Consumerism and its connection with conspiracy. Could it be possible that companies that produce consumerism products, such as cars, DVD players, phones, TVs, etc., are all partaking in the conspiracy of screwing their customers? Think about it for a second. What if all of the products we buy, especially technology items, are purposefully made to deteriorate in performance within a few years? That way consumers are constantly having to buy new products every 2-3 years or so, as an example. For cars, it may be more like 5-6 years. For phones, the standard is about 2 years. But take this for example. My mom and I have a DVD player. We bought this DVD player 5 years ago. About a year ago, its performance drastically started to decrease. Now, my mom and I never know when it'd going to "load" a DVD successfully or not. Sometimes it doesn't load the DVD at all, other times it loads the DVD but the DVD skips (we know it is not a problem with the DVD because the DVD will play perfectly fine in any other DVD player) or the DVD will load and play perfectly...but the fact is that my mom and I never know when it's going to work properly and when it's not. While 5 years may seem like a reasonable spans of time for errors like this to occur, the fact that we have another DVD player that we bought only 2 years ago and that sometimes this DVD player does not successfully load DVDs, and sometimes it won't open and close until repeatedly turning on and off the DVD system, does not seem reasonable to me at all. It also just so happens that over the last 2 years or so Blue-Ray DVD players have "started to take over" and some say that soon they'll stop producing regular DVD players all together. I have a huge collection of DVDs, and a huge collection of VCRs. For those who still watch VCR tapes and regular DVDs, the idea of halting the production of regular DVD players and VCR players would be, at least in my opinion, rather tragic and annoying since I would then have to buy all of my movies on Blue-Ray. Could it be that companies purposefully do this so we'll be spending more and more and more money? Purposefully making it so devices start to perform poorly after a certain amount of time, purposefully halt the production of certain products just so consumers will buy newer, more expensive items even if they already have them (referring to the example of regular DVDs and VCRs compared to Blue-Ray DVDs and DVD players)? Any thoughts?
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Consumerism Conspiracy
Consumerism and its connection with conspiracy. Could it be possible that companies that produce consumerism products, such as cars, DVD players, phones, TVs, etc., are all partaking in the conspiracy of screwing their customers? Think about it for a second. What if all of the products we buy, especially technology items, are purposefully made to deteriorate in performance within a few years? That way consumers are constantly having to buy new products every 2-3 years or so, as an example. For cars, it may be more like 5-6 years. For phones, the standard is about 2 years. But take this for example. My mom and I have a DVD player. We bought this DVD player 5 years ago. About a year ago, its performance drastically started to decrease. Now, my mom and I never know when it'd going to "load" a DVD successfully or not. Sometimes it doesn't load the DVD at all, other times it loads the DVD but the DVD skips (we know it is not a problem with the DVD because the DVD will play perfectly fine in any other DVD player) or the DVD will load and play perfectly...but the fact is that my mom and I never know when it's going to work properly and when it's not. While 5 years may seem like a reasonable spans of time for errors like this to occur, the fact that we have another DVD player that we bought only 2 years ago and that sometimes this DVD player does not successfully load DVDs, and sometimes it won't open and close until repeatedly turning on and off the DVD system, does not seem reasonable to me at all. It also just so happens that over the last 2 years or so Blue-Ray DVD players have "started to take over" and some say that soon they'll stop producing regular DVD players all together. I have a huge collection of DVDs, and a huge collection of VCRs. For those who still watch VCR tapes and regular DVDs, the idea of halting the production of regular DVD players and VCR players would be, at least in my opinion, rather tragic and annoying since I would then have to buy all of my movies on Blue-Ray. Could it be that companies purposefully do this so we'll be spending more and more and more money? Purposefully making it so devices start to perform poorly after a certain amount of time, purposefully halt the production of certain products just so consumers will buy newer, more expensive items even if they already have them (referring to the example of regular DVDs and VCRs compared to Blue-Ray DVDs and DVD players)? Any thoughts?
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Yes Paige. You are right and I think there is surely some truth to this. Many products just don't have the same quality as they did years ago. In addition to that concept, manufacturers also use cheaper quality parts and materials that break down easier to lower their costs. Lower quality parts...more breakdowns. That is why it does not pay in many cases to buy the "cheapest item". In some cases the lower the price the less quality in the product. I think you are starting to think about being a "smart" consumer. I believe in doing the research before buying.
ReplyDeleteMy mother is definitely trying to train me into being a "smart" consumer. It just frustrates me so much how the world is "all about money" these days and chucks morality completely out of the window :(
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