The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy

http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy/

by mr_golyadkin • 12 years ago

207 164 12 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

vichu• 12 years ago

The first thing I thought of after reading this article was the Centennial Light which has reportedly been continuously burning since 1901.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light

Pyrodogg• 12 years ago

Was just discussed here recently too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353200

cygx6• 12 years ago

jolan• 12 years ago

This was covered recently in the BBC series "The Men Who Made Us Spend"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/26/men-who-ma...

anigbrowl4• 12 years ago

A great example of why the public delegates regulatory powers to government, flawed though that regulation can be. The interests of consumers and producers are often not aligned, and it is easier for producers to organize than for consumers. Incumbency creates high barriers to market entry in many fields.

Adam Smith recognized this when writing The Wealth of Nations, commenting 'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.'

andrewla2• 12 years ago

Isn't the article saying the opposite? The cartel fell apart pretty much on its own without government intervention. A combination of being undercut by low-cost Japanese producers and the outbreak of war between the countries hosting the cartel members.

As described, the cartel sounds more like a "conspiracy" to help customers by providing a better standard of lightbulb (in terms of brightness and efficiency) rather than to hurt them.

The reduction in the lifespan seems like a side effect of this rather than the goal, even though I feel like the tone of the article is tending towards pushing that as the goal. They were undercut on cost and quality, though, not on lifetime, which seems like if it were achievable, would be a wonderful way to build a business.

anigbrowl4• 12 years ago

As described, the cartel sounds more like a "conspiracy" to help customers by providing a better standard of lightbulb (in terms of brightness and efficiency) rather than to hurt them.

Despite the existence of fines for factories producing longer-life bulbs, quotas, and remarks such as 'This, you will agree with me, is a very dangerous practice and is having a most detrimental influence on the total turnover of the Phoebus Parties…. After the very strenuous efforts we made to emerge from a period of long life lamps, it is of the greatest importance that we do not sink back into the same mire by paying no attention to voltages and supplying lamps that will have a very prolonged life' from people like Anton Philips?

cygx6• 12 years ago

The cartel fell apart pretty much on its own without government intervention.

But the cartel didn't fall apart 'on its own' due to magic self-regulating properties of the free market. It took WW2 to do it.

For some anecdotal post-war evidence, note that light bulbs in eastern Germany came with twice the lifetime of western models.

In Germany, there also circulates a story about representatives from Osram and Narva (an eastern manufacturer) meeting at Hannover fair, the latter presenting a light bulb with a lifetime of 5000h. The stories goes that the Osram representatives accused the Narva representatives of being imbeciles for cutting into their own profits...

ancap3• 12 years ago

There are two flaws in your argument:

1) As someone previously pointed out the cartel was only possible because of a government created monopoly through the patent system.

2) You imply that while producers do not have the interests of consumers in mind, that the government somehow does.

anigbrowl4• 12 years ago

'the cartel was only possible because of a government created monopoly'? Absurd on its face, as the cartel participants were not all licensees of the same patent.

crusso• 12 years ago

The "cartel", if it really was that, fell apart in a few years. Compare that to government failures like the 17th amendment that has eroded states' rights for almost a century, the high-carb low-fat diets they pushed that caused an epidemic of obesity that they still haven't copped to, the Vietnam war that killed a million people, and I could go on all day.

We all know that government and corporations fail. The problem is the way that they fail and the methods for addressing failure. Corporations go out of business, making way for competitors. Governments only change through a painfully slow election cycle process that heavily favors incumbents (in the US). Even then, much of the government like the Bureaucracy and Judges are there for life, yielding very little redress for their incompetence.

cygx6• 12 years ago

The "cartel", if it really was that, fell apart in a few years.

Personally, I'd consider 15+ years a pretty good run. And yes, it really was a cartel.

nemo6• 12 years ago

"if it really was that" What definition of the word 'cartel' are you using where the group of bulb manufacturers secretly conspiring to keep bulb prices up for their profit doesn't fit perfectly?

"Compare that to government failures like the 17th amendment" Senators being democratically elected seem to be the least of our problems, in general it's been a great blessing to the country, since the body elected to serve it cares more about the national interest, than provincial ones.

otakucode2• 12 years ago

It seems to me that modern corporations have simply accepted antitrust busting as a regular part of business. A new technology is developed and becomes widespread, they get together and price-fix it, they cruise on gigantic profits for a decade or more, then they get busted and, of course, only get a tiny slap on the wrist. They did this with RAM, they did it with LCD panels, and right now they're doing it with NAND chips.

cygx6• 12 years ago

Putting legal issues aside, this is a perfectly rational approach to doing business. You do not need evil governments for cartelization to happen: It's a natural occurrence in constrained markets with established players.

not_that_noob• 12 years ago

New lighting technologies like CFL and LED are sold by comparing to incandescent - e.g. "Burns 10x longer than a regular lightbulb!" I wonder how many of those analyses would look if its life wasn't artificially limited in this manner.

andrewla2• 12 years ago

It sounds like the "artificial limitations" described in the article were just a tradeoff -- better quality of light, and more efficiency, at the cost of lifetime of the bulbs and a higher production cost.

I'm not sure that this article really gives any evidence to support the so-called "lightbulb conspiracy" even though the tone of the article seems to imply that planned obsolescence was involved.

vidarh9• 12 years ago

The article claims production costs dropped.

Also, the article claims the limitations were explicitly on number of hours. If they cared about better quality of light, they could have had a similar effect by demanding brightness and efficiency, and let manufacturers produce longer lasting bulbs if they managed to achieve that as well.

In terms of evidence, it does not present much, though it references a number of other material, but the article author certainly claims to have seen it. It does however provide this quote from Anton Phillips:

“This, you will agree with me, is a very dangerous practice and is having a most detrimental influence on the total turnover of the Phoebus Parties…. After the very strenuous efforts we made to emerge from a period of long life lamps, it is of the greatest importance that we do not sink back into the same mire by paying no attention to voltages and supplying lamps that will have a very prolonged life.”

IshKebab• 12 years ago

This was in the 1920s. Modern incandescent bulbs aren't sabotaged.

bdamm• 12 years ago

Citation needed.

UrMomReadsHN6• 12 years ago

Most incandescent bulbs are literally banned in the United States. So it is kinda pointless talking about a product that is no longer on the market.

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

The retina macbook screen being glued to the battery comes to mind.

mannkind2• 12 years ago

Um... what?

The display is fused to the glass. The battery is glued to the case.

cmdrfred3• 12 years ago

Still, why is it glued at all?

incision• 12 years ago

'There are already reports of CFLs and LED lamps burning out long before their rated lifetimes were reached.'

To go off on a tangent...

I have a couple of CFLs that have been going since 1997 in my first apartment while most of the CFLs I purchased after my last move in 2009 have burned out.

None of my LEDs have gone. Not the ridiculously expensive ones from a few years ago or the current "almost, but not quite cheap enough for the whole house" ones I've been testing out.

My impression is that there's a sweet spot in relatively early adoption for many technologies when you can get nearly all the eventual performance with much higher reliability. A point where manufacturers are perhaps over-engineering or at least have not yet dialed in their cost-cutting trade-offs.

Of course, whether this is worth anything depends on the context - my 2004 Linksys AP, 1997 bulbs and 1999 DVD player are fine for my purposes, but my tank-like 2009 Motorola Droid - not so much.

sliverstorm2• 12 years ago

Usage patterns are important with CFL's. They are sensitive to many on/off cycles, and last longest when they burn continually. So, it might be interesting to take a moment and consider whether your usage patterns have shifted markedly.

danielweber• 12 years ago

Oddly, the ones I abuse the most -- leaving them outdoors in enclosures, frequent on/off -- have lastest the longest, and those I've simply put in normal sockets have failed the quickest.

derekp73• 12 years ago

Also, CFL's installed in ceiling fixtures have two problems -- the heat goes up into the circuitry (many CFL packages I've seen said not to install upside down), and anyone stomping around on the floor above will induce vibrations which shorten life.

vidarh9• 12 years ago

Also, whatever the rated voltage for your power, don't assume it will be exact, and different voltage can be very noticeable on bulb lifetime. If bulbs keep popping it may be worth checking the voltage of your electricity supply. Ours is nearly 10% higher than it should be...

dpeck• 12 years ago

I noticed this as well, especially with CFLs from Phillips.

Osmium• 12 years ago

I believe it's typically the heat sinks/packaging etc. that go with the LED bulbs, long before the crystals themselves do (which are the most expensive part, though they can fail too).

philwelch• 12 years ago

Inkjet printers from the 90's are also much more durable and overengineered than anything you'll buy today.

cecilpl• 12 years ago

More like, the inkjet printers from the 90's that aren't in landfills yet are very durable.

There were lots of 90s era printers that were just as trashy as the ones made today.

Istof• 12 years ago

I would say that over-engineered goods are the ones that last just long enough (and not any more) so that most customers don't feel like they were ripped off when they need to replace the product. The products that you are refering to were under-engineered (they were engineered on the safe side).

justin66• 12 years ago

I lost an expensive (and weak) GE LED lamp I bought a few years ago. In fairness, they weren't rated for a super long lifetime - or at least they didn't have a very long warranty.

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

'There are already reports of CFLs and LED lamps burning out long before their rated lifetimes were reached.'

What's more worrying is that Governments have outlawed traditional light bulbs in favor of LED or CFL ones. If that's not some powerful lobby, I don't know what it is.

warbastard• 12 years ago

In the EU, incandescent bulbs were banned as part of a directive [1] to reduce energy use, as only 10% of the energy put in was converted to light. That sounds like a sensible move to me rather than lobbying.

In the UK, CFL bulbs were also subsidised and/or given out free to households by the energy companies before incandescent bulbs were banned.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/31/lightbulb...

crististm• 12 years ago

In my building, administration changed last year all the floor lamps with CFL. From a total of 19 bulbs, 2 burned out.

They stay on all day long. That means 10% of the bulbs burned before reaching 9000 hours. The rest seems to be unaffected.

However, _older_ lamps (made > 15, 20 years ago) used to last much longer than two or three years on all the time. I know this because I took notice of this at the moment.

I have incandescent bulbs that are more than 10 years old, that burn 2-3 hours a day today. Incandescent bulbs I bought in the last years typically lasted less than 1-2 years at a similar burning rate. I saw a change in bulb quality when the local industry died (east Europe) and all you could get were Osram from Poland or Phillips.

In my opinion, the reaches of the cartel are still strong.

gambiting3• 12 years ago

In my opinion, people want to pay less and less each year, which leads to using cheaper materials. 15 years ago a CFL cost a very decent amount of money, I am sure that if you adjusted the price for inflation it would cost at least 4x of what they cost now. You can get a 60W-equivalent CFL for £1.50-2, which is ridiculously close to the cost of regular 60W lightbulbs(which cost £0.5-0.8 when bought in bulk).

leoedin• 12 years ago

It's often cheaper for manufacturers of low-cost electronics to minimally test devices before sale, with the expectation that some will die early in their life and be fixed under warranty. Burning in everything you make is expensive, especially if failure rates are fairly low anyway.

Electronics tend to have a bathtub curve of failure, with high failure rates at the beginning of life. It wouldn't surprise me that older CFLs (with much higher market prices) had greater levels of testing/burn in before being shipped, leading to much lower failure rates.

angersock• 12 years ago

Sometimes, there really are people twirling their mustaches and cognac as they conspire against the consumer. See also the great American streetcar fiasco.

sehugg• 12 years ago

GE was involved? You don't say. Every single CFL at my local grocery store is a GE product.

nostromo• 12 years ago

Note that this cartel would have been impossible without patent protection.

In fact, this seems to be a purported feature of the patent system, not a bug -- to give inventors monopolistic control of a market for several decades.

javert2• 12 years ago

Note that without patent protection, there would be little incentive for these companies' research labs to continue to improve their bulbs, because doing so would not give any competitive advantage, while it would cost money in research and development.

e.g.

It was rendered superfluous when in 1906 two European companies introduced a superior lightbulb whose filament was made from tungsten paste. That bulb was itself eclipsed in 1911 by General Electric’s metal-filament bulb, which used pure drawn tungsten wire, and in 1913 by GE’s gas-filled tungsten bulb.

It's better to have a technology available and have a choice to pay slightly more or to stay with the prior technology, as opposed to not having a technology available at all. That's why we have patents.

cromwellian• 12 years ago

People invent and invest in the absence of patents. That justification is getting rather tired.

jcfrei• 12 years ago

Such a cartel would still be possible even without patent protection (the article doesn't go into enough detail on whether patents where still only available through GE after WWI). Cartels are always possible when you have massive economies of scale. The (mass) production of light bulbs in this case is sufficiently difficult and expensive, so that any cartel could easily thwart new competitors - even without patent protection. The expertise in the production of light bulbs doesn't lie within the schematics of the light bulbs themselves - it lies within the exact production process, the selection of the suppliers, refinement of materials, etc. Those are enough hurdles to make an entry into this market very difficult and the establishment of a cartel so easy.

In my eyes this article is a very good argument against a pure laissez-faire economy.

dublinben• 12 years ago

Corporate cartels are incredibly unstable though, because it is always in a single company's best interests to defect. They tend to last much less time than a patent, and are obviously not legally enforceable.

th0ma52• 12 years ago

The oldest (mostly) continuously running light bulb was made in my home town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light ... It is featured also in a documentary about "planned obsolescence" quite prominently.

I think it is well known that things that are made well and do cost a little more are available. This reminds me of a guy who shows how to counterfeit his own product - http://kottke.org/14/01/how-to-make-a-fake-bag

Some things however we've all seem to accept, like light bulbs, razor blades, etc, and its a shame. On one hand, having a newer product that may be better more often is good, and having a lower price for a product that lasts even temporary is also good, but it would be nice if there were more choice, and more awareness, of these kinds of issues in our markets.

Mithaldu• 12 years ago

I wish people would stop posting about that thing. It doesn't even provide enough light to read a book by. If i only ever take microscopical sips from a sealed bottle of water it will also last for years.

th0ma52• 12 years ago

Point taken :P What light it does provide is still impressive that it has done it for a hundred years.

mark-r• 12 years ago

I once owned a Remington electric razor that just died for no reason one day. I decided to take it apart and see if there was anything obviously wrong with it. There was - the electrical contact with the motor was made by a piece of graphite, and it had worn down to nothing. At that moment I decided to switch to another brand on the hope that it did not practice planned obsolescence, and I've been happy ever since.

lttlrck• 12 years ago

I wouldn't consider the practice of using graphite brushes in DC motors as planned obsolescence. It's more like best tool for the job, with a limited lifetime by its very nature.

Johnythree• 12 years ago

You've just discovered that Electric motors use brushes on their commutators? Welcome to the 20th century.

Brushes are intended to be replaced, and many manufacturers supply spare brushes in the original packaging.

In the 21st century however the traditional brushes have been replaced by electronic switching.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor

guelo• 12 years ago

Incandescent light bulbs are cheap. The cost of the electricity over the lifespan of the bulb is much greater than the cost of the bulb. If the cartel was reducing bulb lifespan by making it run hotter thus producing more lumens per watt, then it was actually saving the consumers money by allowing the consumer to select a lower watt bulb. In fact, even today most standard incandescent light bulbs are rated for 1,000 hours or less.

Lagged2Death• 12 years ago

This (that lifespan and efficiency are inevitably a tradeoff in incandescent bulbs) is my understanding as well.

You can get "rough service" or "extended life" incandescent bulbs that claim 5,000 hour lifetimes, but they are very obviously dim and orange compared with the standard bulbs.

You can also get newfangled "high efficiency" incandescent bulbs (a 60W bulb's worth of light for ~40W) that package little halogen lamps inside the traditional bulb shape. (I'm a fan, I think they provide the highest quality light you can get right now.) But residential halogen lamps used to mostly claim 2,000 hour lifespans, and these new high efficiency ones only claim 900.

None of that means the cartel had good intentions, though. Sometimes the right thing happens for the wrong reasons.

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

Undervolt your light bulbs just a little bit (add a piece of iron or steel cable to the copper wire) and they last a lot longer. The plural of anecdote is not data, but I do this with light bulbs in my home, which are mostly CFLs except for the LED in my little lab (haven't bought any in two years) and projector bulbs (lasted four years).

http://robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?n=Main.Projec... Obviously, don't use the capacitor for light bulbs connected to AC!

dirktheman• 12 years ago

The European Union has a ban on the production of incandescent lightbulbs as of 9/1/2012. You can still buy them, but they are getting rarer. I'm still not sure if this is a scheme from the energy-saving-bulbs-cartel or just eco-lobbyists at work...

gesman• 12 years ago

I used to buy bulbs from 1 month full refunds store. I kept receipts for bulbs and regularly returned the bad ones that lived shorter than advertised lifespan.

At least didn't cost me extra to pay for crap.

npinguy• 12 years ago

I always wonder about people like you. How do you manage your receipts for all these things? And what about the additional time to go back and return lightbulbs. Does that not more than cover the money you save from the bulb?

ryandrake• 12 years ago

Not the original commenter, but:

Not difficult. File folder full of receipts, sorted by "action" date. Cost of gasoline is trivial (~$0.20/mile). Time doesn't cost anything (if you wouldn't otherwise be working).

ANTSANTS• 12 years ago

And what about the additional time to go back and return lightbulbs. Does that not more than cover the money you save from the bulb?

Err, you just bring them with you the next time you go to the supermarket...

mikeytown2• 12 years ago

The reason I believe that there is a conspiracy is that the technology to get a 10,000 hour incandescent bulb is fairly cheap & easy; you need a temperature compensating thermistor, AKA the Bulb-Miser [1]. I've used one before and they really work. I'm now 100% LED.

[1] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2007001...

DigitalJack• 12 years ago

That's interesting, thanks for the link.

One thing I have noticed in my house is that incandescent bulbs last longer if their power is ramped up to turn them on. We have this kind of switch in our main room and the bulbs have lasted longer than 8 years of more than 8 hours a day.

They are rarely on full bright so that could be it too.

sliverstorm2• 12 years ago

Supposedly hot/cold cycles are bad for incandescent, so if you have dimmers and rarely actually switch the bulb off, that might be the source of improvement.

rtpg• 12 years ago

best way to blow out a lightbulb used to be to flick the switches on and off many times really quickly . Used to accidentally do this as a kid while horsing around.

JeremyMorgan• 12 years ago

Oh, the bulb miser. I discovered this one time when I had bathroom lights that "warmed up". They were really dim for the first minute or two. It drove me crazy at times but one day I decided I would replace them, and pulled out the bulb and found this bulb miser thing.

I had no idea what it was, but my buddy did and explained it to me, and I laughed my ass off about it. But then I thought about it, and decided to replace one bulb without the miser inserted, so I would at least be able to see in my bathroom. Left the other 3 (it was a light bulb panel above the mirror) with misers inserted.

Sure as the sun comes up that one bulb would go out every year or so, but the ones with misers never did, in 9 years I was there.

snarfy• 12 years ago

This is the same reason old CFLs seem to last a lot longer than new ones. The old ones had better temperature ramp up circuitry.

rogerbinns• 12 years ago

I highly recommend NLee the Engineer's reviews on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AOEAD7DPLZE53?filter=re... (you can also get it as RSS)

Heavily covered are various light bulbs and rechargeable batteries. That includes checking power against manufacturer claims, noise, dimmability, power factor etc.

Spooky232• 12 years ago

The ridiculous lightbulb practices of today are even more offensive.

You cannot purchase a 100 watt bulb anymore, because the government says so. You can buy a 250 watt outdoor bulb, or a variety of CFL and LED bulbs with a bunch of additional things to worry about (light color, directionality of the light, warranties, shape, etc)

Consumers manage to make rational decisions about car purchases (15mpg SUVs aren't as popular in the era of $4/gallon gasoline), but we must be protected about the incandescent bulb.

nemo6• 12 years ago

"You cannot purchase a 100 watt bulb anymore, because the government says so."

You can purchase them here: http://www.amazon.com/GE-41036-100A-Light-bulbs/dp/B000U7Q7P...

Spooky232• 12 years ago

They are no longer manufactured and cannot be imported. You can only purchase them from jobbers -- retailers don't carry them.

Also, the per-bulb price is like 300-400% higher than it was two years ago.

otakucode2• 12 years ago

I think the bigger problem with LED bulbs is that they are so much cheaper to manufacture, but the lightbulb companies think they have the right to charge exorbitant prices for them just to maintain their profit margin. If a new product comes around that lasts 10x as long and is 10x cheaper to make, the market is supposed to make sure that you shrink radically in terms of revenue and profit. The belief that they have some divine right to continued levels of high profit is inane.

PhantomGremlin• 12 years ago

I think the bigger problem with LED bulbs is that they are so much cheaper to manufacture

Huh? Cheaper compared to what?

Look at this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I0YiXE-gtk It's amazing to me that LED bulbs are priced so inexpensively, considering how complex they are.

ultimape• 12 years ago

We have tons of lightbulbs in our house that are in shitty fixtures with dimmer switches... none of the bulbs are rated for dimmers. Roommates keep buying more bad light-bulbs.

The ones they keep putting on teh porch during the winter die at least twice as often.

TL:DR; People don't understand how these things work.

transfire2• 12 years ago

This is really the fundamental problem of Capitalism which we are now regularly butting are heads against. If it were possible, say, to create a light bulb that lasted 1,000 years for a dollar. Who could afford to make such a thing? After the initial flurry of sales, demand would drop off precipitously. And as the world approaches peek population, there would be fewer and fewer sales. And that's just the logistical problem. This story speaks to the further moral dimension in which it is always more profitable to corner a market and force on consumers ever increasing reoccurring cost.

fpgaminer• 12 years ago

It's unlikely that 1000 year bulbs would actually be useful for 1000 years. Just as incandescents are being replaced for sake of energy efficiency. And I find it hard to imagine any economic system that could efficiently build 1000 year bulbs. It requires spinning up factories for a short period of high volume, mass production, followed by a long, low volume trailoff. That's a costly and wasteful process under any economic system. Our limited time and money is better spent solving more immediate problems, methinks.

Roboprog2• 12 years ago

I think the original argument would have stood if the numbers were 20 to 50 years, and anything less than $1/yr or so.

ams6110• 12 years ago

Icandescents are being replaced because they were made illegal. If people really wanted the CFLs that would not have been necessary.

bunderbunder• 12 years ago

If it were possible, say, to create a light bulb that lasted 1,000 years for a dollar. Who could afford to make such a thing?

Anybody who wants to get rich.

Let's say that you can sell such a light bulb, and that it's so great that everyone in the world buys one, on average. And say you can sell it for a dollar, but you only make a cent of profit on each one. Why, that'd only leave you with. . . $70,000,000 dollars.

Well that's not too bad, but really not great either. It'd certainly let you retire to a tropical island for the rest of your life. But you could do better. If the light bulb is so great, wouldn't everyone be willing to spend more than a dollar on one? After all, those inferior light bulbs cost about twice as much, so if your bulbs are better than others should be willing to pay at least that much. Let's knock the price up to $2, then. That puts the profit per bulb at $1.01. So then you can simultaneously destroy the light bulb industry (fun!) and put a cool 7 billion dollars in your pocket (profit!).

Who would choose not do do such a thing? Certainly most anybody who's motivated by profit (like, say, a capitalist) would jump at the opportunity.

Decade2• 12 years ago

If it took 1 person to make, sell, and distribute those things, then $70 million are enough to retire comfortably. If it takes 100 people, then you could still retire, if you lived somewhere cheap.

More realistically, you might sell a few hundred thousand to the developed world, and then sales fall off a cliff, because it takes a lot of work to distribute outside your home market. Total payoff: Less than 2 months' salary.

That's the concern with the new lights. The industry is built on 1,000-hour bulbs and regular replacements. We currently have a boom as incandescents get replaced by fluorescents and fluorescents get replaced by LEDs (my father hates fluorescent light). Once that is done, who is going to buy bulbs at the rate that the factories can produce them?

vidarh9• 12 years ago

Even assuming the hypothetical price does not refer to just production costs per bulb, but also initial capital outlays for a manufacturing plant etc., you're still assuming there are no marketing and sales costs, and no distribution costs, and no costs to cover returns (want to claim it lasts a 1,000 years? better be prepared to replace each and every bulb that fails for some reason or face lawsuits).

You'd also need capital to stand up to much larger manufacturers who'd go for an all out assault to find real or imagined flaws with your product (it'll destroy the environment - think of the dying baby seals!).

Some products costs many times their manufacturing cost to sell and distribute.

After all, those inferior light bulbs cost about twice as much

That may sound like a good thing for you, but it's not a given. You've just created a reason for people to go "hold on, if this bulb lasts so long, why does it cost so little? what's wrong with it?" (at which point the less ethical of your competitors will whisper in their ears: "think of the dying baby seals; we can't prove that's what they make their filament of, but ...")

You'll need to convince people that you're selling them a genuine product, because it sounds too good to be true and a lot of people would assume it is too good to be true. Convincing them would cost a lot of money.

The irony is that you might be better off promising a much shorter timespan (you'd still need a fortune for marketing campaigns) and/or hiking the price up.

But if you're promising a shorter lifespan, why not cut manufacturing costs and achieve a shorter lifespan and increase your profit? It's what your competitors will do.

And of course you'd face clones of your products - patents or no patents there'd be people trying to find workarounds, or just blatantly ignoring any patents and hoping to make a profit before you can stop them (or hope they can make it too expensive for you to pursue)

Who would choose not do do such a thing? Certainly most anybody who's motivated by profit (like, say, a capitalist) would jump at the opportunity.

The article points out that a cartel of the biggest manufacturers at the time saw things opposite: They saw increasing how long they'd last as a threat to the extent that they went to extreme lengths to prevent it from coming to pass.

I think that's a pretty good indication that "most anybody who's motivated by profit" would not necessarily jump at the opportunity to create a longer life product.

gus_massa• 12 years ago

In the zones with frequent natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, ...) the replace rate will be higher.

mynameishere• 12 years ago

Most competently-constructed buildings and bridges today could last for a thousand years. They still get built, and they take a lot more upfront capital investment than any light bulb.

My guess: Buildings tend to be over-engineered because any failure will kill people. There's just no reason to buy a light bulb that will last longer than your own occupancy of a given place.

transfire2• 12 years ago

Most competently-constructed buildings and bridges today could last for a thousand years.

That's not even remotely true. Without continual maintenance most of them would collapse in 100 years, maybe 200 on the outside. But that's not really the point. The real estate market is quite a different beast driven primarily by scarcity of space and location desirability.

trop• 12 years ago

The Fairbanks Scales in the 19th century were famously reliable and durable. Sadly, for the Fairbanks, to the point that once one was bought, there was little need to replace it. The Fairbanks brothers (who lived in Vermont, not Alaska!) became fabulously wealthy. But their company is largely forgotten, due to it saturation the scale market within a generation or so....

vidarh9• 12 years ago

I bought new bathroom scales about 5 years ago or so. The company I bought it from pretty much only sells scales, and they hilariously keeps trying to send me offers for discounted scales every few months. I've not unsubscribed almost entirely out of amusement: If I was in the market for another scale already, it'd mean theirs were of poor enough quality I wouldn't buy a second one from them.

Karellen• 12 years ago

Someone like Elon Musk would do it.

Some people are happy to make enough money to generate a comfortable (but not outrageous) salary for all involved for a limited period, if it means making the world a better place. Not everyone wants to screw over their fellow humans to extract as much rent as physically possible for absolutely as long as they can.

Sure, you won't raise much capital from Wall St. to do it, so you'll need a rich backer with philanthropic tendancies. They're a rare breed, but they do exist.

tomohawk• 12 years ago

A cartel is a way to constrain trade in an anti-competitive way. It is the opposite of capitalism. This is why antitrust laws and enforcement are so important.

grn4• 12 years ago

If it were possible, say, to create a light bulb that lasted 1,000 years for a dollar. Who could afford to make such a thing?

I sense that you think manufacturers don't have an incentive to produce quality products like bulbs that can be used for a long time. I think you're making a mistake which I'll try to illustrate with an example.

Suppose light bulbs cost 1 USD each and last 1 year. I invent a new light bulb that is the same except it lasts 2 years. Would you say selling it would be a bad deal for me? Of course if I were to sell it for 1 USD then it certainly would be. But the value of my bulb to consumers is at least 2 USD, because it's equivalent to buying and using two competitors' bulbs! Manufacturing costs aren't relevant - if my bulb is cheaper to produce then it's even better for me.

You shouldn't look at the cost of production because it isn't the only factor. Take a look at e-books, for example. Sometimes they're even more expensive than paperbacks!

vidarh9• 12 years ago

I sense that you think manufacturers don't have an incentive to produce quality products like bulbs that can be used for a long time.

They do, to an extent, if they're not a dominant market player. But the article demonstrates quite clearly that once you reach a certain size, the effect on overall market demand starts to become a concern that relates directly to how much product you'll expect to be able to shift.

But the value of my bulb to consumers is at least 2 USD, because it's equivalent to buying and using two competitors' bulbs!

It's not, because people (rationally) discount future events: We won't fully believe the claim; we'll assume other things may make it break in the meantime; we may have more immediate uses for the extra dollar. A dollar saved a year from now is not generally worth a dollar today.

It will be worth more than the competing products (all else being equal), but it won't be worth twice just because it lasts twice as long.

bikamonki• 12 years ago

As always, it is a matter of choice: http://www.ownitforlife.com/

rplst8• 12 years ago

Banning incandescent bulbs is The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy.

robomartin• 12 years ago

A number of years ago I engineered a light engine consisting of 1,500 1W LED's very tightly packed. Excellent thermal design was crucial in making such a device work and remain reliable for years. We ran hundreds of FEA thermal simulations spanning months before arriving at a set of good thermal management solutions. This also extended to the electronics. It was very important to ensure that the tightly packed electronics did not suffer premature failure due to exposure to high temperatures or thermal cycling. The design had over 40 microprocessors driving the array using an innovative and highly efficient (98% if I remember correctly) technology. This was a very interesting project.

I learned that thermal issues can be real killers when it comes to high power LED designs. While I have not analyzed any consumer lighting designs I would not be surprised if thermal issues, either steady-state or cyclic, are at the core of some of the failures over time.

The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy

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