Is it ethical for companies to manufacture products that easily break, if they have the ability to make them less breakable?

There are companies that went broke by making their product indestructible, a notable example being the maker of the wildly popular Instant Pot. They made a product that just didn't break. This is called planned obsolescence failure and has happened to other companies too.

That being said, making flimsy shit on purpose is shady at best.

Think about all the waste that cheap products create. I can buy a cheap pair of work boots twice a year or a good pair every 2/3 years. I believe it's unethical for preying on the poor while also creating more waste.

Every company does it. It even has a name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

No, it isn't ethical.

Is it ethical for you as a consumer to buy low quality stuff that you know will break?

Imagine you went to a football game and bought a serving fries. They come in a little clay-lined paper dish. The clay lining in that dish resists small amounts of oil for about 30 minutes, but after that time is up, the oil will penetrate through, soaking the dish and possibly staining your clothes.

The manufacturer could've used a plastic lining instead. It's more resistant for much longer, and is still food-safe at reasonable temperatures. Is the choice of clay over plastic unethical? Or is it reasonable to pick a cheaper, more recyclable material with the assumption that it won't take most people a full 30 minutes to eat their fries?

Different things have different purposes and need to meet different standards. "Breakable" vs "durable" isn't an objective measurement of quality.

Companies are not people. They have no ethics. The only thing that keeps them in check is regulation and market forces.

Welcome to end stage capitalism, where the only rule is line go up. Line go up when you use fewer materials. That's why everything is shitty now.

If everyone built them at the highest quality, then every product would be at the highest price point.

Each reduction in quality makes that product available to more people who couldn't afford it otherwise.

Eventually, the only way to put the product in everybody's hands is to make it so cheap that it only works once, if you're lucky.

Is it ethical to do something unethical?

No

no, of course it’s not. but ethics for the worker and consumer do not exist under capitalism. only for the shareholder.

Yes, particularly if you're the company creating the "In case of emergency, break glass" boxes.

Just engineering something to be garbage for no other reason than so that people will buy more is unethical. That said, there are always trade offs and durability has to be weighed against other priorities.

For example, cars used to have much bigger bumpers which were expected to protect against damage in low speed impacts. Those went away because the requirements changed, the low speed crash test was out, and fuel efficiency requirements were in.

Or there's incandescent bulbs. They were ubiquitous for over a century, and yet they were constantly burning out and changing them was just a fact of life. Manufacturers could have easily made a more robust filament so the bulb would last longer, but doing so would have dramatically decreased the output of the bulb.

You should read about planned obsolescence.

It really depends on the product Id think. For an extreme example, a packaging company making packaging that does not degrade after a reasonable time contributes to landfill waste in a way that a packaging that eventually breaks down would be less responsible for.

If a product's useful life is limited by some other fundamental reason to the thing simply breaking (I don't mean planned obsolescence here, but more objects only needs for a certain period of time and which customers are almost certain to throw out afterwards), then making the product last longer than needed just turns the extra material needed to get that robustness into extra waste.

If we are talking planned obsolescence, that reasoning flips around to making longer lasting stuff cause less waste obviously, though nothing is truly needed for or able to last forever so there is always going to be a point where making the thing tougher is not going to help the end user any further.

I think it's okay to have different levels of quality at different price points so people can have options that fit their budget. A personal anecdote is measuring spoons. When I was young and just starting out, I just bought the cheapest set that would get the job done for a while. They were simply rounded plastic and the markings quickly started to wear off. Years later, when I was a bit more settled down, I decided to splurge on some nice stainless steel spoons in a rectangular shape that lets them fit inside spice jars better.

It is unethical. If a company made a product so good it went bankrupt, there should be guardrails to ensure the workers and their families be rightfully compensated for their contribution to the better of society.

We're drowning in waste because of this mentality of selling things no matter what.

There should be incentives to make great things, there shouldn't be incentives to be a great stealer.

No. A good example is phones. They are intentionally designed to be breakable and difficult to repair. Even ignoring the repairabilty standpoint: the glass backs for wireless charging (a feature that a minority use), not giving consumers a phone case, the lack of innovation for "water proofing" the phone; just using glue everywhere (more annoying to recycle existing phones).

That is unethical. The sheer amount of human life wasted needlessly spent repairing and paying to fix these phones, and polluting the environment is unethical. The default should be more repairable, if not more durable, but no.

Companies are not people. They need people, sure. And it isnt automatically a good thing when they lose. But they are NOT people. 1000s of companies could crumble tommorow with no loss significant loss to anyone. They can find new jobs, create new companies. A company failing because they prioritised the consumer isn't "good", but it isnt "bad" either. However, if a company relies on the pollution of people's time, money, and environment? That is unethical.

I don't believe so.

If every product was made with the highest standards of materials and craft, then all of the products would be more expensive. A competitive free market is meant to allow a wider variety of consumers access to products that suit their individual needs, and price is a huge part of those needs.

I do think it's unethical to charge too much for products that aren't well made and that it's a failing of capitalism that it's not just allowed, but encouraged.

That's a toughie. Go broke with morals or get rich being unethical.

If you started a business and was faced with the same situation, what do you think you would do? Personally, I think I would focus on the money over time

It's not ethical, it's capitalism and democracy in the name of the lord Money.

You can pay more to get better made things. Like most refrigerators are trash now, you can buy a commercial grade one and it will last like the one you had in the 70-80s but it costs $5,000+ easily and has nothing special about it.

Obviously not, thats literally the opposite of what ethics are about....

no.

I've been wearing crocs since the beginning, so 20+ years, and I've never yet managed to wear a pair out. The only issue I've had was that the little croc logo button popped off one and was lost. I wrote to the company and they sent me a replacement button, free. I have I think four pairs in various colours; the most recent I got second-hand on Vinted. My sport involves launching and recovering boats in muddy water, so they're perfect summer footwear - hose them down and you're good to go. Also good as house shoes.

FWIW: "In 2025, Crocs revenue stood at $3.3 billion, an increase of 1.5% from the previous year."

is this engagement bait? the phrasing of this question answers itself.

You mean... Apple? Create a new version and say the others are obsolete... Adobe?

it's called engineered obsolescence, a concept driven by German auto industry post 2000 and the reason why they are all in financial trouble today. Specific example: they started using plastic engine parts with plastics that last a set number of heat cycles. They are designed to fail within a set time period. AUDI now uses plastic oil pans that cost as much as steel pan to make. BMWs are catching fire from pressurized fuel systems failing because the plastics are failing. They also move the timing chains to the back of the motor, so that when the chains fails, it will be too much labor to replace and the car is junked.

Tesla uses structural battery packs, so when the pack dies, the car dies. Similar concept to gluing phones together.

I’m sure someone has the Vimes Principle of Economic Unfairness on hand.

I’m also sure that there’s a slope for every product showing the durability and the price required to achieve it. Then there’s the reputation cost of making a cheap version and expensive version of something. If you make something flimsy for $5, it’s unlikely that someone would buy the indestructible version for $100, even if the cheap version was intended to function as an example of what the expensive product can do. Given an ethical vacuum, I think there’s great incentive to do the mediumest you can, even if you have a monopoly.

The ethics are going to be different for every product and every person. If you care about whales, indestructible fishing nets will seem evil. If you make something biodegradable, it will necessarily be flimsy, and that limits its long term usefulness. When the owner of an indestructible item dies, what’s to be done with it, and by whom? I think society would need to be radically different to even begin to answer this question.

Is it ethical for them to withhold performance to generate profit? CPUs and GPUs are limited in the range, to a certain large extent, by price discrimination.

The problem is the price point. You can absolutely get products today that will last decades, but you'll have to pay more for them.

We've become a culture of instant gratification, and most people don't want to budget and save. They want that hit of dopamine right now.

What's unethical is the advertising industry making people believe that buying things makes you happy.

planned obselescence is an ongoing thing, they figured if they make a very long lasting product, they wont be returning customers, what better way to use shrinkflation,chepflation every 2-5 years. things like fridges and microwaves often is replaced every 2 years.

This is why God designed knees the way he did. He secretly hates humans and wants us to have an expiration date.

If they can make it indestructible but it costs three times as much, it's not unethical for them to make a less-indestructible version that they sell for less money.

Anything beyond that is rent-seeking.

Here's a canonical example. The East Germans made a drinking glass that didn't break. They produced 120 million of them. Then, capitalism happened and now we don't have unbreakable glasses any more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfest

Perhaps it's interesting to flip the problem. What if you made a product that lasted say 10x as long as the competition with a small margin and accepted the market would saturate? Then pivot to the next product, and the next?

I would expect, given the current state of 'capitalism', you would be sued, IP'd and regulated out of existence very quickly. Criminal contempt of business model.

I would not want to own a car, of almost any make, made after 2010, because they are made shittier on purpose while being more expensive and harder to work on. One company that stands out is Tesla. Even before the Cyberdumpster Shitbox came out, I had decided I'd never own one after a story I'd seen on Louis Rossmann's YouTube channel. A guy bought a used Tesla that had been upgraded with extended range. After bringing it in for an unrelated issue, those assholes rescinded the upgrade and wanted $6,000 to give back what they took away. More and more other manufacturers are trying to pull similar bullshit, which is pushing me to become more and more of a Luddite.

Yes, for a suitable value of "easily." It doesn't make sense to design every product to be as robust as possible, so there is a trade-off between robustness and other factors like cost and weight. A laptop or phone breaks easily if you drop it, but that doesn't mean the manufacturer is unethical for not making every single one be one of those super-rugged ones with rubber corners. As the ease of breakage increases, and as the cost of making it more robust decreases, so it becomes less and less justifiable to do.

The problem here is really uncertainty and lack of knowledge. If you knew that the product you were buying was going to last for exactly 17 months, you could compare the cost over its lifetime to one which would last exactly 25 months. Then all the underhanded tactics of planned obsolescence would be far less effective. But we don't know that, and really we don't even know the average or likely range.

yes, the point of a company is to make money and you can make more money by having people buy your product repeatedly, also products like phones will bwcome obsolete when their towers gwt shutdown in less than 10 years anyways.