Carol Schaeffer in The Nation:
In 1960, the journalist and social critic Vance Packard identified a trend in American consumer culture: “planned obsolescence.” Either through superficial changes that made the older models appear outdated or through deliberately shortened product lifespans, consumers were encouraged to buy more, which also meant wasting more. It was a sales tactic, Packard found, originally popularized by a 1932 snake-oil salesman turned entrepreneur named Bernard London. London argued that manufacturers should deliberately shorten the lifespan of their products to drive continual consumer demand, boost sales, and keep the industry’s wheels turning. Just a few decades later, Packard argued that planned obsolescence was changing the very character of the American shopper: “We are being trained to live wastefully, with the idea that this is somehow patriotic,” he wrote in his book The Waste Makers.
Packard was perhaps the 20th century’s most prolific Cassandra on the trajectory of American consumerism, a way of life that has touched every corner of the globe and reshaped the world economy. Americans are the world’s foremost buyers, and the rest of the world—until recently—has mostly happily served as willing merchants and manufacturers. This cycle of consumption has created so much trash on the planet that the quantities are almost impossible to comprehend.
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