Why everything you buy is worse now

Source: Why everything you buy is worse now, Vox, 8:01, uploaded 2023-02-09, category Other / Unclear, playlist index 1610.

Vox begins with a replacement bra. Izzie, a colleague of the narrator, had to replace one, so the narrator buys the same product from the same place. A few weeks later, it falls apart. That small failure becomes a question about the things people meet every day: coffee machines, phones, computers, sweaters, and other objects seem to tear, break, or explode sooner than they used to. The video asks how products reached this state and whether consumers can get out from under the pile of things they keep replacing.

The three demands placed on a product

The video starts with the design process. A company making a jacket has to consider three demands. The jacket needs to work, look good, and remain easy and cheap enough to manufacture at scale. A good product balances functionality, appearance, and manufacturability. The video argues that the balance has tilted towards the third demand.

The history of clothing shows how the pressure developed. Someone who needed a jacket once went to a tailor, got measured, selected a material, and had the garment made. Department stores then made mass-produced clothing normal. By the 1980s and 1990s, shoppers had a large choice of stores and styles. Online shopping removed another pause from the process. A person can now click “add to cart” without seeing the product in person.

The frequency of buying matters as much as the method. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Ernest Elmo wrote a paper arguing that governments should support planned obsolescence. He called the idea “consumer engineering”. A jacket could become obsolete because a new season had replaced buttons with zippers, even though the old jacket still worked. The pressure sits in taste and expectation, so the customer buys again without a physical failure forcing the decision.

Consumer engineering and the price of speed

The video connects that older idea to the present speed of trend cycles. Trends now move through small online communities. Stanley cups replace Hydro Flasks as a recent example of how quickly an object can become the thing people are expected to own. A 2021 survey cited by Vox found that nearly 40 per cent of UK consumers bought clothing as often as once a month. The video also cites the UN’s report that, between 2000 and 2014, the average person bought 60 per cent more clothing whilst keeping each item for half as long.

Frequent replacement creates a price problem. People may want the same bra or jacket to cost roughly what it cost ten years earlier, even though labour has become more expensive. If shoppers replace an object quickly, they also have less reason to pay more for it. Manufacturers then face a fast demand for low-cost products.

The production response is familiar. A company can hire more people, alter the way it makes the product, or do both whilst keeping the price low enough for the cycle to continue. It might replace cotton or silk with a cheaper synthetic material. It might use a simpler stitching pattern that does not hold as well. When a product looks the same and costs about the same after a decade of higher costs, the video asks us to look for the part of the product that changed.

Technology and the old case for upgrading

The story becomes different when the video turns to technology. Early personal computers and phones improved so quickly that replacing a two-year-old device could bring a large gain in what it could do. Gay Gordon-Byrne, who directs the consumer advocacy group the Repair Association, explains that people once had a good reason to replace a device because the new model could perform things the old one could not.

The first iPhone supplies the example. The change from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4 brought much higher resolution and a front-facing camera. For a period, such jumps made regular replacement feel connected to function. Those large changes now happen less often. Companies can still encourage yearly purchases through small adjustments, such as a dryer that plays a tune at the end of a cycle instead of making an unpleasant alarm.

The growing complexity of devices creates a second problem. Modern objects arrive with computer chips and circuit boards, yet they often provide no repair tools. A person cannot make a replacement chip in a garage, so repair depends on what the manufacturer is willing to sell. Manufacturers may withhold parts, tools, diagnostic software, or repair diagrams. Some products become impossible to repair because their makers replace metal and screws with plastic and glue, a cost-saving choice that also makes the object disposable.

The video applies this problem across a household and beyond it. Phones, toasters, blenders, electric wheelchairs, and cars can all contain the same barrier. Once a person counts the objects around a home that contain chips, the scale of the repair problem becomes easier to see.

Repair, care, and a small amount of control

The conclusion keeps responsibility in view without turning consumer behaviour into a moral failure. People have been taught to buy in this way, and the design of the market limits what an individual can change. The video still sees more control here than in many other problems.

For technology, the right-to-repair movement offers a direct route. New York State passed a right-to-repair bill in 2022. The video calls the law imperfect, yet treats it as evidence that organised consumer pressure can change the rules around products. Repair.org provides a map through which people can find their state, enter their address, and send a letter describing a repair problem. The association says that more than 100,000 people used the tool, including more than 30,000 in New York, where the campaign helped build the pressure behind the law.

Clothing asks for slower decisions and ordinary maintenance. The video recommends avoiding micro-trends and fast fashion when possible, buying with intention, learning how to care for what one already owns, and reading the care label. The aim is to regain some control over the replacement cycle by treating an object as something that needs maintenance rather than as a temporary version waiting for its successor.

The final appeal is political as well as personal. Products exist for people, so consumers can make their preferences legible through what they buy, how they maintain it, and the laws they support. The video does not offer a way to escape the system. It offers a way to push back against the parts of it that turn every failure into another sale.

Limits

This note reconstructs Vox’s argument from the complete English caption track, the video description, and its metadata. The survey figure, the UN clothing figures, the account of rising labour costs, and the descriptions of manufacturing choices remain claims made or cited by the video. The source gives no survey method, sample details beyond the UK consumer reference, or underlying report pages, so the figures need their original sources for proper evaluation.

The history of planned obsolescence is compressed into Ernest Elmo’s 1930s account, and the video does not develop the economic history behind it. The technology section also describes repair barriers through Gordon-Byrne’s explanation and selected examples. It establishes a pattern the video wants viewers to notice, rather than proving that every manufacturer makes repair impossible or that every failure comes from deliberate cost cutting.

Further reading / references

• Izzie Ramirez, the original Vox article behind the video.
• Repair.org, the Repair Association website mentioned in the video.
• Engadget’s article on New York’s right-to-repair law.
• The Verge’s article on New York’s right-to-repair law.
• Haley E. D. Houseman’s article on clothing costs, labour, and materials, Catapult.
• Wired’s article on Shein and fast fashion.
• Vogue’s article on the price of fashion.