5 ms·
The article mentions light bulb durability. There was a cartel, the awesomely-named Phoebus Cartel [1] that encouraged its members to reduce the typical operat
by LMSolar 10mo ago
The article mentions light bulb durability. There was a cartel, the awesomely-named Phoebus Cartel [1] that encouraged its members to reduce the typical operating life of bulbs from 2500 hours to 1000 hours to increase bulb sales.
So the author's list of 'Why Stuff is Bad' should * certainly * include 'lack of anti-trust laws and enforcement'. Rent-seeking, anti-trust, regulatory capture should all be mentioned in this under-thought blog product.
Seriously, not mentioning useful regulation and standards as a countermeasure to the negative trends the author describes seems like willful blindness.
[1] Phoebus Cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
- cenamus 10mo agoBulbs with a shorter lifetime are also a lot more efficient, because they run hotter. That's why that one bulb that's been burning for a 100 years in a firestation somewhere is only just glowing.
- sdenton4 10mo agoHeat is literally inefficient by definition - it's spent energy which hasn't been converted to visible light.
- hmry 10mo agoAnd hotter light bulbs produce proportionally more visible light (higher luminous efficacy) than cooler ones. An electric heater at 100C is an incandescent light source with 0% luminous efficacy :)
- MarkusQ 10mo agoHotter _incandescent_ bulbs (e.g. tungsten wire, halogen, etc.) produce more light than cooler ones, but the heat is still wasted. That's why such bulbs are going away. With non-blackbody bulbs (e.g. florescent, LED, etc.) the light is produced directly. Any extra heat is still wasted, but we can (and do) engineer to reduce it, thus making the bulbs far more efficient.