Corporate Greed - Blog Posts

Sewing Machines & Planned Obsolescence

I've got these two sewing machines, made about 100 years apart. An old treadle machine from around 1920-1930, that I pulled out of the trash on a rainy day, and a new Brother sewing machine from around 2020.

I've always known planned obsolescence was a thing, but I never knew just how insidious it was till I started looking at these two side by side.

I wasn't feeling hopeful at first that I'd actually be able to fix the old one, I found it in the trash at 2 am in a thunderstorm. It was rusty, dusty, soggy, squeaky, missing parts, and 100 years old.

How do you even find specialized parts 100 years later? Well, easily, it turns out. The manufacturers at the time didn't just make parts backwards compatible to be consistent across the years, but also interchangeable across brands! Imagine that today, being able to grab a part from an old iPhone to fix your Android.

Anyway, 6 months into having them both, I can confidently say that my busted up trash machine is far better than my new one, or any consumer-grade sewing machine on the market.

Old Machine Guts

The old machine? Can sew through a pile of leather thicker than my fingers like it's nothing. (it's actually terrifying and I treat it like a power tool - I'll never sew drunk on that thing because I'm genuinely afraid it'd sew through a finger!) At high speeds, it's well balanced and doesn't shake. The parts are all metal, attached by standard flathead screws, designed to be simple and strong, and easily reachable behind large access doors. The tools I need to work on it? A screwdriver and oil. Lost my screwdriver? That's OK, a knife works too.

New Machine Guts

The new machine's skipping stitches now that the plastic parts are starting to wear out. It's always throwing software errors, and it damn near shakes itself apart at top speed. Look at it's innards - I could barely fit a boriscope camera that's about as thick as spaghetti in there let alone my fingers. Very little is attached with standard screws.

And it's infuriating. I'm an engineer - there's no damn reason to make high-wear parts out of plastic. Or put them in places they can't be reached to replace. There's no reason to make your mechanism so unbalanced it's reaching the point of failure before reaching it's own design speed. (Oh yeah there is, it's corporate greed)

100 years, and your standard home sewing machine has gone from a beast of a machine that can be pulled out of the literal waterlogged trash and repaired - to a machine that eats itself if you sew anything but delicate fast-fashion fabrics that are also designed to fall apart in a few years.

Looking for something modern built to the standard that was set 100 years ago? I'd be looking at industrial machines that are going for thousands of dollars... Used on craigslist. I don't even want to know what they'd cost new.

We have the technology and knowledge to manufacture "old" sewing machines still. Hell, even better, sewing machines with the mechanical design quality of the old ones, but with more modern features. It would be so easy - at a technical level to start building things well again. Hell, it's easier to fabricate something sturdy than engineer something to fail at just the right time. (I have half a mind to see if any of my meche friends with machine shops want to help me fabricate an actually good modern machine lol)

We need to push for right-to-repair laws, and legislation against planned obsolescence. Because it's honestly shocking how corporate greed has downright sabotaged good design. They're selling us utter shit, and expecting us to come back for more every financial quarter? I'm over it.

Nothing says dystopia like corporate greed

anybody else deeply hate spotify rn. like i used to use it all the time, i have around 50 playlists. but now it sucks ass. like 2 minutes of unskippable ads for like 5 songs. and now you cant even play individual songs! you can’t shuffle playlists. if you had your playlist on shuffle before the update, now it’s stuck that way.

it’s become more convenient to use basic youtube for music now. only 10 seconds of unskippable ads per song, plus you can play individual songs, make playlists, and shuffle/loop playlists!

i never thought we’d see the day where youtube became a better music platform than spotify. but here we are. corporate greed ruins everything.

rant!!

the american economy is single handily killing everyone middle/lower class. i turned 18 literally a month ago but im considering opening a credit card because i simply can’t afford to pay for things. i still live at home too, imagine if i didn’t. i wouldn’t be able to provide housing for myself or basic medical care (all the things my mom currently pays for.) that’s the sad reality of living here and homelessness is extremely normalized to where most people don’t even pay attention anymore. prices for anything even in low cost of living states are outrageous. i live in a small southern town and a pack of tictacs is $5!! mcdonald’s is $10 for one meal and that’s the CHEAPEST fast food here. ever since this country was built companies have just been taking more and more from their employees and continue to add on to the CEO’s salary. the media tells us it’s inflation but the reality is it’s just price gouging and greed. people here can’t afford necessities while our “leader” sends money overseas to fund genocide. we also can’t forget the TRILLIONS of dollars our government just “can’t find.” our government keeps us reliant on them and keeps it impossible for every citizen to be cared for. the united states COULD have free healthcare/university, lower prices, have a higher minimum wage, fix the teacher shortage, but they won’t. they keep us afraid and want us to feel trapped by our lives in this country. people are noticing now and their support will eventually run out to where we all go french revolution style and i DO NOT want to be here when that happens. thanks for reading, this whole situation scares me and i’d love to hear what y’all think because it’s all just so frustrating:(

This is pretty self-explanatory