusting for only $20. Alright say $100 alright let's go staggeringly and say $200. And that is a vehicle would not rust for its lifetime. How much environment would that save. We already have the technologies we already have the engineers we already have the scientists that have made things last for a complete life time. All we have to do is take away greed and there you have it. We're talking about planet Earth and sustainable living we've had it for decades probably 100 years but it has been taken office by greed corruption and distortion. So who profits. Ha ha that's another story. But what's going to happen when the Sunday law comes in it's basically legislated now in all countries. The Christian coalition in America are forcing the American government to have a Sunday law at their peril. 500 Pentecostal ministers with Kenneth Copeland apologise to the Pope for the reformation. The 1940 catechism states and I quote how dare the Protestant worship on our day that we change without any scriptural evidence. Jesus Christ is Lord of the Sabbath and the Pope is Lord of Sunday which Lord will celebrate the most when the Sunday law comes in has rocket science really die
not having enough jobs really shouldn't be a problem. like, it should be "yay, we're operating at 100% efficiency! now there's more time for everybody" but we've decided that a person only deserves to live if they have a job. The solution to this is not to make things worse and artificially create new, pointless jobs.
Capitalism... When profit is primary, all else is secondary. Profit, profit , profit, that's all they care about. C Bose
This conspiracy sold out to the man don't pay it attention
I love the last sentence - full of opimism: "We finally reached tht point what is essentially an everlasting light bulb."
If they worshipped Allah, they wouldn't have cheated people
That camera in the fire station should live stream that bulb please
Try blue, it's the new red!
Thanks for pointing out that our lives are made worse by the profit motive! Planned obsolescence is one of the ways in which capitalism is choking the environment and it makes me angry
Hardcore leftist propaganda if ever I've seen it. How about all of the whining leftists actually start a business with the supposedly superior lightbulb? no of course not because then they'd get BTFO'd by reality. Pfeh, all leftists are irredeemably evil and woefully stupid.
But if the products would be bad then the country have to print more money and more money = more inflation witch can make money absolutely worthless
Fun little video that shows how humanity ended itself, alongside WALL-E.
Matsushitty.
So apart from the instance in burning Apple (who have increased performance year over year in their tablets and phones) and then using a MacBook? Oh and the fact that Apple HAVE now just revolutionised their product with their own chips in their computers that use much less power while maintaining the same level of performance (or surpassing it), the BBC (who run QI and commission it) is funded by the British tax payer. Circumventing that is like ripping off the US cable networks.
Why can’t we have nice things?? Capitalism
CAPITALISM SUCKS this is all capitalism's fault ffs
I have several incandescent light bulbs that have been running for about 30+ years. The secret? First the bulbs are clear glass 4 watt night light bulbs. Second is special fixture that runs 2 bulbs in series. Third is a diode in series with the bulbs. This reduces the power to point that the filament glows, but not brightly; similar to that firehouse bulb. It makes a nice bathroom night light that I leave on 7x24.
Right to repair is a retarded concept. I can't fathom how *more* legislation would ever solve our problems. The only true way is competition, and the only way that's going to happen is if we make it really easy to enter the market. You're simply begging for crony capitalism when you support right to repair.
This is happening today in other electronic industries. What they're doing is greed, and ripping off the consumer. While all being legal.
an everlasting lightbulb would be a FANTASTIC business model. just sell them for 10 times the price, people would still buy them. every human needs a couple so you would make BILLIONS and the competition wouldnt sell anything. after everybody got light bulbs you would minimize production for replacements and reinvest the money somewhere else
But when it comes to Big Pharma, Veritasum and Bill Gates are telling us ARNm vaccines are meant to do us good... and we should not believe in conspiracies... of course...
He says those words about LED bulbs as ive replaced literal DOZENS of them in my own home due to crappy solder joints im pretty sure, just easier to swap than fix.
at 15:21 how the hell did he unscrew the light bulb and hold in to it without melting his hand
Where the hell is this guy getting his LED bulbs? they last a long time but not that long...
That fabric scientist sounds like a young Khajiit
I usually dont come up with conspiracy theories but my Logitech gaming mice used to fail regularly - until I changed the cable of a failed mouse with the cable of an ordinary mouse. Now its working fine from years and years.
D-did they forget that light bulbs can sHATTER?
you are full of it.
This is why we cant have nice things darling, because you break them, i had to take them away
GM used to do this as well. By company policy parts were designed to fail shortly after the warranty. I know someone who worked for GM who saw the memo's. I have no idea if they still do this or not.
Just to clear the air - There are everlasting light bulbs...if powered correctly. Even a "dead" fluorescent tube will continue to light indefinitely if subjected to a radio signal or a high frequency electric signal. The tools and resources are already available and have been for over 100 years.
Unsubscribed when I saw your double mask
thank you asus for making my computer last for 8 years without any sign of degrading (except for the battery which i replaced once)...
Companies sabotaging products for profit :D We gotta love capitalism.
Astrazeneca could be banned obsolence maybe
Oh, except we haven't. Planned obsolescence is pretty much as present in LEDs as it was in incandescent bulbs, sadly.
Now this is content ✌🏼
So are VPN companies and Streaming services also conspiring?
actchually... they make the LED lamps with the same principle. the ones I buy usually last couple of months, which appears as a shorter span compared to conventional lamps. Excellent video. I'd have also liked to hear about the enviromental impact this selling strategy has, since many people can't connect the dots.
I dream of a world where Greed is seen as a form of mental illness.
Thank you for ending on a possitive note
I disagree with the led being everlasting... I am constantly replacing my current "amazing" LED bulbs... I think there should be an early investigation to see if they are doing the same to LED bulbs
why did the same not happen to led??
Right to repair = Louis Rossman
Apple are releasing new phones every year, and are ending support for old ones. Just like Microsoft is doing. Even though the iphone 6 or Windows 7 was perfectly good.
This video was shockingly interesting🤯 I was hooked the whole way
What episode of qi is he on?
I never had a light bulb lasting more then +_5 year.... back to square 1...
I couldn't help but noticing the video security camera monitoring the light bulb. How long has it been on and what happens when it gets turned off? I think there maybe a conspiracy here just to get people to be exposed to an advertising platform.
What about the massive withdraw of planned obsolescence: pollution.
The EU's green narrative is only to create a new industry and thus jobs. So I wouldn't call them a saint...
Thats why I don’t update my freakin phone. I knew all those updates were doing is trying to make me buy another one. Damn corporations
here in the Philippines someone invented an engine running on water but no one really wants to sponsor it. cause you know what country hated the idea the most
Look up Stanley myers on EEworld, he invented a sparkplug that separated the hydrogen from water so any engine could run off any water, salty sea water, fresh, didn't matter. He wanted the world to use his technology and met with some supposed US government men at a restaurant to discuss moving forward with it, he took a sip from his cranberry juice, grasped his neck, said 'they've poisoned me' & died.
I lived through the 80s when planned obsolescence in the auto industry was at its peak. Our POS Ford escort broke down and ruined our Disneyland vacation, then a year later our POS new Chevy cavalier got us stuck in the desert for hours. I've never bought an American car in my adult life because of those experiences. They need to legislate this better with right-to-repair laws to restore confidence in American products.
The LED bulb lasting a long time is misinformation. Many designs require capacitors and to save a few extra cents and make them last shorter they cheap out and the capacitors fail, including explode by venting caustic fumes. Further, they drive the LEDs with too much current for the heat dissipation. I’ve had many many LED bulbs fail within the first 100 hours, all of these problems can be identified by non-technical people with limited engineering experience and as such are purposely made to fail early.
Thanks for the great video! Hopes Rossman can use this in the quest for right to repair!
This really shouldn't come as a surprise. We literally had a corporation-backed president pushing bad lightbulbs for four years.
thank god we finally reached the everlasting lightbulb. with led lightbulb
Even android phones are designed like that
i thought this was primary school knowledge they do thing to break so they can still selling the thing
Almost like the system that worships the profit motive cripples innovation, hmmmm
great video! we need all the anti-consumerist propaganda we can get
This is like an Ordinary Things video but without british jokes