Planned obsolescence and the swiss army bike

Planned obsolescence (click the link to go to the wikipedia article on the matter) has been part of our capitalist economy for the past eighty years or so. It is the idea that by introducing a new version of a product every year you can make the previous year's product obsolete in some way (either functionally, aesthetically or whatever) and put pressure on consumers to buy the product again.

Critics of this method of increasing production and profit say that it is wasteful and generally harmful to our society in a whole for a variety of sociological, psychological and economy reasons.

Here is an example of planned obsolescence in action:

the Trek 6500 model year 2008

the Trek 6500 model year 2009

... so when the blue bike is introduced in September it makes the silver bike obsolete even if they are essentially identical.

I recently got a chance to replace a spoke on a Swiss Army bike that was made in the 1940's. It is being ridden on the regular by a gentleman, so it has a real life, not just an existence as a wall hanging. This is an impressive machine. Not that I wouldn't prefer to ride the Loch Raven trails on that Trek 6500, but it is an example of a completely different production philosophy. Since these bikes are not produced for the purpose of maximizing profit for the corporation that they were produced by it doesn't make sense to come out with a new model every year. Instead they have only updated this bicycle three times in the over the one hundred years that it has been produced. This means less waste in production, greater ease for the consumer to find replacement parts, and a dearth of real world testing before improvements are planned and implemented.

Check out this funny video showing the swiss military riding on bikes and dodging fake bullets.

Now I don't think that we all need to go out and buy Swiss Army bikes ... they certainly aren't practical for all applications (though it would make the Tour de France's Alp D'Huez stage much more challenging for the riders and fun to watch for spectators ... if fun for spectators is measured in suffering for the competitors). But if we are at a stage of capitalism where our American president is forced to openly advocate for its continuation as our economic system ... then maybe it is worth revisiting if this is the best way to make and sell our products.