Environmental Design Considerations

Climate change is not news anymore. And we - humans - should really get together to do something about it. I'm in the middle of the excellent book on history of Poland by Brian Porter-Szűcs - Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom (or the Polish version: Całkiem zwyczajny kraj: Historia Polski bez martyrologii). He has super accurate remarks on capitalism / consumerism in general:

The basic logic of capitalism is to sell, ether by meeting existing consumer desires or by using advertising and marketing to create new desires. The latter is particularly important, because growth depends on an ever-expanding wish list of manufactured goods. 

The relentless push to generate new desires leads to planned obsolescence and massive amounts of material waste, but that is not deemed an inefficiency because it happens after the point of sale. That same attention to marketing and sales ensures that customers are very well treated, but it also requires that they rapidly become disillusioned with their purchases so that they will buy something new.

I blogged on this before, e.g., Wrong Metrics (Feb 2021), Responsible Inventions (Feb 2021), Tyranny of Convenience (June 2021). I was hoping COVID would deal with that to some extent, but no, it is even worse now.

This all came to me on the heels of my recent encounters with Apple service. My first encounter was a year ago, when the super-shiny-flat-slim MacBook keyboard failed and (covered by the special Apple replacement program) was indeed replaced "for free". The caveat was - due to the intended to fuel a desire looks of the MacBook - to replace the keyboard, it has to be replaced together with batteries, loudspeakers and the top part of the computer shell. Massive amounts of waste. Then barely 12 months later the batteries (replaced with the keyboard) inflated like they were about to burst, and again Apple replaced the batteries "for free" together with the keyboard, speakers and the top part of the computer shell.

From the capitalistic supplier - consumer relationship, you may say it has been great. Free replacement of parts in a 4-year old computer. But from the Planet Earth perspective - this is terrible. In the relentless push to generate new desires Apple, to shave a millimeter or two from the thickness of the laptop, designed it such that it breaks down and is barely serviceable, leading to planned obsolescence and massive amounts of material waste.

If this is indeed the basic logic of capitalism, it is high time we change it now. The logic or the system.