{"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":253,"pdf_page":261,"physical_index":261,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"532a207fb67ccb5b3cd0f6bb7de6dc54e5a18a2c6c39b842856e5f09f91c13f7"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"11. Obsolescence and Waste\n\nThe evolution of the debate about planned obsolescence is reflected in the way in which diferent conceptions of waste get expressed in discussions about the issue. The interpretation of product obsolescence as primarily an environmental concern rather than as a matter of fair exchange and economic justice, involved a shift between two distinct conceptions of waste: waste as the abstract product of calculations about fair or optimally eficient uses of resources and waste as an objectionable material byproduct.\n\nIn Stuart Chase’s influential discussion of the economics of waste, written in the early part of the century, waste was conceived of as, in essence, ineficiency (Chase 1925). Chase, an engineer by training, and consumer advocate by vocation, thought of waste primarily as nonproductive labor and ineficient use of resources. He condemned as wasteful labor spent on wars, on the making of luxury goods, and the idle “manpower” of “both the idle rich and the wandering hobo.” Waste was a result of the ineficient exploitation of natural resources and production not being suficiently directed by “the technical arts.” There was no nature-preserving environmentalism in Chase’s account. He complained that that “for every reclaimed ton [of natural resources] a ton and more has been needlessly and irretrievably lost” (Chase 1925, p. 2). Within this framework, waste was not a useless or toxic byproduct but rather was a result of suboptimal use of resources. It could be figured counterfactually, by estimating how much more eficiently a given task could have been accomplished, and therefore how much could have been saved. The specific amount of wastefulness in any given goal-directed action can, on this view, be calculated by subtracting the resources required at optimal eficiency to accomplish the goal from those actually used. This concern with eficiency and waste encompassed not just production but also household consumption. The consumer movement, in which Chase was an important figure, was very much allied to the home economics movement in encouraging households to regiment themselves in an optimally eficient manner.\n\nThe understanding of waste as ineficiency informs the early attacks on planned obsolescence, only with squandered potential use value standing in for wasted resources as the object of the calculation. For example, “death dates” were regarded as wasteful to the extent that more durability, hence more use value, could have been designed into a product with no significant change in other product characteristics (including price). The counterfactual calculation of waste produced by planned material obsolescence thus measures a quantity of hypothetical use value illegitimately withheld from the consumer. The same is true for style obsolescence. When, under the nefarious influence of marketing, consumers replace perfectly functional products for seemingly superficial reasons, some amount of “true” use value is in efect being withheld from them. For rather than replacing a perfectly good product with a functionally equivalent new one, they could instead have acquired a product with use value along some new dimension. Planned obsolescence was thus wasteful of people’s hard-earned wages and, therefore, of their labor.\n\nMoral Panic about Utility\n\n253","previous_page":252,"next_page":254}