Quote from a discussion in Dr Tim Morgan’s blog on Surplus Energy Economics
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/11/10/265-explore-and-explain/
I have in front of me a wooden table dating from the 1980s. It’s solid, heavy, and if it ever gets to look too tatty I can just sand it down and paint it again. What good is that to the world’s table manufacturers? If it had been made of flat-packed composite and aluminium tubes it would have had to be replaced every five or ten years since then. This seems to be extending into everything. A supposedly “good” (and certainly quite costly) CD player I bought in 2019 can’t play CDs, and never really has, and I’ve given up on getting it fixed – one I bought from the same manufacturer back in 2007 still works just fine.
Change won’t happen until materials become far more costly. The business model based on rapid disposal and replacement is incompatible with economic contraction driven by energy constraints.
