Why American Things Don't Last

Giles Slade came out with the book Made to Break in 2006 which exposes America's habit of making their products obsolete. It was interesting to read in the first three chapters about how the minds of American manufacturers began to gravitate towards obsolete products and screw over their consumers. As explained by Slade, the overproduction resulting from the shift from man-powered economy to machine-driven industry in the late 1950s only resulted in repetitive consumption(pg 9). The whole idea of America becoming a technology consumed society has been introduced by Niel Postman in his book Technopoly; Postman explains that the American character is "so congenial to the sovereignty of technology" (pg. 95) and Americans have become technophiles who are lovers of technology and can only think of technology positively. During the industrial era of the United States, manufacturers could not lessen their use of machinery.
There are a few terms which Slade presents as contributors to the development of obsolescence in America. In the late 19th century, American companies relied on increasing and sustaining demand and distribution of their products in order to sell all the products that they were overproducing as a result of industrial machines (pg 10). This was done by branding, fancy packaging, advertising and making disposable products. This created the "disposable culture" or "the throwaway ethic"; consumers would rather have the instant gratification of having an inexpensive product which was disposable than saving up their money to buy an expensive product (pg 15). these products included disposable paper shirts, dollar Yankee pocket watches, disposable Star safety razors and sanitary napkin(pg 13-17). "As the disposable trend continued, it became culturally permissible to throw away objects that could not simply and conveniently be consumed by flames"(pg 24) like food and coal.

All of these things led in psychological, progressive and planned obsolescence. Psychological obsolescence's key feature is the "self-conscious concern about being out-of-fashion"(pg 53) because companies came out with new models of products like silverware and automobiles every year. Progressive obsolescence encouraged psychological obsolescence because it sought to "elevate Sloan's practice of annual model changes to an economic habit that would sustain America's economy by means of perpetual consumption and growth in all industries" (pg 58). Planned obsolescence is even more disturbing because manufacturers would sell products with planned short lifespans.

This reading did not surprise me with the concept of obsolescence in America but instead the idea of compensating overproduction with repetitive consumption. The fact that consumers have fallen for marketing of cheap products makes me question how many priceless resources like coal have been disposed of because of blind consumption. It would be interesting to hear what advocates of American made products have to say after reading this book.