{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":239,"pdf_page":247,"physical_index":247,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ea7756c1fbfb5bd27f59861ddccfbee6d6a7b9e7b1bcddd0698902589efb00d6"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Yet by the 1950s, thinking about consumption had to a significant extent moved beyond the collectivist mindset of the 1930s, instead becoming focused on a quasi-contractual relationship between producers and individual consumers. Even the “business executives” surveyed by the Harvard Business Review in 1959—many of whom surely had some vested interest in rationalizing planned obsolescence—were roughly equally divided for and against the view that planned obsolescence is a necessary evil to protect the economy.43\n\nA second line of response to the controversy on the part of industry was simply to deny that the practice of planned obsolescence existed. For example, Harold W. Johnson, head of the vehicles and components research at Ford’s Research and Engineering Center in Dearborn, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times about the auto industry, made a point of attacking the suggestion that nefarious forms of planned obsolescence were implemented by the industry: “Styling cycles are characteristic of American marketing in many, many products. Last year’s car is no more obsolete than last year’s coat or refrigerator. As for ‘planned obsolescence’, this is pure nonsense.”44 Likewise, when, in 1973, Gillette introduced a range of new disposable products and critics suggested that the new items represented “a sort of planned obsolescence,” the company issued heated denials.45\n\nA third line of response from a business perspective to public fears about planned obsolescence was to argue that consumers could not so easily be duped, asserting the primacy of consumer sovereignty in determining the shape of the marketplace. The financial weekly Barron’s published a piece in 1961 defending business from accusations about planned obsolescence made by Packard and J. K. Galbraith: “Bureaucrats and best-selling authors to the contrary notwithstanding, the buying public, far from being the victim of ruthless manipulation, is actually the one that pulls the strings. Or, to hark back to an old saying which has lost none of its point, in the US the consumer is king. While his reign has been challenged time and again, often with a temporary measure of success, in the end he has tended to prevail. Let those who would challenge him now think twice.”46 Another financial weekly, Fortune magazine, in a 1963 editorial went so far as to blame the mini-recession of 1958, the sharpest economic downturn experienced in the United States during the boom years between 1945 and 1970, on “moralists” who objected to planned obsolescence: “Recall for a moment the auto industry’s dark days in 1958. General Motor’s net earnings were of 24.9 percent in that year; Ford was of 60.5 percent; Chrysler was sufering the worst season ever. Dealers had huge inventories and were closing up all over the country. The aesthetes were in rebellion over tail fins and chrome, and the moralists were lecturing against the ‘planned obsolescence’ of new models.”47 The opinion that there was a connection between the concern about planned obsolescence and the 1958 recession was not, however, shared by everyone in business. For example, Judson S. Sayre, head of Norge, the appliance-making division of the Borg Warner corporation, put the blame for the recession squarely on the practice of planned obsolescence itself, the efect of which was to cause “consumer confusion and self-induced business recession.”48 Perhaps in an efort to reduce “consumer confusion” about planned obsolescence, Maytag, another maker of appliances, made a decision in the late 1960s to provide the consumer with more information about the expected life span of its products. The objective was to counter “suggestions that manufacturers practice planned obsolescence by giving the consumer better notions of the life expectancy of his machines.”49\n\nMoral Panic about Utility\n\n239","previous_page":238,"next_page":240}