- Frederick wrote: “Just as old George F. Baker, the greatest living banker, discovered that the way to relieve panics was for banks to unhesitatingly pay out their resources instead of hoarding them, when stringency arrived, so we have learned that the way to break the vicious deadlock of a low standard of living is to spend freely, and even to waste creatively” (Frederick 1929, p. 81).
- In 1956, Burke wrote an essay in The Nation in which he expresses surprise that an idea he had intended as satire had now become standard business practice. He commented: “In my original article . . . I thought I was making much sport of the trick psychological devices whereby a customer with a perfectly serviceable car was persuaded that he should get rid of it because there was a newer model available. In particular, I guyed the doctrine of ‘obsolescence’ that was implied in such high pressure selling tactics. But now I find Business Week referring quite respectfully to the way in which General Motors ‘adopted the annual model change, helping to establish the auto-industry’s renowned principle of ‘planned obsolescence.’ I had mistakenly thought that the principle was a joke; by now it has become ‘renowned’” (Burke 1956, p. 211).
- Oddly, Gregory also noted that a condition of possibility for the new policy of obsolescence was the presence of oligopoly market conditions in the automobile industry. The question of why oligopoly should lead to psychological obsolescence was left unanswered.
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Notes to Pages 228–234