Prediction · Durability ·
Built to last
Whoever pays when a thing breaks decides how long it lasts. For a century that was you, so things were built to be replaced. In a world of subscriptions it is the company, and every extra year a thing survives becomes profit.
Average life: 3 years · Thrown away in the last decade: 114
The washing machine stops mid-cycle with a full drum of water. The repair costs most of what a new one would, so you buy the new one, and the old one goes to the curb. Nobody at the factory thinks of this as a failure. For them it was a sale.
Who pays for the failure
In December 1924 the world’s biggest light bulb makers met in Geneva and formed a cartel called Phoebus. Among other things, they agreed that a household bulb should last about a thousand hours, and they fined members whose bulbs lasted longer. Over the next decade the typical bulb’s life fell by about a third. Meanwhile, in a fire station in Livermore, California, a bulb installed in 1901 is still burning today.
The Phoebus story is usually told as a scandal. I think it is better told as a principle. Nothing about a light bulb decides how long it lasts. What decides it is who pays when it dies. When the buyer pays, every failure is a new sale, and the maker’s best engineers are quietly asked to make things that fail on time. When the maker pays, every failure is a cost, and the same engineers are asked to make things that never fail at all.
So here is the rule. The life of a thing is set by who pays for its death.
The flip
This series has described a world where a dozen companies sell whole lives by the month. On a Living or Health plan you do not own the car, the battery, the fridge, the washing machine or the walls. The company does. You pay one fixed price, and when something breaks it is replaced by morning, at the company’s expense.
Look at what that does to the arithmetic. The plan price does not go up when the washing machine dies. The cost of the new one comes straight out of the company’s margin. A machine that lasts twenty years instead of ten costs the company half as much per year. A battery that outlives the car it came in is pure profit. You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy argued that these companies would insure their own subscribers; this is the same idea applied to things. The pool pays for every failure, so the cheapest way to lower the cost of a life, the one Feeding the Machine priced out, is to stop things from failing.
And because twelve companies compete for every subscriber every month, the savings do not stay inside the company. They show up as a lower price or more in the plan. Durability becomes the thing companies race on.
For a hundred years, a thing breaking was a sale. In a subscription world, it is a cost.
What changes in the design
Once the maker pays for failure, every design meeting asks a different question. Not how cheaply can we make it, but how cheaply can we keep it running for twenty years. That changes the things themselves.
- Modules, not machines. When a pump fails, swap the pump. Products are built in sections that can be replaced one at a time, because throwing away the whole thing is now the company’s loss.
- Over-engineering becomes sensible. A thicker bearing, a better seal, a cooler-running motor cost a little more on day one and much less over the life of the plan.
- Software that adds years. Updates stop being a way to make the old model feel slow. They become a way to keep it useful.
- Repair before failure. Every machine reports its own health. The worn part is replaced on a quiet Tuesday, before anything breaks.
What AI changes
Makers have never really known how long their things last. The failure happened in your basement, and the only signal that came back was a new order. In the subscription world, the company owns the machine, watches it all its life, and pays for its death. For the first time the maker has the full story of every object it made.
AI turns that story into design. It can find the bearing that fails first across a million machines, simulate a better one before anything is built, and schedule the repair before you notice. Robots make the repair itself cheap. Put those together and the old trade between cheap and durable mostly disappears. Building to last stops being a luxury and becomes the low-cost way to run the business.
The dishwasher that came with the house is eleven years old. Last spring it reported a tired pump, and a technician swapped it on a Tuesday while you were at work. You did not know until you read the note. It runs every night, and nobody in the house has ever thought about buying a dishwasher.
Six predictions
Lifespans double, then double again.
For anything inside a plan, the expected life of cars, batteries, appliances and fixtures will rise steadily, because each extra year is margin the companies can compete with.
The warranty disappears.
When the whole product is guaranteed for as long as you subscribe, a separate promise to fix it for a year means nothing. Warranties will survive only on things people still buy outright.
Repair beats replacement.
Most failures will be handled by swapping one module, often before it fails. The repair trades will grow and the curb will see less of our kitchens.
Waste falls without a single new law.
The heap gets smaller because companies pay for it, not because anyone banned anything. Less mining, less shipping, less landfill, all as a side effect of the price.
The model year fades.
For things in plans, new versions will come less often and stay longer. Improvements arrive as upgraded modules and software rather than as a reason to throw away the old one.
Old becomes the boast.
Companies will advertise their oldest machines still in service the way a fire station shows off its bulb. A twenty-year-old car still on the road will be a maker’s best advertisement.
Where I stand
I tell my students to keep their needs low while they get started: rent instead of buy, ride instead of own. It is the idea behind First Customer. The objection I hear most is that renting means living with someone else’s cheap stuff. I think that objection is about to flip. In the world this series describes, the things you rent will be the best-built things you have ever used, because the company that owns them pays every time they break. Owning was how you got quality. Soon it will be how you lose it.
The claim ledger
- Already true
- Makers once agreed to shorten the life of the light bulb, and a bulb from 1901 is still burning. Jet engines have long been sold by the hour of flight, so the engine maker is paid to keep them running. Companies that own fleets already keep their vehicles in service far longer than most owners do.
- What has to happen
- Plans at scale, with the company owning the things and paying the full cost of their failure, and real competition among the twelve so the savings reach subscribers.
- Where I am probably wrong
- Built to last can turn into kept too long. A company paying for every replacement may hold on to old, tired things when something new would serve you better, and that pushes against a better service. If damage fees shift the cost of failure back onto subscribers, the incentive blurs. And people may still want the new thing, even when the old one is fine.
Back to the washing machine at the curb. Nobody planned for it to fail you. It was planned to fail on time, because its failure was somebody’s sale. Change who pays, and the same engineers will build one that outlasts the house.
For a century we were sold things built to be replaced. Next, we will be lent things built to last.
Background
- Markus Krajewski, The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy, IEEE Spectrum.
- Longest burning light bulb, Guinness World Records.
- John Rector, You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy.
- John Rector, Feeding the Machine.
- John Rector, Regulate the Door.
- John Rector, First Customer.
- John Rector, The Last Deed, a novel.