Speaker 1: Oh bed of the Aarre, Hello, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: This is the Cult of Conspiracy, and my name is Jonathan.
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Jacob. Are we uh, what are we getting
Speaker 2: into today? Sir? You're kind of surprising me with this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is completely in the dark for all
Speaker 3: the good cold memories. Jonathan has no idea what we're
Speaker 3: about to talk about. And it's a good one. It's
Speaker 3: a very good one.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 3: So there I was, you know, i'd be looking into
Speaker 3: history and doing a little research into things, and right
Speaker 3: for this particular one, I was I was looking at
Speaker 3: actually a Guinness World record, Right, did you know that
Speaker 3: there is a light a light bulb that has been
Speaker 3: continuously burning in a firehouse in California for like over
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten years.
Speaker 2: Or something of that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so they got me thinking, right, why is
Speaker 3: it that we don't have light bulbs that do that anymore? So, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I understand the old adage, though they just
Speaker 3: don't make it like.
Speaker 4: I used to bump a buh.
Speaker 3: But that being said, where's all the other light bulbs
Speaker 3: that were made back in that time? And why aren't
Speaker 3: they still being used? What is the situation of this?
Speaker 3: So I did a little bit of digging. Have you
Speaker 3: ever heard of the Phoebus Cartel?
Speaker 2: I feel like I know where you're going with this,
Speaker 2: but I can't say that the Phoebus Cartel rings any bills.
Speaker 4: So what if I told.
Speaker 3: You in the early nineteen twenties, every global electricity company,
Speaker 3: not just electrics specifically, the big names in electronics and
Speaker 3: electricity and all of this got together and they decided
Speaker 3: that they are only going to make light bulbs that
Speaker 3: could go for a thousand hours, And if you make
Speaker 3: a light bulb that goes longer than that, the cartel
Speaker 3: themselves will find you unto oblivion. Would you think that
Speaker 3: this is fucking crazy? Or would you think that there
Speaker 3: might be something to this.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna lie to you, dude. Before my third
Speaker 2: eye busted all the way open, I would have thought
Speaker 2: there's no way they're all in on it.
Speaker 4: They all know.
Speaker 2: The same old adage right with pretty much everything else.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's not even a surprise. It's not a shocker.
Speaker 2: It's almost to the point where I expect it.
Speaker 3: So this is a really great example of planned obsolescence
Speaker 3: right when you make something that is built to run
Speaker 3: to failure and you know it's gonna fail, but you
Speaker 3: do it anyway.
Speaker 4: Typically this is done.
Speaker 3: For older technology in light of newer technology, right out
Speaker 3: with the old, in with the new. So you build
Speaker 3: things to only go for so long because you think
Speaker 3: the technology will catch up by that point, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 4: The nineteen twenties, no one.
Speaker 3: Thought that there was gonna be a better way to
Speaker 3: light your home than the light bulb. There was no
Speaker 3: other theories that were being proposed at this time. So,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm just gonna let all of the
Speaker 3: data speak for itself here. I'm gonna go ahead and share
Speaker 3: the screen and for anybody that would like to see
Speaker 3: what we were talking about. I got a couple of videos.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna play a couple of articles. We're gonna talk
Speaker 3: about this is the phasing out of the light bulb.
Speaker 3: Then we're gonna talk about our LEDs now being used
Speaker 3: in favor of the planned obsolescence of the incandescent bulb.
Speaker 3: We're gonna go wild with it, y'all, for anybody that
Speaker 3: would like to see what we're talking about, rather than
Speaker 3: just hear about it, Jonathan, tell them where they could go.
Speaker 2: Dude. Before I even get into that, I want to
Speaker 2: just say, what a range synchronicity that you're talking about
Speaker 2: this today, because I literally just got done going down
Speaker 2: a super deep dive rabbit hole. As far as our
Speaker 2: eyes ability, uh to have like the amount of frames
Speaker 2: per second that our eyes can perceive, which is like
Speaker 2: twenty four point one frames per second and that and
Speaker 2: you wouldn't think, you would think it's continuous, right, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't think it's in frames like you know, like a
Speaker 2: movie film or something like that. But that's really what
Speaker 2: it is. Our eyes are only capable of twenty four
Speaker 2: frames per second. And it sounds it sounds like, oh okay,
Speaker 2: twenty four frames in a second. That's a lot in
Speaker 2: one second. Dude. That is that's dog shit. Yeah, that's horrible.
Speaker 2: Like it's it's it points to the illusion if anything else.
Speaker 3: Slow mo on your iPhone has a higher capability than
Speaker 3: your own eyeballs.
Speaker 4: That's correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so crazy. But anyhow, Yeah, if you want
Speaker 2: to be able to see this, this, these articles, our faces,
Speaker 2: anytime we have guests, any of our video, you want
Speaker 2: to be able to support us. The best way to
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Speaker 2: reason why you join Patreon is because it is completely
Speaker 2: commercial free. Wistman man, Yeah, who wants interruptions? I don't.
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Speaker 2: first tier starting at only five dollars a month. I
Speaker 2: mean five dollars a month, Dude's that's like Netflix's prices
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago. Okay, like that's we're actually stuck in
Speaker 2: the past and we're not moving it up. That's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's going to remain this price forever. It's always that way.
Speaker 2: We're not trying to gain the system by any means,
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Speaker 2: this out.
Speaker 3: All right, So all that being out of the way,
Speaker 3: let's learn a little bit about this light bulb in
Speaker 3: California that has been burning for over one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty years.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: It currently holds the Guinness World Record for a light
Speaker 3: that is continuously gone.
Speaker 4: Let's listen in.
Speaker 6: They just don't make them like they used to.
Speaker 7: This adage applies to this light bulb, which has literally
Speaker 7: been flickering longer than Henry Kissinger, who just turned one hundred,
Speaker 7: has been alive.
Speaker 6: It has been glowing over this garage in California.
Speaker 7: It's Livermore pleasanton Fire Department since nineteen o one.
Speaker 8: Nineteen oh one, we believe, is when the light bulb
Speaker 8: was done by Dennis Bernal, who owned the Livermore Power
Speaker 8: and Water company, and he was going out of business
Speaker 8: and was selling his business, and he donated the light
Speaker 8: bulb to the fire department.
Speaker 7: Retired Deputy fire Chief Tom Bramle should know. He's affectionately
Speaker 7: known as the Guardian of light.
Speaker 4: You're not allowed to touch it, by the way.
Speaker 2: We don't even dust it off.
Speaker 7: He was surprised five years ago when the thing had
Speaker 7: been burning at that point for only one million hours.
Speaker 7: After being around the bulb for fifty years, Brammel says
Speaker 7: he's only aware of a couple times it has been out,
Speaker 7: a major one in twenty thirteen after he'd already been
Speaker 7: retired for a decade.
Speaker 8: Oddly enough, if it wasn't the light bulb, it was
Speaker 8: an uninterrupted power supply. What we did is we bypassed
Speaker 8: the UPS system with an extension court at that time
Speaker 8: when a light bulb came back on.
Speaker 7: Other things, this little light out shone World Wars one
Speaker 7: and two, the moon landing twenty two presidents, even a
Speaker 7: global pandemic. The durable light bulb was made in Shelby, Ohio,
Speaker 7: and made its mark in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Speaker 7: Ripley's Believe It or Not and a General Electric.
Speaker 8: It puts out about four watts of light, but it's
Speaker 8: a sixty watt light bulb that Shelby Electric had to
Speaker 8: develop his hand blown. The filament is carbon filament, and
Speaker 8: the filament is about half the size the thickness of
Speaker 8: your hair.
Speaker 6: Small, mighty, and durable enough to stand a test of time.
Speaker 8: I suspect that this light bulb will continually burn another
Speaker 8: one hundred years.
Speaker 6: For Inside Edition Digital, I'm Stephanie Officer.
Speaker 4: All right, now, let's talk about a couple of things
Speaker 4: that we're just said. It really is.
Speaker 3: It really is, so let's break it all down before
Speaker 3: we get into that. Though she said a global pandemic,
Speaker 3: keep in mind that she probably meant the Spanish flu
Speaker 3: because this was burning before the Spanish.
Speaker 4: Flu even hit America.
Speaker 3: I know she mean COVID, but I'm gonna assume that
Speaker 3: she meant the Spanish flu. That's how old this thing is, Okay,
Speaker 3: nineteen oh one. They filled it in there, or they
Speaker 3: screwed it into that socket. And keep in mind there
Speaker 3: are those that it will say, oh well yeah, if
Speaker 3: you turn it off and turn it back on, it
Speaker 3: will never come on again. That's happened multiple times. The
Speaker 3: most recent was twenty thirteen when they had a power outage.
Speaker 3: They ran a new power source to that outlet and
Speaker 3: then tadah, the light came back on and it's still
Speaker 3: going It's insane.
Speaker 2: It's pretty impressive that they've only had one power outage
Speaker 2: since twenty thirteen. But it is a fire station, so
Speaker 2: maybe they always have like continuous power or something.
Speaker 3: They've had multiple instances of the light going off, but
Speaker 3: the most recent was twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, gotcha. And even still if their power goes out,
Speaker 2: I'm sure a fire station has backup generators, so oh for.
Speaker 4: Sure, for sure.
Speaker 3: But so I know what everybody's gonna think, Oh, well,
Speaker 3: that's just the one oddity, right, that's that's the one
Speaker 3: light bulb on earth. And I mean even a blind
Speaker 3: squirrel finds a nut once in a while, right, maybe
Speaker 3: the power company that built this light bulb, they accidentally
Speaker 3: made the perfect bulb is a there's a complete one off. Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's a conversation that we could have except for the
Speaker 3: fact that here, let me introduce you to the second
Speaker 3: oldest light bulb that is currently in North Texas on display.
Speaker 4: Get ready for this.
Speaker 1: M Brown A birthday party for a light bulb sounds bizarre,
Speaker 1: and it is, but you didn't know one of the
Speaker 1: oldest light bulbs is right here in North Texas.
Speaker 4: Here's Tiffany Leu.
Speaker 9: Here's the thing about light bulbs. No matter how bright
Speaker 9: the water d or lumens, no matter what shape or size,
Speaker 9: they almost always burn.
Speaker 5: Out, maybe a year if you're lucky.
Speaker 9: There's only a few exceptions in the world. One of
Speaker 9: them inside the Stockyards Museum, two.
Speaker 5: Hundred and nine years old Steeve burning.
Speaker 9: And in two days it's turning one hundred.
Speaker 5: Ten welb birthday.
Speaker 9: This is the second oldest light bulb, put up in
Speaker 9: nineteen oh eight at the now demolished Palace Theater.
Speaker 5: It barnes all day, all night. We never tourn it all.
Speaker 9: Volunteer James Madwell says it has one older sibling at
Speaker 9: one hundred and six teen years in Livermore, California.
Speaker 10: In fact, I was out there last month and I
Speaker 10: went I got to see it, So I've actually seen
Speaker 10: both the world's oldest light bulbs.
Speaker 9: And there are a few theories of why they last
Speaker 9: so long. Here's option A.
Speaker 10: The film is made out of tungctionen Option B. Some
Speaker 10: people say it was because it wasn't mass produced, it
Speaker 10: was handmade.
Speaker 5: They were handmade and Option C.
Speaker 10: Shelby Electric Company had around three hundred people employed. Ninety
Speaker 10: percent of those people were women.
Speaker 9: Take your pick. Yeah, quality were no matter what you choose.
Speaker 5: When you leave here, you can tell everybody that you
Speaker 5: saw the.
Speaker 4: Light in Fort Worth.
Speaker 9: Tiffany Lew Channel eight News.
Speaker 4: Okay, now let's break this one down.
Speaker 2: He was trying to get some ass with that last one.
Speaker 4: Oh you know this, you.
Speaker 3: Know this now, all right, the oldest light bulb. They
Speaker 3: know that it's a carbon filament. He is saying that
Speaker 3: it's possible that this one is a tungsten filament. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that was even a filament that they
Speaker 3: used in earlier light bulbs.
Speaker 4: Who's to say, right, either way you go with it.
Speaker 3: There is not just one we know of at least
Speaker 3: two of these light bulbs that were made in the
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds before World War One.
Speaker 4: That are still burning to this day.
Speaker 3: So yeah, okay, we could say that possibly, well, they
Speaker 3: just built them different back then, right, they've built them
Speaker 3: at a higher quality. But then why don't we see
Speaker 3: more of these light bulbs that are from back in
Speaker 3: the day that we could be still using to this day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me just reiterate on that tungsten situation. So, yes,
Speaker 2: tungsten was used as a filament in light bulbs by
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty. Haven't been introduced in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Due to its superior efficiency and longer lifespan compared to
Speaker 2: earlier materials, the development of tungsten filaments significantly improved the
Speaker 2: performance of incandescent light bulbs.
Speaker 3: Okay, there you have it. So this was tungsten, who knows? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's possible, all right, So who knows?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: But then something happened, like you just read before nineteen
Speaker 3: twe it.
Speaker 4: Was used, but it stopped.
Speaker 3: They stopped using better, more efficient, more long lasting materials.
Speaker 3: Now I can't keep a light bulb burning in my
Speaker 3: house for more than a year if I'm lucky. Okay,
Speaker 3: So what happened when did everything go to the side
Speaker 3: of this is gonna burn out way quicker because it's
Speaker 3: a money making operation rather than a lifespan and production operation. Now,
Speaker 3: I want to introduce everybody to the Phoebus cartel.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about it.
Speaker 11: In Geneva, Switzerland, Just before Christmas nineteen twenty four, there
Speaker 11: was a secret meeting of top executives from the world's
Speaker 11: leading light bulb companies Phillips International, General Electric, Tokyo Electric,
Speaker 11: OSRAM from Germany, and the UK's Associated Electric, among others.
Speaker 11: They formed what became known as the Phoebus Cartel, named
Speaker 11: after Phoebus, the Greek god of light. There all these
Speaker 11: companies agreed to work together to help each other by
Speaker 11: controlling the world's supply of light bulbs. In the early
Speaker 11: days of the electrical industry, there had been lots of
Speaker 11: different small light bulb manufacturers, but by now they had
Speaker 11: largely been consolidated into these big corporations, each dominant in
Speaker 11: a particular part of the world. The biggest threat they
Speaker 11: all faced was from longer lasting light bulbs real quick.
Speaker 3: So remember earlier we heard that the light bulb in
Speaker 3: the firehouse was made by the Shelby Electric Company.
Speaker 4: You've never heard of this company.
Speaker 3: Because it went out the bigger conglomerates bought it up.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of these, for lack of better words,
Speaker 3: mom and pop shop operations. When it came to all
Speaker 3: appliances and new technologies and all these things back in
Speaker 3: the day. But the same way that always happens in
Speaker 3: big business, the bigger conglomerates rather scoop them up, rebrand it,
Speaker 3: take over all their licensing agreements, and they tweak it
Speaker 3: to make it more of the general electric Look right,
Speaker 3: AEI look and all these things.
Speaker 2: And back in that time, like the first guy was saying,
Speaker 2: I mean it was, they were glowing blowing glass manually.
Speaker 4: By a hand, dude, hand blown glass light bulb.
Speaker 2: Which you're only gonna get with like bongs and pipes nowadays,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: Basically, But then you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: There's no way that they could keep up with an
Speaker 3: industrial demand, especially as we go into the roaring twenties.
Speaker 3: So these big companies bought up all those little ones,
Speaker 3: and these were pretty much the last men's standing. Now
Speaker 3: it wasn't technically a monopoly, but they were all owned
Speaker 3: by the same types of people who were all members
Speaker 3: of the Phoebus cartel.
Speaker 4: Let's keep going.
Speaker 11: For example, in nineteen twenty three, Ostram sold sixty three
Speaker 11: million light bulbs, but the following year they sold only
Speaker 11: twenty eight million. Light bulbs were lasting too long, eating
Speaker 11: into sales, So all the companies in the cartel agreed
Speaker 11: to reduce the lifespan of their bulbs to one thousand hours,
Speaker 11: cutting the existing average almost in half. To enforce the
Speaker 11: thousand hour limit, each of the manufacturers had to send
Speaker 11: in sample bulbs from their factories and they were tested
Speaker 11: on big test stands like this one. If a ball
Speaker 11: lasted significantly longer than one thousand hours, but then the
Speaker 11: company was fined, and there are records of these fines
Speaker 11: being issued to companies.
Speaker 3: Okay, so before we continue, what are your thoughts as
Speaker 3: of this moment. It sounds crazy right to any new
Speaker 3: conspiracy head out there that's listening to this, Like, okay,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, you're seriously telling me that all these
Speaker 3: light bulb companies, all these electronics companies, they all got
Speaker 3: to be together in a global cabal, a literal cartel.
Speaker 3: They even called it the Phoebus cartel, for fuck's sake.
Speaker 3: Unironically they named it that. You mean to tell me
Speaker 3: that they were making their products too well and then
Speaker 3: they to make more money, decide to screw over the
Speaker 3: consumer base that was buying all of their products and
Speaker 3: do it this way.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, Well, and then Ford learned from them as well,
Speaker 2: and so did the iPhone. I mean, do you remember
Speaker 2: the last time the iPhone got a significant update that
Speaker 2: couldn't have been had on a you know, on a
Speaker 2: twenty ten iPhone?
Speaker 4: Planned obsolescent suit that's absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2: And even just sticking on the iPhone here for a second,
Speaker 2: like the literally the one of the things that they
Speaker 2: do is because the updates they take up space and
Speaker 2: they take up memory. It's my it's my opinion they
Speaker 2: actually do that on purpose, because with every update, your
Speaker 2: phone is losing less and less power and memory and
Speaker 2: everything else. And that's not even just with your phone's,
Speaker 2: I mean with your computers and all all of your
Speaker 2: your electronics that have some kind of updates or whatever, right,
Speaker 2: and so the older ones they eventually just run out
Speaker 2: of fucking memory, they run out of space because they
Speaker 2: can't hold all the updates. And so yeah, it's the
Speaker 2: planned obsolescence, that's It's like, that's old school shit right there. Dude.
Speaker 2: I'm happy you're bringing this one up because this is
Speaker 2: really probably where it all started.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, we could argue if it started with
Speaker 3: other industries and things like that. I just found the
Speaker 3: light bulb conversation and that's what started me on this.
Speaker 4: So, and that's the thing. There's traceable evidence of this.
Speaker 3: You can look at the Osram company sixty four million
Speaker 3: in sales in nineteen twenty three nineteen twenty four. That
Speaker 3: was a fraction of the sales they had. Even though
Speaker 3: the demand was higher, their sales were lower. Why because
Speaker 3: they made their products too well and they didn't have
Speaker 3: repeat customers, not to the scale.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have like light bulbs that get broken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll have things happen and sometimes the filament will
Speaker 3: go out, but not as much as it should if
Speaker 3: they're going to have a money making operation.
Speaker 2: Well, so let's look at it from like a different
Speaker 2: perspective though. I mean, if you're the company, and like,
Speaker 2: if you have the technology to be able to build
Speaker 2: a light bulb that lasts potentially for rev why not
Speaker 2: just charge more for that one and then make the
Speaker 2: ones that are a thousand hours cheaper? You know, Like,
Speaker 2: why not make them both? I mean, you can really
Speaker 2: double fist it on both ends at that point.
Speaker 4: You could.
Speaker 3: But I'm gonna give you a phrase that we used
Speaker 3: to use in my former employment industry. We make dollars here,
Speaker 3: not cents, Okay, And what I mean by sense is
Speaker 3: like common sense. Okay, we are here to make dollar bills.
Speaker 3: We are not here to make sense of the situation.
Speaker 3: Do what you're paid to do. Okay, let's keep going here.
Speaker 3: And that was the thing. Wait, why are we doing
Speaker 3: it this way? This way is so much smarter and
Speaker 3: easier and would save time. Hey boy, we make dollars,
Speaker 3: not cents. Get back to work. That's how this works.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So if you are a company that is making a
Speaker 3: product to make money, you're here to make dollar bills.
Speaker 3: You are not here to do for the good of mankind.
Speaker 3: To your point about why wouldn't you make like the
Speaker 3: everlasting light bulb? It'd be a one time sale. How
Speaker 3: would you make enough money off of that one time
Speaker 3: sale to justify keeping your business running for the next
Speaker 3: twenty thirty forty years. How much would that light bulb cost?
Speaker 3: What realistically, if a light bulb costs just throwing it
Speaker 3: out here a dollar? I don't know if that's an
Speaker 3: actual price. You can get them out a dollar tree.
Speaker 3: So yeah, okay, so a light bulb costs a dollar.
Speaker 3: And let's say that everybody in America, we have three
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty some odd million people in this country.
Speaker 3: And let's just say everybody buys that one light bulb,
Speaker 3: all right, cool. I don't know how many light bulbs
Speaker 3: you currently have in your house. Let's just say, for
Speaker 3: sake of argument, twenty, So, all right, everybody is spending
Speaker 3: twenty dollars on this light bulb.
Speaker 4: It'll be a really good year for you.
Speaker 3: But that'll be the only year where you have that
Speaker 3: type of income, the occasional one that breaks or something
Speaker 3: like that. Sure, but that's not going to be enough
Speaker 3: for your stockholders. That's not going to be enough to
Speaker 3: pay your boarder directors. They're yearly dividends. That's not gonna
Speaker 3: be enough to pay your employees and the insurance and
Speaker 3: all of these things. You want to have continual revenue flow.
Speaker 3: You can't have continual revenue flow off of a one
Speaker 3: time sale, you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could just keep on advancing it though,
Speaker 2: Like the light bulb really hasn't changed all that much
Speaker 2: in one hundred years, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 2: know that they have led light bulbs and all the
Speaker 2: different cool kind of light bulbs, but for the most part,
Speaker 2: it's just a fucking light bulb. Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: do something extra with it, make them colorful, or make
Speaker 2: them stroby, or make them I don't know, maybe make
Speaker 2: a light bulb that expands throughout the vast corners of
Speaker 2: all the dark places of your house somehow using reflective mirrors.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but that's my point, right.
Speaker 3: They have light bulbs that are different colors, and they
Speaker 3: have them that can do strobe lights and all these things.
Speaker 3: But again, it's not about the one time sale, and
Speaker 3: there's only so much advancement that can be done in
Speaker 3: the way of an incandescent bulb.
Speaker 4: We will talk about LEDs.
Speaker 3: That is another conversation, especially as we're going in with
Speaker 3: the Phoebus Cartel and all these things.
Speaker 4: But it became an issue for them.
Speaker 3: They realized that if they wanted to continue to make
Speaker 3: money year after year, they couldn't do it off of
Speaker 3: the one time sales. And you had all these mom
Speaker 3: and pop shops that were making way better quality light
Speaker 3: bulbs to the tune of over one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: years that bitch has been burning. There's no way the
Speaker 3: ge could make money making products like that. So they
Speaker 3: got together and created the Phoebus Cartel. I got the
Speaker 3: Wikipedia pulled up. We are not going to read all
Speaker 3: of it, just as opening two paragraphs, and then we'll
Speaker 3: get into the main article for this episode.
Speaker 2: All right. The Phoebus Cartel was an international cartel that
Speaker 2: controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in
Speaker 2: much of Europe and North America between nineteen twenty five
Speaker 2: and nineteen thirty nine. The cartel took over market territories
Speaker 2: and lowered the useful life of such bulbs, which is
Speaker 2: commonly cited as an example of planned obsolescence. Corporations based
Speaker 2: in Europe and the US, including Tongues, ram Osram General Electric,
Speaker 2: Associated Electrical Industries, and Phillips and Phillips Incorporated, they all
Speaker 2: incorporated the cartel on January fifteenth, nineteen twenty five, in Geneva.
Speaker 2: That's not a shocker, right, is that Geneva, Switzerland. It
Speaker 2: is indeed takes sense okay, as a Phoebus SA compan
Speaker 2: Company company and okay, something French so French.
Speaker 3: Company industrial poorlo development debt charge. Basically, it's French for
Speaker 3: Phoebus PLC Industrial company for the development of lighting.
Speaker 2: Although the group had intended the cartel to last for
Speaker 2: thirty years between twenty five and fifty five. It ceased
Speaker 2: operations in thirty nine with the outbreak of World War Two.
Speaker 2: Following its dissolution, light bulbs continue to be sold at
Speaker 2: one thousand hour life, standardized by the cartel.
Speaker 3: So let's break this down real quick. You remember how
Speaker 3: I said that it couldn't be a monopoly. Right now,
Speaker 3: we don't have AEI in America, but we have General Electric,
Speaker 3: and we have Phillips, you see what I'm saying. And
Speaker 3: they have Tonguesgram and Osram in Germany, and they have
Speaker 3: enough company that it's not considered technically a monopoly. But
Speaker 3: if all of them are all incahoots with an international cartel,
Speaker 3: it bypasses all monopoly laws. They all still make their
Speaker 3: money and they self check themselves to where they all
Speaker 3: agree on the thousand hour lifespan.
Speaker 4: Now allegedly, allegedly they.
Speaker 3: All stopped operation in nineteen thirty nine with the pickup
Speaker 3: of World War Two, even though the group was intended
Speaker 3: to go from nineteen twenty five to nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 3: But why are they still using the thousand hour standard
Speaker 3: if the group went by the wayside. I am personally
Speaker 3: of the belief that the Phoebus Cartel is still currently
Speaker 3: in operation, although I do believe that they.
Speaker 4: Have shifted gears to the LED. Again.
Speaker 3: We will talk about that one towards the end of
Speaker 3: the episode.
Speaker 4: So what are your thoughts at this.
Speaker 2: Moment, bro, Yeah, I'm not really surprised. I think that
Speaker 2: probably there's the majority of companies that sell a product
Speaker 2: that eventually expires outside of food, and you could probably
Speaker 2: argue the food industry as well, but I think that
Speaker 2: there's the majority of the majority of companies that sell
Speaker 2: not everlasting products. Which name a company that does sell
Speaker 2: an everlasting product. I think that, yeah, they probably all
Speaker 2: you know, put this in, you know, in their construction
Speaker 2: of whatever they're making. It's always something in the back
Speaker 2: of their mind. You need return customers. It's the same
Speaker 2: reason why you know, big pharma and the vaccine industry
Speaker 2: and certain places where certain diseases leak, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, they're all working together, so you need return
Speaker 2: company customers. You know. I actually heard something recently is
Speaker 2: that that there was this person that was like studying
Speaker 2: to find the cure to cancer, and whenever he was
Speaker 2: studying to find it, it was like a TikTok that
Speaker 2: I had found and this guy he was like, study
Speaker 2: to try and find it. And he goes, once they found,
Speaker 2: like they found they already know the cure to cancer.
Speaker 2: Like it's not just one cure, it's multiple different things.
Speaker 2: They can cure multiple different cancers. He goes, He goes,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I can't believe I found it. This
Speaker 2: is amazing. And the cancer company or whatever was just
Speaker 2: like okay, good, and it was just like they're not
Speaker 2: going to implement it because they're studying to see that. Basically,
Speaker 2: they were studying to try and see what it was
Speaker 2: that could cure cancer, but they're never going to actually
Speaker 2: implement it as a medicine because the cancer company makes
Speaker 2: big bucks, you know, like it's something that will always
Speaker 2: bring repeat customers. So they're not interested in curing cancer.
Speaker 2: They're interested in finding the cure to cancer.
Speaker 3: There's a difference, absolutely, and there's reasons for that, right,
Speaker 3: So they could dissuade future scientific explorers away from the
Speaker 3: things that they know work. They'll fund research into who
Speaker 3: they already know it's a dead end project, but they're
Speaker 3: gonna send these people off on a wild goose chase
Speaker 3: for something that they already know is not gonna work
Speaker 3: because they already know it does work.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: There's a whole conversation we had for that. But even
Speaker 3: further in the pharmaceutical conversation. They found a cure for
Speaker 3: AIDS a couple of years back. You remember hearing about this,
Speaker 3: and they were able to mass produce it for like
Speaker 3: ten dollars a pill.
Speaker 4: It was insane.
Speaker 3: Then some wealthy white dude I forget what country he
Speaker 3: was from, bought all of the rights and patents to
Speaker 3: it and is now selling it for ten thousand dollars
Speaker 3: a pill.
Speaker 2: Is it the cure to AIDS or HIV?
Speaker 4: Excuse me one of them?
Speaker 2: I think HIV because some people have discussed that AIDS
Speaker 2: is fake and actually it is gay. But yeah, some
Speaker 2: people actually say that, no, it's only AHIV, that there
Speaker 2: is no such thing as AIDS. I don't know. That's
Speaker 2: a conspiracy out there. I don't know too much about it,
Speaker 2: fair enough.
Speaker 3: Okay, it may have been HIV. It's been a while
Speaker 3: since I didn't my research into that. But the guy
Speaker 3: marked it up at a one thousand percent markup, and
Speaker 3: well even more than that, honestly, But beside the point.
Speaker 2: When you can corner the market, you can do.
Speaker 3: That exactly exactly, And he was trying to get rich
Speaker 3: off of the product itself.
Speaker 4: He wasn't banking on the repeat customers.
Speaker 3: Right, for an industry that is banking on the repeat customers,
Speaker 3: you got to make them come back for more. And
Speaker 3: if your companies are the only ones making light bulbs,
Speaker 3: and you're all in cahoots to make sure that all
Speaker 3: light bulbs can only burn for a thousand hours period,
Speaker 3: you've cornered the market. And if they don't buy from ge,
Speaker 3: they'll buy from Phillips. These are the only two at
Speaker 3: the time anyway, that were making light bulbs. Then when
Speaker 3: you had these other spinoff companies that also make light bulbs,
Speaker 3: they learned that if they don't play ball, they will
Speaker 3: have the Rockefeller treatment, where basically the other electric companies
Speaker 3: will charge a penny for a light bulb instead of
Speaker 3: a dollar, and they will get forced out of business
Speaker 3: strictly on the economy of Jesus Christ, the economics of
Speaker 3: it all, right, right, right, So that's how the cartel works,
Speaker 3: and that's how they flex their might. So I got
Speaker 3: an article pulled up here from Spectrum dot i eee
Speaker 3: the Great light Bulb Conspiracy the Phoebus Cartel engineered a
Speaker 3: short lived light bulb and gave birth to planned obsolescence.
Speaker 3: There is an argument to say that this is where
Speaker 3: planned obs lessons actually came from. I don't know if
Speaker 3: I'd necessarily believe it, but I mean it's as good
Speaker 3: of a start as any to have the conversation.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe the first official one. People were probably
Speaker 2: doing it unofficially for a while, I would imagine, sure.
Speaker 4: Sure So.
Speaker 2: On December twenty third, nineteen twenty four, a group of
Speaker 2: leading international businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that
Speaker 2: would alter the world for decades to come. Present were
Speaker 2: top representatives from all the major light bulb manufacturers, including
Speaker 2: Germany's Osram and the Netherlands Phillips, France's company of Lamps.
Speaker 2: I think is what it translates to, and the United
Speaker 2: States is General Electric. As revelers hung Christmas lights elsewhere
Speaker 2: in the city, the group founded the Phoebus Cartel, a
Speaker 2: supervisory body that would carve up the worldwide incandescent light
Speaker 2: bulb market, with each national and regional zone assigned and
Speaker 2: assigned its own manufacturers and production quotas. It was the
Speaker 2: first cartel in history to enjoy a truly global reach.
Speaker 2: Think about that global or flat, whatever you want to
Speaker 2: look at it, but all the outstretching lands of the
Speaker 2: corners of the earth.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, either way you want to call it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they had worldwide dominance over this market. And the thing
Speaker 3: you said earlier, like it's just light bulbs, right, But
Speaker 3: to them, this was Tesla's mona Lisa right. I know
Speaker 3: Edison got the credit for it. He was a fucking
Speaker 3: plagiarist at best. But this was their thing. And it's
Speaker 3: not like this is the only thing they did this
Speaker 3: with ge made a lot more than light bulbs, dude,
Speaker 3: Phillips made a lot more than light bulbs. This was
Speaker 3: one thing that they knew they could corner on really
Speaker 3: easily or really quickly. Think of the same thing that
Speaker 3: they did with refrigerators with uh, well this is before
Speaker 3: refrigeration was the thing. They were still using ice boxes
Speaker 3: at this time. But think of any electric product that
Speaker 3: they have come out with that you know it's only
Speaker 3: good for so long before Oh the circuits fried, Oh
Speaker 3: it burned up. Oh this it didn't have to, but
Speaker 3: they have made it to where it guaranteed.
Speaker 2: Will What about your boy William mineheart, is that a monocle?
Speaker 2: He's repping right there? Or am I tripping?
Speaker 3: Um?
Speaker 4: I think it might be glasses, but it very well
Speaker 4: might be a monocle. Dude.
Speaker 3: This is the early nineteen hundreds and this was big
Speaker 3: money boys. That's who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's before they went over the ears. You just
Speaker 2: squint it all day to keep dunbitches in.
Speaker 3: You could get it fitted to where it would fit
Speaker 3: perfectly on your eye, but like, yeah, it was a
Speaker 3: whole thing. You don't just walk around with your monocle
Speaker 3: attached to your face. Usually, like would hold it up
Speaker 3: to read a thing.
Speaker 11: Maeah.
Speaker 2: So the cartel's grip on the light bulb market lasted
Speaker 2: only into the nineteen thirties. It's far more enduring legacy
Speaker 2: was to engineer a shorter life span for the inc
Speaker 2: deescent light bulb. By early nineteen twenty five, this became
Speaker 2: codified at a thousand hours for a pear shaped household bulb,
Speaker 2: a marked reduction from the fifteen hundred to two thousand
Speaker 2: hours that had previously been common. Cartel members rationalized this
Speaker 2: approach as a tradeoff. Their light bulbs were of a high,
Speaker 2: higher quality, more efficient and burning brighter than other bulbs,
Speaker 2: they also cost a lot more. Indeed, all evidence point
Speaker 2: to the cartels being motivated by profits and increased sales,
Speaker 2: not by what was best for the consumer, and carefully
Speaker 2: crafting a light bulb with a relatively short lifespan. The
Speaker 2: cartel thus hatched the industrial strategy now known as planned obsolescence. Indeed,
Speaker 2: today with many countries phasing out incandescent lighting in favor
Speaker 2: of more efficient and pricier LEDs, which ooh, I'm going
Speaker 2: to add so much to that too, just for its
Speaker 2: hypnotic effect. But yeah, it's it's fucking wild. It's worth
Speaker 2: revisiting this history not simply as a quirky anecdote from
Speaker 2: the annals of technology, but as a cautionary tale about
Speaker 2: the strange and unexpected pitfalls that can arise when a
Speaker 2: new technology vanquishes an old one.
Speaker 4: It isn't easy being a.
Speaker 2: Light bulb maker. In the early twentieth century, the rapid
Speaker 2: spread of electrification and the introduction of new light forms
Speaker 2: of lighting like bicycle lamps, car headlights, and street lights
Speaker 2: did not offer nearly limitless opportunities for inventors and entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: but as thousands of manufacturers vied for market share and
Speaker 2: a technological edge. No single company felt assured of stable
Speaker 2: sales stable sales from one year to the next. That
Speaker 2: was as true for tiny backroom operations as it was
Speaker 2: for the giant corporate entities with multinational factories and research laboratories.
Speaker 2: Immediately preceding the cartel's formation, for instance, Ozram experienced a
Speaker 2: dizzying drop in its German sales from sixty three million
Speaker 2: light bulbs in the financial year of twenty two to
Speaker 2: twenty three in nineteen twenty two to twenty three to
Speaker 2: twenty eight million the following year. Not surprisingly, Osram head
Speaker 2: William Miinehart, old monicle Man, was the first to propose
Speaker 2: the arrangement that eventually became the Phoebus Cartel.
Speaker 4: So how about you create Germany.
Speaker 3: Germany was the people that brought about the planned ops
Speaker 3: to lescence, but not just Germany, right, So they got
Speaker 3: this little thing over here, says circling the globe, And
Speaker 3: let's talk a little bit about some of the other
Speaker 3: players here circling the globe. Phoebus Cartel enjoyed a truly
Speaker 3: global reachich The US company General Electric itself not a member,
Speaker 3: but was represented through its overseas subsidiaries. So right here
Speaker 3: at the top we got William Mainheart from Ozram from Germany,
Speaker 3: Anton Phillips from Phillips the company the Netherlands, Tongues Graham
Speaker 3: from Hungary, Associated Electrical Industries from the UK, International General Electric,
Speaker 3: even though it says it wasn't there like it said,
Speaker 3: international subsidiaries also played in. So the Americans got on
Speaker 3: board Company de Lampees or Lumps i should say, from France.
Speaker 3: Then there was Overseas group General Electric Societad anonym excuse me,
Speaker 3: from Brazil, China General Edison, Yeah, China was in on
Speaker 3: this conversation. Mexicana de l'am press Electracas, Yeah, Mexico had
Speaker 3: their hands in this one as well, and Tokyo Electric.
Speaker 3: This wasn't just one spot, dude. This was three different
Speaker 3: continents that were in this conversation just off of what
Speaker 3: we know right now.
Speaker 4: But you also.
Speaker 3: Understand that the British group, this was back when the
Speaker 3: British Commonwealth was still very very poppin', So Australia was
Speaker 3: a part of the the Associated Electrical Industries. Okay, so
Speaker 3: pretty much everywhere on earth that spoke English aside from
Speaker 3: America had their light bulbs come from this group. Then
Speaker 3: you had China and that covered pretty much all of
Speaker 3: Asia was concerned. Oh my bad. Tokyo was also in
Speaker 3: this conversation. France and Germany and Hungary were all over
Speaker 3: this area. So you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: This wasn't group right.
Speaker 2: So the fact that all these countries from around the
Speaker 2: world can all conspire together to reduce the life of
Speaker 2: said light in order to make more money, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not that crazy. Now, whenever you look down
Speaker 2: at Antarctica with the Antarctic Peace Treaty and everything, we
Speaker 2: don't know what the fuck's down there. We don't know,
Speaker 2: We have no idea because you have what was it
Speaker 2: sixty three countries that are conspiring to hide information from you.
Speaker 3: So keep in mind also, this conglomerate, this cartel was
Speaker 3: started after.
Speaker 4: World War One had ended.
Speaker 3: So all the old ways of thinking of the Royalty
Speaker 3: of Europe and all these things, they were gone.
Speaker 4: They were gone.
Speaker 3: Big business was allowed to pump out and thrive in
Speaker 3: ways that it had never been allowed to before unless
Speaker 3: you were relatives of somebody. That's how that worked. Now,
Speaker 3: money talked, bloodlines were important to certain people for other reasons.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to negate that, but in the realm
Speaker 3: of big business and industry, money spoke way larger than
Speaker 3: if you claim to be cousins to earl fluptiflaw from
Speaker 3: this Essex region or some shit.
Speaker 4: You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well it's as alliance is among light bulb
Speaker 2: makers were not exactly new. The Verchestafel. Holy shit, that
Speaker 2: is a word.
Speaker 4: You killed that one. But I have no idea where
Speaker 4: we're going with this one.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, verkoff stell, verniter gloom think came fabricn, bringing out.
Speaker 4: The fluct hymen.
Speaker 2: Context, the fluke hymen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, bro, that is what this word looks like. Glue
Speaker 4: lempin fabricn. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Okay, that was a eurotrip reference for anybody that doesn't know,
Speaker 2: so Jesus Christ. Yeah. So anyway, that company, for instance,
Speaker 2: was a European cartel of carbon filament lamp manufacturers that
Speaker 2: formed in nineteen oh three to stabilize industry ties. It
Speaker 2: was rendered superfluous when in nineteen oh six, two European
Speaker 2: companies introduced a superior light bulb whose filament was made
Speaker 2: from tungsten paste. That bulb was itself eclipsed in nineteen
Speaker 2: eleven by General Electric's metal filament bulb, which used pure
Speaker 2: drawn tungsten wire, and in nineteen thirteen by GE's gas
Speaker 2: field tungsten bulb, rather dubbed the half watt bulb. The
Speaker 2: latter was infused with argone or some other noble gas,
Speaker 2: which preserved the tungsten better than a simple vacuum. It
Speaker 2: produced five times as much light per watt as its
Speaker 2: carbon filament predecessor. GE's licensing of its basic light bulb
Speaker 2: patents gave rise to yet more alliances, most notably the
Speaker 2: powerful patent mindshaft something which stands for patent Pool, which
Speaker 2: controlled the GE patent rights in much of Europe up
Speaker 2: until World War One. Any company seeking to license GE's
Speaker 2: intellectual property had to abide by a strict production quota. Phillips,
Speaker 2: for example, was given an annual quota of five point
Speaker 2: seven million light bulbs, despite the fact that its Eindhoven
Speaker 2: facility could easily produce twice that amount. The Berlin based
Speaker 2: patent Pool fell apart with the geopolitical re shuffling during
Speaker 2: the war as soon as hostilities ended and the light
Speaker 2: bulb business once again surged a new cartel, the International
Speaker 2: Gloom some something German I think, sprang up to try
Speaker 2: to control prices for much of continental Europe.
Speaker 3: All right, So with that being said, remember how I
Speaker 3: just said after World War One the old power structures
Speaker 3: all over Europe they were gone.
Speaker 4: Now was the way of a new system. So they
Speaker 4: had quotas.
Speaker 3: Even though they could produce twice as much, they were
Speaker 3: required to only produce this much. Why because they didn't
Speaker 3: pay their extortion fee to the local what they would
Speaker 3: call the patent pool basically their industrial monarch for lack
Speaker 3: of better words, that say no, we're not allowing you
Speaker 3: to make any more than this, So you had to
Speaker 3: make your money off of what you were allowed to sell.
Speaker 3: Now that they were out, it was all gas, no brakes,
Speaker 3: and that's excellent. Business can thrive one hundred percent manufacturing
Speaker 3: and production.
Speaker 4: Let's get after it, boys, Boom boom boom, go go go.
Speaker 3: Except for the fact that they were making their products
Speaker 3: way too good. So although they could make twice as much,
Speaker 3: they couldn't sell twice as much, so they had to
Speaker 3: do some about this.
Speaker 2: None of these efforts, though, had quite the reach and
Speaker 2: ambition of the Phoebus Cartel. On paper, it sounded entirely benign.
Speaker 2: The document that companies signed to join it was called
Speaker 2: the Convention for the Development and Progress of the International
Speaker 2: Incandescent Electric Lamp Industry. According to that document, the organization's
Speaker 2: chief goals were securing the cooperation of all parties to
Speaker 2: the agreement, ensuring the advantageous exploitation of their manufacturing capabilities
Speaker 2: in the production of lamps, ensuring and maintaining a uniformly
Speaker 2: high quality, increasing the effectiveness of electric lighting, and increasing
Speaker 2: light used to the advantage of the consumer. That was
Speaker 2: all that long ass sentence it is, But I mean,
Speaker 2: all right, breaking that down. That's a great operating procedure. Right,
Speaker 2: you're one in the cooperation of all parties. You want
Speaker 2: to ensure advantageous movements within your manufacturing capabilities and the
Speaker 2: production of lamps. You want to maintain a uniformly high quality,
Speaker 2: you want to increase the effectiveness, and you want to
Speaker 2: increase the advantage of the consumer.
Speaker 3: That's a great motto to go by. Right, That's a
Speaker 3: great mission statement for this organization, except that it's not
Speaker 3: exactly accurate.
Speaker 2: It covered all electric light bulbs, used for illumination, heating,
Speaker 2: and medical purposes. In addition to the companies mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: its members included Hungary's Tunguesrim, the United Kingdom's Associated Electrical Industries,
Speaker 2: and Japan's Tokyo Electric. The US company GE, one of
Speaker 2: the prime movers behind the group's formation, was itself not
Speaker 2: a member. Instead, it was represented by its British subsidiary
Speaker 2: International General Electric and by the Overseas Group. Oh, it
Speaker 2: was called the Overseas Group, which consisted of its subsidiaries
Speaker 2: in Brazil, China, and Mexico. Over the next day decade
Speaker 2: or so, GE would acquire significant stakes and all the
Speaker 2: member companies that it did not already own.
Speaker 3: So it's fascinating, right, Yeah, GE wasn't a part of it. Oh,
Speaker 3: we're not associated with the global Cabal. It's just all
Speaker 3: of our underlings are a part of the cabal. And
Speaker 3: then as the years go on, we're gonna buy out
Speaker 3: all of the people that we don't already own that
Speaker 3: are a part of the global Cabal.
Speaker 2: So I think g G now has actually gone bankrupt.
Speaker 2: I believe, I don't know. I know that a couple
Speaker 2: of years ago, whenever I was playing the stock market
Speaker 2: that you can get a fucking ge stock for. It
Speaker 2: was like super cheap, like three bucks. It didn't even
Speaker 2: make sense how cheap it was. And because it was,
Speaker 2: it was, I guess they were talking about how it
Speaker 2: was gonna be bankrupt and so they were going to
Speaker 2: bring it to the pink lists and all this other shit.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's not doing great or if it's if
Speaker 2: it's all, unless it's already you know, shut down.
Speaker 3: Wow, I hadn't heard about that, And be honest with you,
Speaker 3: that's that's fascinating. But all right, so looking at this
Speaker 3: picture right here, this is one of their showrooms.
Speaker 4: Okay, all of.
Speaker 3: These companies, the ones that we've listed, would send in
Speaker 3: at least one of their light bulbs for quality testing,
Speaker 3: you know, the QA and QC of it. They would
Speaker 3: fill they would fill up this room with them and
Speaker 3: essentially they would make sure that they are all burning
Speaker 3: at the brightness that is required, they are burning out
Speaker 3: at the time that it's required, and that none of
Speaker 3: them are too good or too bad. It's making sure
Speaker 3: that it's a uniform across the board. In theory, that
Speaker 3: sounds great, right. Good quality assurance and quality control make
Speaker 3: for a good company and a good product.
Speaker 4: I am a believer of this.
Speaker 3: But if you're building your products specifically to fail at
Speaker 3: a certain point, then you're already screwing your customer base
Speaker 3: right off the rip.
Speaker 2: Oh you know what, I just looked up their general
Speaker 2: electric stock price. It's at two hundred and sixty eight
Speaker 2: dollars a share right now. It wasn't It didn't get
Speaker 2: down to three. It went down to thirty, like thirty
Speaker 2: five or thirty one dollars or something like that. And
Speaker 2: then they had what you would call a reverse split,
Speaker 2: which would essentially cut the amount of stock shares that
Speaker 2: are available in double the price if it was a
Speaker 2: two to one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyhow to oversee national light bulb markets and their
Speaker 2: respective development in global trade, PHOEBUS established a supervisory body
Speaker 2: chaired by Minehart of OSRAM. The cartel's other main activities
Speaker 2: were to facilitate the exchange of patents and technical know how,
Speaker 2: and to impose far reaching and long lived standards. To
Speaker 2: this day, we still use the screw type socket devised
Speaker 2: by Thomas Edison back in eighteen eighty and designed or
Speaker 2: designated rather E twenty six slash E twenty seven. Thanks
Speaker 2: to the cartel, most significantly for consumers, Phoebus expended considerable
Speaker 2: technical effort into engineering a shorter lived light bulb. So
Speaker 2: how exactly did the cartel pulled off this engineering feat.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just a matter of making an inferior or
Speaker 2: sloppy product. Anybody could have done that, But to create
Speaker 2: one that reliably failed after an agreed upon thousand hours
Speaker 2: took some doing over a number of years. The household
Speaker 2: light bulb in nineteen twenty four was already technologically sophisticated,
Speaker 2: The light yield was considerable, the burning time was easily
Speaker 2: twenty five hundred hours or more. By striving for something less,
Speaker 2: the Cartel would systematically reverse decades of progress. The details
Speaker 2: of this effort have been very slow to emerge. Some
Speaker 2: facts came to light, but in the nineteen forties when
Speaker 2: the US government investigated Ge and a number of its
Speaker 2: business partners for anti competitive practices, others.
Speaker 3: Were on go huh, oh, who could have seen that
Speaker 3: coming a mile away?
Speaker 2: Others were uncovered more recently when I and the German
Speaker 2: journalist Helmet Hoge. Hoge is that whenever you got the
Speaker 2: two dots above an oh, is that emphasize one to know.
Speaker 3: I wanted to say, it makes the hard own noise.
Speaker 3: I think I'm not an expert of the German language.
Speaker 3: When you start putting dots over vowels and lines through
Speaker 3: them and writing letters backwards, it very much us.
Speaker 4: I speak American, hell I barely.
Speaker 2: Speak English anyhow, this gentleman and the German German journalist
Speaker 2: Helmet Hoge delved into the corporate archives of Ozram and
Speaker 2: in Berlin, jointly founded in nineteen twenty by three German companies.
Speaker 2: Ozram remains one of the world's leading makers of all
Speaker 2: kinds of lighting, including state of the art LEDs. In
Speaker 2: the archives, we found meticulous correspondence between the cartel's factories
Speaker 2: and laboratories which were researching which were researching how to
Speaker 2: modify the filament and other measures to shorten the lifespan
Speaker 2: of their light bulbs.
Speaker 3: So they would have gotten away with it if they
Speaker 3: wouldn't have kept such meticulous notes of their research to
Speaker 3: screw over their customer base.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, you know. So the cartel took its
Speaker 2: business of shortening the lifetime of Bob's every bit as
Speaker 2: seriously as earlier researchers had approached their job of lengthening it.
Speaker 2: Each factory bound by the Cartel agreement, and there were hundreds,
Speaker 2: including GE's numerous licenses throughout the world, had to regularly
Speaker 2: send samples of its bulbs to a central testing laboratory
Speaker 2: in Switzerland. There the bulbs were thoroughly vetted against Cartel standards.
Speaker 2: If any factory submitted light bulb or submitted bulbs lasting
Speaker 2: longer or shorter than the regulated lifespan for its type,
Speaker 2: the factory was obliged to pay a fine. Companies were
Speaker 2: also fined for exceeding their sales quotas, which were constantly
Speaker 2: being adjusted. In nineteen twenty seven, for example, Tokyo Electric
Speaker 2: noted in a memo to the Cartel that after shortening
Speaker 2: the lives of its vacuum and gas filled light bulbs,
Speaker 2: sales had jumped five fold. This is a quote from
Speaker 2: the memo. But if the increase in our business resulting
Speaker 2: from such endeavors directly means a heavy penalty, it must
Speaker 2: be a thing out of reason and shall quite discourage us.
Speaker 3: So basically, they got fined for doing too good, and
Speaker 3: they got fined for doing too bad. They wanted to
Speaker 3: be one uniform thing across the board, and they're basically
Speaker 3: saying like, bro, if you're gonna find us for doing
Speaker 3: business too, well, how is this beneficial for us? Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: it was more like beneficial or not. You better do
Speaker 3: what we say or we'll shut you down. That's how
Speaker 3: cartel works. This is basically mafioso's style business. And again
Speaker 3: this is in the nineteen twenties. Some would say the
Speaker 3: heyday of certain mafia families will find you until you
Speaker 3: run out of business, biach, or your entire factory will
Speaker 3: just suffer this crazy electrical issue and you won't have
Speaker 3: a fucking factory.
Speaker 2: Here's that option as well. Maybe there will be a
Speaker 2: fire of sorts.
Speaker 3: You know, electrical fires happen every day, and add an
Speaker 3: electronics factory. Man, that is that is crazy. Did you
Speaker 3: hear about what happened in Tokyo?
Speaker 5: That?
Speaker 4: Oh man, it's exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: There were continual reports of Cartel members attempts to restore
Speaker 2: the burning time of their bulbs to the old levels
Speaker 2: and defiance of the watchful eyes of Phoebus. At one point,
Speaker 2: some members, oh surais surah?
Speaker 4: Surreptitiously?
Speaker 2: Is that how you say that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Surreptitiously.
Speaker 2: I've never heard that word in my life anyway, Some
Speaker 2: members surreptitiously introduce longer lived bulbs by designing them to
Speaker 2: run at a voltage higher than the standard line voltage.
Speaker 2: After the Phoebus Development Department's customary report of voltage statistics
Speaker 2: revealed such products enhancements, ant On Phillips head of Phillips
Speaker 2: complained to an executive at International General Electric. This is
Speaker 2: his quote. This you will agree with me is a
Speaker 2: very dangerous practice and is having a most detrimental influence
Speaker 2: on the total turnover of the Phoebus parties. After the
Speaker 2: very strenuous efforts we made to emerge from a period
Speaker 2: of long life lamps, it is one of the greatest
Speaker 2: importance that we do not sink back into the same
Speaker 2: mire by paying no attention to voltages and supplying lamps
Speaker 2: that will have a very prolonged life.
Speaker 3: Basically, he's saying, listen, my boy, we spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time and effort to make the products burn out
Speaker 3: at a certain time. Now you got these do gooders
Speaker 3: over here that are trying to make things that can
Speaker 3: outshine our bulbs. This is not good for business. This
Speaker 3: is not good at all. We got to shut that down.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, hey, dude, I mean it used to be
Speaker 2: that you used to only be able to find reggie
Speaker 2: on the streets. Now you can't find it anywhere. You know. Eventually, people,
Speaker 2: you know, just forget about things. The good old times.
Speaker 2: Those uh, those those old Willie Nelson cigarettes, They ain't
Speaker 2: around no more.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: To that point, Let's say it's a drug to give
Speaker 3: it to another, you know, situation that might be similar.
Speaker 3: All Let's say that all of the drugs in your street,
Speaker 3: and let's say the the coke market, you can't find
Speaker 3: coke that hasn't been stepped on.
Speaker 4: Okay, it's just not a thing.
Speaker 3: Then all of a sudden, you got some new guy
Speaker 3: on the block that is selling one hundred percent pure cocaine.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, not on this block. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Now, all my customers are going to you, and they're
Speaker 3: getting a better fix than what I've been giving them
Speaker 3: for ten years.
Speaker 4: Oh no, we're gonna have to shut that down right now.
Speaker 2: Or they start selling meth. It lasts longer, it's cheaper,
Speaker 2: and it's easier to get your hands on.
Speaker 3: That's true, that's true, But I mean, I guess it
Speaker 3: depends on what the coke is cut with right, because
Speaker 3: if you cut it with heroin, then you're gonna make
Speaker 3: way more of an addicted customer base than anything.
Speaker 4: So they can go get the one hundred percent pure
Speaker 4: all they want.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe that wasn't an exact apples to apples comparison,
Speaker 3: but that's my point. The cartel was looking at these
Speaker 3: guys as like, yo, you're my boy. You're not gonna
Speaker 3: come up in here and make some long lasting life balls.
Speaker 4: We're not gonna go back into the meyer.
Speaker 3: That was the free market where everybody's trying to make
Speaker 3: a better product.
Speaker 4: And that's what you know.
Speaker 3: Well, at the end of the day, reign supreme on
Speaker 3: who gets the business because we need repeat customers. You
Speaker 3: can make you up ten thousand hour light bulb. How
Speaker 3: is that gonna help me pay my chairman? How is
Speaker 3: that gonna help me pay my bills? Oh no, no,
Speaker 3: you're not taking food off of my table.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, they're like, because we got that baking soda.
Speaker 2: That so stupid.
Speaker 4: That's always so stupid. But yeah, it plays well.
Speaker 5: It plays well.
Speaker 2: As this episode reveals, tweaking a light bulb's rated voltage
Speaker 2: was one way to modify the product's life. Another was
Speaker 2: to adjust the current, as GE engineers did to decrease
Speaker 2: the lifespan of its flashlight bulbs. A GE flashlight bulb
Speaker 2: in the pre Cartel days was designed to last longer
Speaker 2: than three changes of batteries. This lifespan was then cut
Speaker 2: to two battery changes, and in nineteen thirty two, the
Speaker 2: GE Engineering Department proposed that the bulb lasts no longer
Speaker 2: than one battery. Ain't that a bach?
Speaker 3: Can you imagine that if you go for a flashlight
Speaker 3: and as soon as the batteries run out, the bulb
Speaker 3: has to be changed out.
Speaker 2: I mean it sounds about right. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: know the last time I used a flashlight to death?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Fair usually just use your phone. Well, which is interesting,
Speaker 2: how come the flashlight on your phone never goes out?
Speaker 4: It's led.
Speaker 2: These don't last forever, though, damn near the last A
Speaker 2: little while so two, a GE engineer named Predo wrote
Speaker 2: in a memo and saying we would suggest increasing Mazda
Speaker 2: lamp number ten from point twenty seven amps to point
Speaker 2: thirty and thirteen point fourteen and thirty one from point
Speaker 2: thirty to point thirty five. This would result This would
Speaker 2: result in increases of candle power of eleven and sixteen percent, respectively.
Speaker 2: That boost and illumination, he suggested, would be acceptable to
Speaker 2: all flashlight users, despite the fact that the higher current
Speaker 2: would shorten not just the bulb's life but also the batteries.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, odd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you see, it's small tweaks, and this is what
Speaker 3: the engineering marvels of this type of technology is a
Speaker 3: small tweak in the amperage and a small tweak in
Speaker 3: the wattage will actually double down in making even more
Speaker 3: repeat customers happen. Yeah, it's a brighter flashlight, and the
Speaker 3: consumer that's buying it is like, oh man, look at this.
Speaker 4: This new flashlight is so much brighter. It's so much better.
Speaker 3: Never mind the fact that the bulb was gonna burn
Speaker 3: out quicker and the batteries are gonna get drained faster.
Speaker 3: That's beside the point. The consumer feels like they just
Speaker 3: got hooked up. In reality, they just got doubly screwed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, the cartel's justification for these changes was that
Speaker 2: at the higher current levels, the bulbs produce more lumens
Speaker 2: per want alas more current means not only more brightness
Speaker 2: but also higher filament temperature and therefore shorter life. Indeed,
Speaker 2: much of the cartel's life limiting research focused on the filament,
Speaker 2: including its material, its shape, and the evenness of its dimensions.
Speaker 2: Over the course of nearly a decade, the Cartel succeeded
Speaker 2: in this quest. The average life of a standard reference
Speaker 2: light bulb produced in dozens of Phoebus members fact factories
Speaker 2: drop by a third between nineteen twenty six and fiscal
Speaker 2: year of thirty three to thirty four, from eighteen hundred
Speaker 2: hours to just twelve hundred and five hours. At that point,
Speaker 2: no factory was producing bulbs lasting more than fifteen hundred hours.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Now this is also a key factor.
Speaker 3: They were the Much of the Cartel's life limiting research
Speaker 3: focused on the filament, including its material, its shape, and
Speaker 3: even in the evenness of its dimension. If you have
Speaker 3: ever noticed when you have a light bulb burnout, you
Speaker 3: notice it almost always burns out at the exact same point.
Speaker 3: Have you ever looked at the filament on a burned
Speaker 3: out bulb? Yeah, and yeah, I understand the film. It's
Speaker 3: that the little squiggly piece in the middle. I get
Speaker 3: that right. But have you noticed that almost always that
Speaker 3: little piece burns at the exact same point, no matter
Speaker 3: if it's a bowl from this company or that company.
Speaker 4: It's almost it's about a third of the way.
Speaker 3: If you were to like draw a straight line that
Speaker 3: is the filament, it's about one third of the way
Speaker 3: beyond the point of contact.
Speaker 4: It's almost like.
Speaker 3: They built it the quote unquote evenness of its dimensions.
Speaker 3: They made one spot a little thinner, knowing that once
Speaker 3: it got hot enough over time, because metal metal loses.
Speaker 4: Its strength over time.
Speaker 3: Right, if you take some metal, heat it, cool it,
Speaker 3: heat it, cool it, heat it, cool it, and you
Speaker 3: do that over and over and over again, Eventually it's
Speaker 3: gonna snap.
Speaker 4: The historicity of the metal is going to break.
Speaker 3: You do that for a small filament, and you do
Speaker 3: it in such a way, You design it in such
Speaker 3: a way to where there's one little spot. To the
Speaker 3: naked eye, you're not gonna see that it's any thinner,
Speaker 3: but under careful observation.
Speaker 4: You definitely could see it.
Speaker 3: And you do that as a standard across all light
Speaker 3: bulb filaments. Now you have it to where no matter what,
Speaker 3: it's gonna go down. This is what they were paying
Speaker 3: the vast amount of attention to.
Speaker 2: Which is actually amazing that you don't have. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm sure they have to exist, just you know, random
Speaker 2: normal people creating their own light bulbs. I imagine it's
Speaker 2: not that hard. If you go back and look at
Speaker 2: the old blueprints or something like that, you blow your
Speaker 2: own blast, you learn how to make in piece together
Speaker 2: the filament and everything else. I mean, I'm surprised there
Speaker 2: isn't some random rogue etsy company that's doing that.
Speaker 4: I mean, you could.
Speaker 3: It's not like this as some sort of like super
Speaker 3: If you were to make your own light bulb, somebody's
Speaker 3: gonna come knock on your door because you're cutting into
Speaker 3: their business or anything like that. You have this type
Speaker 3: of thing, but it's expensive, right, It's a lot of
Speaker 3: extra work to do something that you could go to
Speaker 3: the dollar store and buy for a dollar.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean I get it. But yeah, So anyway,
Speaker 2: it says, of course, given the collective ingenuity of the Cartels,
Speaker 2: engineers and scientists, it should have been possible to design
Speaker 2: a light bulb that was both bright and long lived,
Speaker 2: but such a product would have interfered with members desire
Speaker 2: to sell more bulbs and sell more bulbs. They did
Speaker 2: at least Initially, in the fiscal year of nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: six to twenty seven, for instance, the Cartel sold three
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five point seven million light bulbs worldwide.
Speaker 2: Four years later, sales had climbed to four hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty point eight million. What's more, despite the fact that
Speaker 2: the actual cost of manufacturing were dropping, the Cartel maintained
Speaker 2: more and less stable prices and therefore higher profit margins.
Speaker 2: From its inception until the end of nineteen thirty the
Speaker 2: Cartel retained its overwhelming share of a growing market, but
Speaker 2: the good times would not last.
Speaker 3: So that's another interesting point, right, the fact that the
Speaker 3: costs of manufacturing were dropping, but the Cartel maintained more
Speaker 3: or less stable prices and therefore higher profit margins. So
Speaker 3: let's say that light bulb is being sold for a dollar.
Speaker 3: It might cost the company a quarter to make it,
Speaker 3: just throwing out a number here. So as technology progressed,
Speaker 3: it got to where that light bulb would cost actually
Speaker 3: a dime to make. Then it would go into the
Speaker 3: point where everybody actually costs it a nickel to make.
Speaker 3: But the public was already used to spending a dollar
Speaker 3: for the light bulb. Why would we cut down prices.
Speaker 3: If we're here to make money, we're already building a
Speaker 3: defunct product that's only good for so long so that
Speaker 3: they could buy more. Why would we not just keep
Speaker 3: this where it's at. And this is also how big
Speaker 3: business has operated for forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, it's pretty crazy. Just like how I'm trying
Speaker 2: to find the average household income in the United States.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I'm not worried about that. I was trying
Speaker 2: to see how much a light bulb cost back then,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't look it up quick well.
Speaker 3: I mean, not all houses had electricity also, right, we're
Speaker 3: talking about the early nineteen twenties into the nineteen thirties
Speaker 3: in America, most houses had power ran to it. But
Speaker 3: I mean that's not a worldwide thing. It depended on
Speaker 3: where you were at. I mean, hell, even to this day,
Speaker 3: one in ten households in Russia don't have indoor plumbing.
Speaker 4: Right. But you also gotta understand also depending on.
Speaker 3: If you were more towards the city or were you
Speaker 3: in rural America and you were using still gas lamps.
Speaker 3: Until the nineteen fifties, it varied, but overall, as a standard,
Speaker 3: more and more people around the world had electricity ran
Speaker 3: to their households. Christmas lights became more of a thing,
Speaker 3: not just candles that were burning in the window. It
Speaker 3: was absolutely becoming. It's for progression, right, It's the way
Speaker 3: of technology, the same way it's always been. More dams
Speaker 3: were being built around the world, especially in America, and
Speaker 3: it was making hydro electric power.
Speaker 4: This was powering whole cities, whole counties. It's a thing.
Speaker 4: It absolutely was a thing.
Speaker 2: And this is why we're never like we could be
Speaker 2: advancing so much faster, Like if you really think about it,
Speaker 2: like we should not be running on like gas and
Speaker 2: oil anymore. Like the technology is there to wipe it.
Speaker 2: I mean, of course you're still gonna need oil for
Speaker 2: plastics and everything else. But I'm talking about just using
Speaker 2: for fuel that should have been done with probably sixty
Speaker 2: seventy years ago.
Speaker 3: Bro, whenever we created nuclear power that should have replaced
Speaker 3: all of this. But here we are, We're still using
Speaker 3: mostly fossil fuels to power our homes. It's ridiculous to me.
Speaker 2: So what nuclear power that was created back in the sixties.
Speaker 4: No, we just learned about down that other episode.
Speaker 3: Remember it was actually nineteen Oh shit, now you got
Speaker 3: me now you got me. It was like nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 3: the first time they actually made a nuclear reactor. That's
Speaker 3: not Oppenheimer though, No, no, not a nuclear bomb. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's the same thing like when you said with rockets, right,
Speaker 3: Parsons made a rocket in the nineteen twenties, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't a rocket that could carry a payload. That didn't
Speaker 3: come around until the V two rocket from Germany. So
Speaker 3: it's like at that point it was more like an
Speaker 3: amateur rocket just to make something shoot up.
Speaker 4: It was a different thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we made nuclear power before they had a nuclear bomb.
Speaker 3: It was kind of using the same principle, but one
Speaker 3: is being used for power and one is being used
Speaker 3: for you know, global power, if you will. But that
Speaker 3: different conversations for different days. No, I'm with you. We
Speaker 3: have the technology and the capabilities to have way cheaper
Speaker 3: and more efficient electricity. Hell, Nikolai Tesll was able to
Speaker 3: make this shit jump for miles with no wires. We
Speaker 3: have his blueprints. We have this technology. But they're not
Speaker 3: gonna do that because it's gonna shut out all of
Speaker 3: the other businesses that have sprung up with our current system.
Speaker 2: I actually think that it's not even it wouldn't even
Speaker 2: make it cheaper, It would just make it free, especially
Speaker 2: if you're pulling on what Tesla was talking about, how
Speaker 2: you can essentially just pull it from the ether right
Speaker 2: like you know, you go up high enough, there is
Speaker 2: electricity that's always there if you have some kind of
Speaker 2: antenna that you know, whenever you're riding around, you're always
Speaker 2: going to be underneath the sky unless you're going through
Speaker 2: the trees, which you know, even if you're going through
Speaker 2: the woods or something like that, you probably have some
Speaker 2: kind of battery that's going to hold it for you
Speaker 2: way better than a solar battery would. Especially since this
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm not gonna get too technic with it,
Speaker 2: but is it's it's absolutely fascinating about how it's just
Speaker 2: so much more for money than it is for advancement.
Speaker 2: It's only advancement whenever they find a better way to
Speaker 2: make more money off of a newer thing.
Speaker 3: Always, dude, as we have said a million times and
Speaker 3: we will say a million more times, follow the money.
Speaker 4: That's how it always breaks down.
Speaker 2: As the cartel continued a policy of artificially elevated prices,
Speaker 2: competitors spotted a golden opportunity to sell cheaper, if often
Speaker 2: inferior quality goods. Particularly threatening was the lot of inexpensive
Speaker 2: bulbs from Japan. Although Tokyo Electric was a cartel member,
Speaker 2: it had no control over the hundreds of smaller, family
Speaker 2: owned workshops that produced bulbs almost entirely by hand. Japanese
Speaker 2: consumers apparently preferred the higher quality products sold by the
Speaker 2: larger manufacturers, and so the majority of these cheap handmade
Speaker 2: bulbs were exported to the United States, Europe and elsewhere
Speaker 2: where they sold for a fraction of the price of
Speaker 2: the Phoebus bulb, and well below the average production cost
Speaker 2: of the cartel bulb too. From nineteen twenty two to
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three, Japan's annual output of incandescent bulbs grew
Speaker 2: from forty five million to three hundred million.
Speaker 3: Daniel absolutely and again, we can't have all these do
Speaker 3: gooders getting in the way of our profit margins.
Speaker 4: Something's got to go.
Speaker 2: However, as Phillip's historian ij Blanken has noted, these cheap
Speaker 2: bulbs weren't necessarily a bargain, owing to its greater current consumption.
Speaker 2: The true cost of using one of the poor quality
Speaker 2: Japanese lamps. Measured over the life of the lfe of
Speaker 2: the lamp was many times greater than whatever the consumers
Speaker 2: had saved by buying a cheap lamp rather than a
Speaker 2: Phillips one. Powerful and influential though it was, the Phoebus
Speaker 2: Cartel was short lived. Within six years of its formation,
Speaker 2: the cartel was already starting to struggle. Between nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: and nineteen thirty three, its sales volume dropped by more
Speaker 2: than twenty percent, even as the overall market lighting or
Speaker 2: for lighting was growing. The cartel was also weakened by
Speaker 2: the expiration of GE's basic light bulb patents in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine, thirty and thirty three, by occasional conflicts among
Speaker 2: its members, and by legal attacks, particularly the particularly in
Speaker 2: the United States. What ultimately killed Phoebus, however, was World
Speaker 2: War II. As the members host countries went to war,
Speaker 2: close coordination became impossible. The cartel's nineteen twenty four agreement,
Speaker 2: which was supposed to last until nineteen fifty five, was
Speaker 2: nullified in nineteen forty.
Speaker 3: So before we continue, allegedly the Phoebus Cartel was short
Speaker 3: lived because all the countries that we have listed today
Speaker 3: have you noticed all went to war with each other
Speaker 3: in World War two, Tokyo Electric, the Oswin Company, AEI,
Speaker 3: which is the British company, and ge the American company.
Speaker 4: So how crazy is it? Walk with me here? How
Speaker 4: crazy is it.
Speaker 3: That these big companies, these big countries all went to
Speaker 3: war with each other, and after the war their entire
Speaker 3: industrial complex was shelled to shit. And then after the
Speaker 3: war they were no longer able to manufacture the same
Speaker 3: amount of goods that they once did because the manufacturing
Speaker 3: facility was no longer there. So then they all had
Speaker 3: to come play ball with whatever company and country still
Speaker 3: had a manufacturing basis. Now a lot of them rebuilt.
Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong, but I am of the belief
Speaker 3: that the Phoebus took cartel took on a new form.
Speaker 3: Probably didn't call themselves this, but you still had to
Speaker 3: come and play ball this way if you wanted to
Speaker 3: rebuild your electrics company in these countries that just so
Speaker 3: happen to all go to war with each other at
Speaker 3: that time.
Speaker 2: It is essentially grandfathered in at that point. You didn't
Speaker 2: even necessarily need any paperwork. It was just kind of
Speaker 2: like everybody.
Speaker 4: Knew right exactly exactly so.
Speaker 2: Though long gone, the Phoebus cartels still cast a shadow today.
Speaker 2: That's true in part because the lighting industry is now
Speaker 2: going through its most tumultuous period of technological change since
Speaker 2: its invention of the incandescent bulb. After more than a
Speaker 2: century of dominance, these bulbs are now being phased out
Speaker 2: in favor of compact fluorescent and especially LED bulbs. Consumers
Speaker 2: are expected to pay more money for bulbs that are
Speaker 2: up to ten times as efficient and that are touted
Speaker 2: to last a fantastically long time up to fifty thousand
Speaker 2: hours in the case of LED lights. In normal usage,
Speaker 2: these lamps will last so long that their owners will
Speaker 2: probably sell the house therein before having to change the bulbs.
Speaker 2: Whether or not these price ofier bulbs will actually last
Speaker 2: that long is still an open question, and not one
Speaker 2: that the average consumer is likely to investigate. There are
Speaker 2: actually reports of CFLs and LED lamps burning out long
Speaker 2: before their rated lifetimes were reached. Such incidents may well
Speaker 2: have resulted from nothing more than sinister than careless manufacturing,
Speaker 2: but there is no denying that these far more technologically
Speaker 2: sophisticated products offer tempting opportunities for the inclusion of purposely
Speaker 2: engineered life shortening defects. After all, few people will complain
Speaker 2: or even notice if a ball burns out after nine
Speaker 2: years after it's installed rather than fourteen. True, today's lighting
Speaker 2: industry is much larger and more diverse than it was
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties and thirties, and government monitoring of
Speaker 2: collusive behavior is more vigilant. Nevertheless, the allure for business
Speaker 2: to cooperate in such a market is strong, and the
Speaker 2: Phoebus cartel shows how it could succeed.
Speaker 3: So before we get into the is as to prove
Speaker 3: further hold on ok ok that's more of a like
Speaker 3: what his sources worth. Yeah, so I would argue that
Speaker 3: again the Phoebus Cartel might have gone by the wayside
Speaker 3: on paper, right, But again let's talk about this. The Netherlands,
Speaker 3: they weren't really involved with World War two too much,
Speaker 3: but we still have the Phillips company today, the UK, France,
Speaker 3: Brazil which that was a ge company. China they got
Speaker 3: destroyed by Japan, Tokyo Electric got destroyed by America. All
Speaker 3: these countries all had a hand in the electrical conversation
Speaker 3: and all but I would argue two of them I'll
Speaker 3: give you three with the subudendum for the Netherlands for Phillips.
Speaker 3: But then again, Phillips manufacturing then started going out of
Speaker 3: the Netherlands and went more to Asia for sweatshop labor.
Speaker 3: But that's a conversation for another day. My point is
Speaker 3: the manufacturing capabilities of these countries and therefore these companies,
Speaker 3: they were gone after World War when the war kicked off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't believe the Phoebus cartel was still operating at
Speaker 3: that moment because the war effort was on. Now you
Speaker 3: needed way more light bulbs for inside all the tanks,
Speaker 3: inside all the aircraft, inside all the ships. So it
Speaker 3: was go go go wartime economy for the entire world.
Speaker 3: Right once that was over and once the dust settled,
Speaker 3: How many of these companies could even continue to operate,
Speaker 3: let alone if they wanted to.
Speaker 4: How many of them actually could? There was a few.
Speaker 3: They decided to dominate the market, and they have for
Speaker 3: the entirety, leading up to fluorescent bulbs and leading up
Speaker 3: to LEDs for the last I would argue a century.
Speaker 3: It's very difficult to find an incandescent bulb that is
Speaker 3: rated to last longer than a thousand hours. That is
Speaker 3: still something that you have issues with to this day.
Speaker 2: So and also just think about it like this too.
Speaker 2: So they were trying their hardest to try and minimalize
Speaker 2: the life of the light bulb so that the consumer
Speaker 2: will continue to buy more. And now they're creating light
Speaker 2: bulbs that will last longer than you are living in
Speaker 2: your house or in your apartment or whatever. Usually you
Speaker 2: change one light bulb map, you ain't got to worry
Speaker 2: about it again, right, especially if you're using LEDs now,
Speaker 2: think about it like that, they're no longer worried about
Speaker 2: you consuming more and more light bulbs. Could it be
Speaker 2: because the LED is doing a different job that they
Speaker 2: have in mind for them.
Speaker 3: Possibly, but I mean they also operate differently, right, So
Speaker 3: LED stands for light emitting diode and it's like a
Speaker 3: byproduct of the diode doing its function. It does produce
Speaker 3: light and a very low amount of heat, which is
Speaker 3: why they're able to last so long. And I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that this was discovered by accident by any means,
Speaker 3: but only in the past few decades did anybody think
Speaker 3: about seeing this And like, wait a minute, what if
Speaker 3: we were to put that into bold form and sell
Speaker 3: it as a replacement for the light bulb, and if
Speaker 3: you look at the history of LED's that was actually
Speaker 3: shut down for a good number of years by the
Speaker 3: what I would say is the continuation of the Phoebus
Speaker 3: cartel until more and more electronics companies decided to just
Speaker 3: run with that idea to make money and whatever the
Speaker 3: remnants of the Phoebus cartel could possibly be. This to
Speaker 3: this day and age, I feel like they are, as
Speaker 3: of this moment, going by the wayside. But that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that they didn't hold the dominance for the last century.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So LEDs do hold a different function, but they also
Speaker 3: are not necessarily better. It depends on what you're trying
Speaker 3: to use them for. And I know people are gonna
Speaker 3: argue about that. Listen, I'm not saying that they are
Speaker 3: not brighter and quote unquote cleaner light and they last
Speaker 3: longer and all that until the point that the article made.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna notice the difference if your LED bowl
Speaker 3: burns out at nine years as opposed to fifteen years.
Speaker 3: At that point, it's been so long since you thought
Speaker 3: about changing the light bulb that when one burns out,
Speaker 3: you're not thinking. Wait minute, I just changed that light
Speaker 3: bulb a decade ago. It said fifteen years. You're not
Speaker 3: gonna think about it like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're you're not even gonna worry
Speaker 2: about it. I mean I every time I go and
Speaker 2: even change like my wiper blades on my car, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't remember the last time I changed them. And
Speaker 2: so you're not gonna think about a warranty like, oh,
Speaker 2: this only lasted, you know, six months, and it says
Speaker 2: right here that the guarantee is gonna last a year
Speaker 2: or whatever. I mean, I don't know if there is
Speaker 2: such a guarantee, but it's like, you know, if you
Speaker 2: ever seen Tommy Boyce the brake pads warranty, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like, you know, just like that, you're
Speaker 2: not gonna think about it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely So, Now with all of that being said, we
Speaker 3: got to keep that third eye all the way open,
Speaker 3: as we do. And there are those that say that
Speaker 3: this entire conversation the Phoebus cartel is a complete hoax,
Speaker 3: It's complete Internet bullshit and all of this, never mind
Speaker 3: the fact that there is receipts, never mind the fact
Speaker 3: that you can see who the cartel members were and
Speaker 3: what they were doing in four what purpose? Okay, they
Speaker 3: still are gonna throw shade towards it, because that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: So this is a little thing from hacker News. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's a blog post, and you're gonna have your haters
Speaker 3: stepping on that hater rate on this.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna read it here.
Speaker 3: It says the planned obsolescence of incandescent light bulbs is
Speaker 3: largely a myth. You never mind everything that we just
Speaker 3: read in all the verified sources. They're just gonna say, no, Dad,
Speaker 3: that's not what happened. While there are plenty of real
Speaker 3: examples of planned obsolescens with incandescent light bulbs, there are
Speaker 3: engineering trade offs between longevity and efficiency. Basically, the longer
Speaker 3: lasting a bulb is the dimmer and less efficient it is.
Speaker 3: If you've ever seen any of the supposed one hundred
Speaker 3: year old light bulbs, I love how they say supposed,
Speaker 3: like that's a okay. You'll notice that they are extremely
Speaker 3: dim Before, during, and after the Phoebus Cartel's incandescent light
Speaker 3: bulbs were and still are standardized to one thousand hours.
Speaker 3: That's not true. They used to last upwards of two
Speaker 3: or three thousand hours. But Okay, why because that happens
Speaker 3: to be a good trade off between longevity and efficiency.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't make sense to waste an extra five
Speaker 3: dollars on electricity to make a one dollar light bulb
Speaker 3: last longer. You have always been able to buy a
Speaker 3: long life incandescent light bulb, and still can to this day.
Speaker 3: They're called rough service bulbs made for ovens and closets
Speaker 3: and areas used infrequently. People just never use them for
Speaker 3: general purpose lighting because they're dim and power hungry. Okay,
Speaker 3: right there, I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on
Speaker 3: this guy. So oven lights, refrigerators, and closets, do you
Speaker 3: know why those bulbs last longer?
Speaker 4: Jonathan?
Speaker 3: Just off the top, I don't. They're used less frequently.
Speaker 3: He literally said it right here. How often does your
Speaker 3: oven light get turned on? As opposed to your kitchen
Speaker 3: light over your table? The light bulb and your refrigerator
Speaker 3: only operates for a few seconds while the door is
Speaker 3: open and then it goes off again. Now, how long
Speaker 3: does it take for a few seconds opening like that
Speaker 3: to go one thousand hours?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, I mean yeah, it's gonna take forever for
Speaker 2: a thousand hours of you opening and shutting, I mean
Speaker 2: most of the time. Like if you leave your refrigerator
Speaker 2: door open for longer than ten seconds, or if like
Speaker 2: your kid goes into your fridge and it's like he's
Speaker 2: just like standing in the fridge and standing in the
Speaker 2: door for longer than ten seconds, You're like shut that
Speaker 2: fucking door, like you're letting.
Speaker 4: All the cold out, you know, exactly. And the whole
Speaker 4: thing about closets.
Speaker 3: The light in your closet is probably the same one
Speaker 3: that's over your kitchen table, but again, it will last
Speaker 3: longer than the one over your kitchen table because it's
Speaker 3: only used while you're in your closet. This hit in
Speaker 3: a rough service bulb. It's a regular bulb. This This
Speaker 3: is what I'm saying. So even the people that are
Speaker 3: throwing the shade make no sense out loud, but let's go.
Speaker 3: If you read the report by the British Monopolies Commission
Speaker 3: quoted in this article, you'll find that they came to
Speaker 3: this same conclusion. Pop science articles and Reddit love to
Speaker 3: bring out the Phoebus cartel over and over as an
Speaker 3: example of planned ops less but always completely ignore the
Speaker 3: factors that go into making a good incandescent light. Bulb,
Speaker 3: and he put out this service thing from the UK.
Speaker 3: We could read that if you want. It doesn't matter
Speaker 3: to me, but it's basically a monopolies clause.
Speaker 4: But here's the problem.
Speaker 3: The Phoebus cartel isn't necessarily a monopoly because monopoly laws
Speaker 3: can only be applied within one country. I don't think
Speaker 3: there are international monopoly laws that apply whenever you're talking
Speaker 3: about countries that went to war with each other. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's like international war crimes laws and things like that.
Speaker 3: It's not the Geneva Convention. It's fucking light.
Speaker 2: Bulbs, dude, right right, I mean it's like, if you
Speaker 2: that's like calling Facebook a monopoly, right it all, it's
Speaker 2: overarching every country. You know, most countries are using it,
Speaker 2: and maybe you could call it a monopoly in that sense,
Speaker 2: but I don't think that's the correct term.
Speaker 3: It's not because there are other social media apps that
Speaker 3: also bridge the gap and are in all other countries.
Speaker 2: I guess Meta not Facebook, But still, okay.
Speaker 4: Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 3: Meta is a international company, but it's not necessarily a monopoly.
Speaker 3: There's all kinds of social networks that you could be
Speaker 3: using instead of the metaverse. So the same way, there's
Speaker 3: all kinds of You don't have to buy a Phillips bulb,
Speaker 3: you don't have to buy a ge bulb.
Speaker 4: You can buy a Tokyo Electric bulb.
Speaker 3: But nobody's paying attention to what the business meetings are
Speaker 3: of the conglomerates that go on behind closed doors. And
Speaker 3: what's the same thing with banks? Yeah, okay, so you
Speaker 3: don't have to bank with Capital One. You can bank
Speaker 3: with Chase, you can bank with Regions, you can bank
Speaker 3: with it doesn't matter name your bank, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: They all answer to the Builderberg group. They all answer
Speaker 3: to the Rothchilds. So you can't find your nation's bank
Speaker 3: for doing, or you can't say that you're holding a
Speaker 3: global monopoly or you're a country wide monopoly.
Speaker 4: Whenever you have options that you have the options.
Speaker 3: And how can you prove that your mom and pop
Speaker 3: bank down the street is in cahoots with Capital One?
Speaker 3: You can't, right, but you're probably gonna go with the
Speaker 3: bigger bank because they'll give you better rates depending what
Speaker 3: you see. What I'm saying, it's it's not technically a monopoly,
Speaker 3: even though the big dogs in the conversation are all in.
Speaker 2: Cahoots, right, right, it's it's the overarching law. I don't
Speaker 2: want to say law, but just the the guideline. So
Speaker 2: it's like even the banks they have to deal with
Speaker 2: like the was it the FCC or something like that
Speaker 2: right to where there are certain laws that you can't
Speaker 2: like you have to charge a certain percentage or you
Speaker 2: can't charge up to it past a certain percentage or
Speaker 2: something like that. But yeah, I mean they're all essentially
Speaker 2: doing the same thing, and that's how they stay in business.
Speaker 2: That's how some companies get bigger. Some companies never get
Speaker 2: very big because some of them are just more stable.
Speaker 4: Agreed.
Speaker 3: And then there was somebody that actually, uh answered to
Speaker 3: this I wanted to read here. It says the whole before, during,
Speaker 3: and after the Phoebus card Cartel, rather incandescent lightbulbs were
Speaker 3: and still our standardized to a thousand hours. Why because
Speaker 3: it happens to be a good trade off between longevity inefficiency.
Speaker 3: I would believe this if the cartel find members based
Speaker 3: off of the inefficiency of their light bulbs relative to
Speaker 3: light produce lumens per watt right and find according to
Speaker 3: this or allow longer life bulbs if they met a
Speaker 3: lumen per watt efficiency target, or even if they added
Speaker 3: a minimum life to ensure that consumers got quality and
Speaker 3: find producers that produced bulbs that were.
Speaker 4: Too low life. They didn't.
Speaker 3: They find members who produced lights that lasted longer regardless
Speaker 3: of bulb efficiency, because that decision is Yeah, because the
Speaker 3: decision to limit life bulb life to one thousand hours
Speaker 3: had obvious financial benefits for the cartel members.
Speaker 4: I think it's a pretty generous.
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty generous to think that this policy
Speaker 3: was solely based on wanting what is best for consumers.
Speaker 2: God, some people, Dude.
Speaker 4: It's agreed. I agree with this guy.
Speaker 3: He's saying that there's no way that this was Oh,
Speaker 3: it was just the perfect trade off of longevity inefficiency.
Speaker 3: If that's the case, then why didn't they find them
Speaker 3: for making because they wanted the standard quality, right, they
Speaker 3: sent them all to that quality assurance and quality control
Speaker 3: guy who's going to make sure they're not burning too
Speaker 3: bright and doing all this.
Speaker 4: They're burning out when they're supposed to.
Speaker 3: If you had a company that was making bulbs that
Speaker 3: would burn out at five hundred hours, why didn't they
Speaker 3: find that guy?
Speaker 4: They didn't.
Speaker 3: Okay, they find you if you made one that lasted
Speaker 3: fifteen to two thousand hours. It was never about making
Speaker 3: a quality product. It was making sure that it met
Speaker 3: a certain standard and did not go beyond it.
Speaker 2: Right, So I misunderstood that, he goes I think it's
Speaker 2: pretty generous to think that this policy was solely based
Speaker 2: on wanting what was best for consumers. Yeah. I agree
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent.
Speaker 3: So it says there was still an anti competitive cartel
Speaker 3: or it was still a competitive cartel. The Phoebus cartel
Speaker 3: wasn't just about light bulb lifespan, but also bulb price.
Speaker 3: They also used their power to increase the price of bulbs.
Speaker 3: The fact that they converged on a practical trade off
Speaker 3: in terms of lifespan and energy costs doesn't change their
Speaker 3: anti can competitive nature. Well, you don't have to be
Speaker 3: anti competitive if you're all on the same page with
Speaker 3: what you're charging. Even when the price of manufacturing goes down,
Speaker 3: you make sure that you're charging the same amount. You're
Speaker 3: making more profit margins, so you don't have to try
Speaker 3: to cut out the legs of your competitor if your
Speaker 3: competitors are making it. It's the same thing with the
Speaker 3: like let's talk about the beverage industry. You go buy
Speaker 3: a twenty ounce coke or you go buy a twenty
Speaker 3: ounce pepsi.
Speaker 4: They're the same price.
Speaker 3: Even though one could cut out the other one right
Speaker 3: one could sell it for fifty cents a drink right
Speaker 3: now to knock out the other one from the market.
Speaker 3: But they're not gonna do that. It's not because they're
Speaker 3: gonna lose money. They're not worried about it. The beverage
Speaker 3: industry makes way more money than what they know what
Speaker 3: to do with. They're doing it because it maintains the standard.
Speaker 3: They're in cahoots with each other. You see what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what Walmart did to kmart rip those the
Speaker 2: blue light.
Speaker 4: Cell Indeed, talk about lights. There you go, youat on
Speaker 4: colored bulbs.
Speaker 3: There it is now the conversation about new Phoebus, the
Speaker 3: led cartel brother It is a short one. It's not
Speaker 3: a very long article, but I thought it was interesting
Speaker 3: as we're talking about how I'm still of the belief
Speaker 3: that the Phoebus cartel didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 4: They may have rebranded, they may call.
Speaker 3: Themselves something else these days, but the elites, for lack
Speaker 3: of better words, the powers that be the made sure
Speaker 3: that the standard was maintained at a thousand hours for
Speaker 3: the last century. I think that that has gone by
Speaker 3: the wayside in favor of LEDs. But again, it's not
Speaker 3: gonna They're not going to lose their power grip. They're
Speaker 3: just gonna shift gears and take over the LED market.
Speaker 3: Let's learn about it.
Speaker 2: So clearly, LED bulbs seem to be in the grip
Speaker 2: of what appears to be a neo Phoebus arrangement of
Speaker 2: reducing the lifespan of a bulb. On discussing the issue
Speaker 2: with those who manufacture the LED bulbs, the clarification that
Speaker 2: came out of this packaged LED bulb had the LED
Speaker 2: lighting with a driver. The LED lighting has promised thirty
Speaker 2: thousand to fifty thousand hours of life, but the driver
Speaker 2: does not. Now well, that seems to be a technicality
Speaker 2: that is solvable if it's if it is the driver
Speaker 2: that fails, then only the driver should be sold separately
Speaker 2: for replacement, and it should be possible to swap the
Speaker 2: drivers in the bulb. That would not only save costs
Speaker 2: but also the environment. And that brings us back to
Speaker 2: Ratan Tata's statement of a or on a promise being
Speaker 2: a promise. When the LED bulb industry made the promise
Speaker 2: of the lifespan of an LED bulb, that promise needs
Speaker 2: to be kept. Whatever the technicalities are, they need to
Speaker 2: be solved, else it gives rise to the suspicion of
Speaker 2: the resurrection of the new Phoebus cartel.
Speaker 3: So to that point, the driver inside of the light
Speaker 3: emitting diode bulbs that could be swapped out relatively cheaply,
Speaker 3: but they don't want that. They want you to go
Speaker 3: buy a replacement bulb. So I don't know if you've
Speaker 3: noticed this. So I mean even the LED bulbs, Yes,
Speaker 3: some of them are rated for thirty thousand to fifty
Speaker 3: thousand hours or whatever.
Speaker 4: Okay, I have a lot of LED bulbs in my house.
Speaker 3: I cannot tell you how many of them I have
Speaker 3: had to change, and you could tell when they start
Speaker 3: getting ready to go out, they start like flickering like crazy.
Speaker 3: Then they might work, sometimes they might work others. All
Speaker 3: of these things and it's only after like a year
Speaker 3: maybe of it being used.
Speaker 4: Period.
Speaker 3: Why are these LED bulbs going out when they're supposed
Speaker 3: to be so much long lasting.
Speaker 4: Well, they're not made to a high quality.
Speaker 3: Because once again you don't want a one time purchase,
Speaker 3: you want repeat customers. It's all a part of the
Speaker 3: cartel's movements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's just not noticeable. And going back to
Speaker 2: the people that were saying that it was just some
Speaker 2: kind of myth or some conspiracy, there was receipts like
Speaker 2: they left behind documentation stating it was a thing. And
Speaker 2: if it was just a weird theory, then how do
Speaker 2: you have specific people in specific companies in specific countries
Speaker 2: all coming together to all make this the same exact
Speaker 2: bulb but at a reduced lifespan, at probably about the
Speaker 2: same cost, all around the same time period. Was it
Speaker 2: just a coincidence?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: But that's the thing they're saying that the Phoebus Cartel
Speaker 3: was largely a myth, although the group itself did exist,
Speaker 3: and there is a paper trail to this. But when
Speaker 3: you look at the fines that were a crue to
Speaker 3: certain companies and for what they like, what they were
Speaker 3: issued for, it was never for making a product that
Speaker 3: wasn't good enough.
Speaker 4: It was always for products that were too good.
Speaker 3: You're fucking up the flow of income here, bro with
Speaker 3: your do good or attitude.
Speaker 4: We can't have all that and that again was in
Speaker 4: the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: This is back when, to give you a spectrum of
Speaker 3: the timeframe, prohibition was a thing in the United States.
Speaker 3: The mafia was doing bootleg operations and bringing in Canadian whiskey.
Speaker 3: This is when al Capone made it big. This is
Speaker 3: when a lot of the mafia families were making their moves.
Speaker 3: This is when well Daddy Kennedy, right, JFK's dad made
Speaker 3: his big money.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: This went right before the stock market crashed in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty nine. This before all of these things happened. People
Speaker 3: still bought light bulbs, even in the Great Depression. This
Speaker 3: was seen as a need for people, not a want
Speaker 3: or a luxury item. So this company, this cartel rather
Speaker 3: got together and had this business model and had this plan,
Speaker 3: and they stuck to the script. And if anybody stepped
Speaker 3: out of line with that script, that they found themselves
Speaker 3: either fined heavily or in a few cases without a company.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I imagine there was a couple of suicides involved
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know that for a fact, but
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be surprised. I'll be honest with.
Speaker 3: You, but I think a lot of them a lot
Speaker 3: of these mom and pop shops that were making these
Speaker 3: high quality bulbs. I think they just kind of got
Speaker 3: shut down and or bought out. It's way easier without
Speaker 3: having to be dirty about it, right if you got
Speaker 3: a like the Shelby Electric Company that got bought out
Speaker 3: by GE So, yeah, they could make a light bulb
Speaker 3: that has and is still burning for one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty years. And I love how the hater acted like
Speaker 3: that's not real. That's that blows my mind, dude. It
Speaker 3: holds multiple world records and the secondary cousin to it
Speaker 3: in Texas right now, like.
Speaker 2: It's not that's not a hoax, that's not It honestly
Speaker 2: blows my mind that there are actual people out there
Speaker 2: that are full on anti conspiracy. Like it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: what conspiracy it is, they are full on against it.
Speaker 2: And it's like, they what are you fighting on? Behalf
Speaker 2: of the people that created all of these all of
Speaker 2: these stories? Like is that what you're doing? You know?
Speaker 2: It's like are you are you mad at people for
Speaker 2: coming up with an original thought? Like what are you
Speaker 2: really fighting for?
Speaker 4: It doesn't make sense to me. I'm gonna be honest
Speaker 4: with you.
Speaker 3: Now, we could read a little bit more about the
Speaker 3: Phoebus cartel over here we talked about the history and
Speaker 3: the purpose.
Speaker 4: Well, actually that looks I guess the entire thing.
Speaker 2: Actually, did you have something else that you want to
Speaker 2: go on LED? Because I got a couple of different
Speaker 2: articles I want to go over.
Speaker 4: We can.
Speaker 3: Honestly, the last thing I had that I wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about was like planned obsolescence and how that works.
Speaker 3: But we don't have to necessarily talk about that. It
Speaker 3: all kind of ties together with this. We get the idea, right,
Speaker 3: you make a company, or you make a product that
Speaker 3: is only rated for a certain amount of time so
Speaker 3: that you can get a repeat.
Speaker 4: Customer out of it.
Speaker 3: It is very unethical, extremely unethical. But this is business
Speaker 3: being decent and morality and ethics and all that that
Speaker 3: goes by the wayside here in favor of making more money.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So this is an article from Scientific American.
Speaker 2: I don't think that they're going to get into everything,
Speaker 2: which is why I have several articles pulled up on
Speaker 2: this topic here. This is something that I don't buy
Speaker 2: LED light bulbs for this reason. What we're about to
Speaker 2: read right now, because they are Once you understand what
Speaker 2: they're capable of doing. You'll never want to buy another
Speaker 2: LED light bulb. They are fucking They're horrible for your mind.
Speaker 2: Believe it or not. Okay, So are there health or
Speaker 2: environmental concerns with LED light bulbs, which may soon replace
Speaker 2: compact fluorescence as the green friendly light bulb of choice. Indeed,
Speaker 2: LED light emitting diode lighting does seem to be the
Speaker 2: wave of the future right now, given the mercury content
Speaker 2: and light quality issues with the current king of the
Speaker 2: hill of green bolbs, the compact fluorescent or the CFL.
Speaker 2: The LEDs use significantly less than even CFLs and do
Speaker 2: not contain mercury, and they are becoming economically competitive with
Speaker 2: CFLs at the point of purchase, while yielding superior quality
Speaker 2: lighting and energy bill savings down the line. But LEDs
Speaker 2: do have a dark side. A study published in the
Speaker 2: late in late twenty ten in the journal called Environmental
Speaker 2: Science and Technology found that LEDs contain lead, arsenic and
Speaker 2: a dozen other potentially dangerous substances. LEDs are touted as
Speaker 2: the next generation of lighting. One of the researchers behind
Speaker 2: the study of the chair of the University of California
Speaker 2: of UC Irvin's Department of Population Health and Disease Prevention.
Speaker 2: It's a long title, fucking.
Speaker 4: Title on that guy.
Speaker 3: His little moniker on his door to his office pretty
Speaker 3: much takes up the entire glass. But anyway, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but as we try to find better products that do
Speaker 3: not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we
Speaker 3: have to be vigilant about toxicity hazards. This guy and
Speaker 3: other UC Irvine researchers tested several types of LEDs, including
Speaker 3: those used in Christmas lights, traffic lights, car headlights, and
Speaker 3: brake lights. What did they find was some of the
Speaker 3: worst offenders were low intensity red LEDs, which were found
Speaker 3: to contain up to eight times the amount of lead,
Speaker 3: a known neurotoxin allowed by California state law, and which,
Speaker 3: according to researchers in quotes, exhibit significant cancer and non
Speaker 3: cancer potentials due to the high content of arsenic and lead.
Speaker 2: So just that low is enough.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that's if the bowl breaks and you
Speaker 3: deal with the matter with your bare hands, though I
Speaker 3: would think.
Speaker 2: I mean you get into a car crash, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: fair enough. Meanwhile, white LEDs contain the least lead but
Speaker 2: still harbor large amounts of nickel. Another heavy metal that
Speaker 2: causes allergic reactions in as many as one in five
Speaker 2: of us upon exposure, and the copper found in some
Speaker 2: LEDs can pose an environmental threat that if it accumulates
Speaker 2: in rivers and lakes, where it can poison aquatic life.
Speaker 2: He also adds that while breaking open a single LED
Speaker 2: and breathing in its fumes wouldn't likely cause cancer, our
Speaker 2: bodies hardly need more toxic substances floating around, as the
Speaker 2: combined effects could be a disease trigger. If any LEDs
Speaker 2: break at home, he recommends sweeping them up while wearing
Speaker 2: gloves and a mask, and disposing the debris even the
Speaker 2: broom and even the broom as hazardous waste. Furthermore, crews
Speaker 2: dispatch to clean up car crashes or broken traffic lights
Speaker 2: should wear protective clothing and handle material as hazardous waste.
Speaker 2: LEDs are currently not considered toxic by law and can
Speaker 2: be disposed of in regular landfills. So that's just one
Speaker 2: thing as far as the dark side of it goes.
Speaker 2: That's just talking about the materials inside of it. But
Speaker 2: there's more. Okay, it gets.
Speaker 3: Just on that article alone, I get it right to
Speaker 3: say that having an LED in your car, in your home.
Speaker 4: That's as of that particular article.
Speaker 3: Doesn't necessarily mean that it's dangerous, but if it does break,
Speaker 3: then you need to wear protective like gloves and a
Speaker 3: mast to clean it up.
Speaker 4: That's not ideal.
Speaker 3: But what's more dangerous of that is the manufacturing of
Speaker 3: the LEDs. This place is going to produce a lot
Speaker 3: of waste with that much arsenic and lead being used
Speaker 3: in the manufacturing thereof.
Speaker 4: So I get where they're going with.
Speaker 2: This, right, Yeah, you can look at that, But what
Speaker 2: I was really trying to get to was the hypnos
Speaker 2: the hypnotic effect of LEDs. So, if you really think
Speaker 2: about it, one of the main reasons why LEDs are
Speaker 2: so energy efficient is because they're blinking on and off
Speaker 2: so rapidly that your mind can't even catch up to it. Right,
Speaker 2: that's the idea. Because it's really only using half the energy,
Speaker 2: it doesn't have to stay lit the entire time. And
Speaker 2: so with that flicker rate, which we talk about all
Speaker 2: the time with TV and everything else, what about LEDs?
Speaker 2: So can led technology be used for hypnosis and mind control?
Speaker 2: This is from the website called PEMF Magazine dot com.
Speaker 2: It says led technology is everywhere on our screens and
Speaker 2: street lights, billboards, and even therapy devices. While most people
Speaker 2: see LED lights as simple sources of illumination, research research
Speaker 2: suggests that flickering LEDs at specific frequencies can influence brainwave activity.
Speaker 2: This discovery raises important questions about their use in hypnosis,
Speaker 2: brainwave entrainment, and subconscious programming. Your fucking lights are putting
Speaker 2: you under a hypnotic yeah, under hypnosis essentially so how
Speaker 2: it works the brain. The human brain operates on different
Speaker 2: frequency bands, commonly known as brainwave states. Certain external simulis
Speaker 2: such as such as light and sound, can synchronize with
Speaker 2: these brainwave patterns, a process known as brainwave and trainment.
Speaker 2: The strobe effect, a rapid flashing of light at specific frequencies,
Speaker 2: plays a significant role in brainwaven trainment and subconscious influence.
Speaker 2: Strobe lighting has been used in entertainment, hypnosis, and even
Speaker 2: therapy to induce altered states of consciousness, higher or heighten immersion,
Speaker 2: and trigger specific brainwave responses. However, similar to flickering LED technology,
Speaker 2: strobe effects can also influence perception, focus, and suggestibility, sometimes
Speaker 2: without the viewer's conscious awareness, and extreme cases, strobe lights
Speaker 2: can cause sensory overload, agitation, or even seizures in photosensitive individuals.
Speaker 2: This raises concerns about how controlled light exposure, whether through
Speaker 2: the LED, screens, advertising or digital media, could be subtle
Speaker 2: shaping behavior and cognitive responses. Now that's just LED. They're
Speaker 2: talking about the LED, you know, bulbs essentially. But think
Speaker 2: about what your phone is already always doing to you.
Speaker 2: You know, it's constantly it's not one pure source of light, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be sending some kind of frequency. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: flickering a little bit faster than an LED would, but anyway,
Speaker 2: so this is where it gets wild. So LEDs can
Speaker 2: be pulsed at specific frequencies to interact with these states.
Speaker 2: So you have the alpha, the alpha and theta waves,
Speaker 2: which remember those are the two light trances. Well, alpha
Speaker 2: is a light trans data is a deep trance that
Speaker 2: is from seven to twelve hertz. It's associated with deep relaxation, meditation,
Speaker 2: and trance like states. These waves increase suggestibility, making individuals
Speaker 2: more open to external influence. It's hypnosis, yeah, right. Then
Speaker 2: you have the beta waves, which always talk that your
Speaker 2: that your alert self. It says it's a link to
Speaker 2: alertness and concentration. Higher beta activity can enhance focus but
Speaker 2: also cause agitation or anxiety. And then the delta waves
Speaker 2: usually associated with sleep, So that's from half a hurtz
Speaker 2: to four hurts, the slowest brain waves associated with deep
Speaker 2: sleep and subconscious access. So by combining combining flashing LED
Speaker 2: patterns with synchronized audio frequencies, research suggests that these techniques
Speaker 2: can be used for hypnotic suggestion, subliminal programming, neuro marketing,
Speaker 2: which we did a whole episode on that recently, So
Speaker 2: neuro marketing, and advertising, and entertainment and gaming. Okay, so
Speaker 2: that's the LED hypnosis. Possible influence that it could have
Speaker 2: on you is through those four main things. Then you
Speaker 2: have potential risks and ethical concerns. So while LED based
Speaker 2: brain wave and trainment has potential benefits, it also raises
Speaker 2: important ethical concerns. Can everyday screens be flickering in ways
Speaker 2: that influence behavior? Are social media platforms, entertainment companies, or
Speaker 2: advertisers already using these techniques, They're not gonna come out
Speaker 2: and say it. You got to test eight.
Speaker 4: On your own.
Speaker 2: And could flickering LED exposure over time lead to subconscious
Speaker 2: conditioning without our awareness. So, with the increasing reliance on
Speaker 2: digital screens, mass exposure to LED flickering patterns could have
Speaker 2: unintended psychological effects. While some uses such as meditation apps
Speaker 2: and therapeutic devices are beneficial, the potential for abuse in marketing, entertainment,
Speaker 2: and even political messaging is worth investigating. Whoa wild right,
Speaker 2: like this shit is I'm telling you, they they manipulate
Speaker 2: you fucking six ways to Sunday and you don't even
Speaker 2: know it.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 2: So oh and then it's pretty interesting. It's funny because
Speaker 2: I literally just watched this movie earlier. This is one
Speaker 2: of my son's favorite movies of all time. Well, the
Speaker 2: Incredibles one and two, both of them, but dude, and
Speaker 2: don't even have a favorite. I think they're both just awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but this was Elasta girl whenever she was getting hypnotized,
Speaker 2: whenever she put those glasses on. I can't remember the
Speaker 2: name of the guy. Uh well, no, it was the
Speaker 2: woman for the company they were working for. That was anyway,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the sister who was the mastermind of it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which was basically and then locas she's doing
Speaker 2: like flashing lights on her eyes hypnotically, right, yep. So
Speaker 2: if it says exploring the healing, I don't care about
Speaker 2: the healing potential. I just want to get into the dangers.
Speaker 2: So this is why this is another thing.
Speaker 4: There's healing potential to LEDs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have like red light therapy, you know, which
Speaker 2: is good for like weight loss and shit like that,
Speaker 2: and there's other forms. It's all about the frequency in
Speaker 2: which it's emitted. So there are certain unnatural frequencies and
Speaker 2: then there are certain natural frequencies. So the natural frequencies,
Speaker 2: you know, almost like the rife machine. You can tune
Speaker 2: it one way to make your headache go away, and
Speaker 2: you can tune it in another way to make you
Speaker 2: shit yourself. It's like, yeah, multiple ways of using it,
Speaker 2: by the.
Speaker 3: Way, right, Real Rife Technologies go check it out. If
Speaker 3: you want to see what the hell he's talking about.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you as a first person account the technology works.
Speaker 4: Go check it out Real Rife Technology.
Speaker 3: Use promo code cult at checkout to get a discount
Speaker 3: and free shipping moving on.
Speaker 2: Ten percent off indeed, which adds up honestly, because they
Speaker 2: are kind of expensive machines, but they're worth every damn
Speaker 2: penny yup. So then I was like, all right, wait
Speaker 2: a second. I remember people talking about how there are
Speaker 2: purple lights and the led lamps that are out on
Speaker 2: their streets they are turning purple. You remember people talking
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: Oh dude, I just had this conversation with somebody the
Speaker 3: other day. I was driving down Airline, Dude, Matt and Rugeluisiana,
Speaker 3: and there is all kinds of car lots on either
Speaker 3: side of the road. I'm driving by the Nissan dealership,
Speaker 3: I see the Range or the lamber Over dealership whatever,
Speaker 3: and then I see the Toyota dealership and you could
Speaker 3: clearly see how over these parking lots there next to
Speaker 3: each other. One of the lights are more of a
Speaker 3: yellowish hue, one of them are kind of a light
Speaker 3: bluish led hue, and one of them are hard purple.
Speaker 3: I thought I was going crazy until I asked him
Speaker 3: by it. I was like, listen, my eyes ain't what
Speaker 3: they used to be. Do you see this? And they're like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, the purple lights. That's becoming more and more
Speaker 3: of a thing. I'm like, what the fuck are you
Speaker 3: talking about? But apparently it's a thing.
Speaker 2: Well, and they'll have you believe that it's not really
Speaker 2: a big deal. It was hard really trying to find
Speaker 2: out why they were purple, and then I found this
Speaker 2: article and it made it all make so much sense.
Speaker 2: So basically, this guy, he did some digging into this
Speaker 2: whole thing trying to figure out why because he couldn't
Speaker 2: find any information on it. He was going to the
Speaker 2: counties or the parishes or whatever and trying to get
Speaker 2: some kind of explanation. Turns out it all goes back
Speaker 2: that literally, every single stream light that uses LEDs uses
Speaker 2: one company, okay, all one company, every single street light
Speaker 2: in the entire country. I don't know about the rest
Speaker 2: of the world, but in the United States they all
Speaker 2: use one company, and it's called Acuity, right, So Acuity
Speaker 2: dominates the solid state lighting market, or the SSL market.
Speaker 2: SSL systems are are systems which incorporate LED light in
Speaker 2: a particular way, which is often considered advantageous for things
Speaker 2: like street lamps. He says that every city with purple
Speaker 2: lights that responded to my queries or has public records
Speaker 2: on the matter, bought its lights from Acuity. Okay, so
Speaker 2: you're like, all right, that's interesting. We're not going to
Speaker 2: read this whole article, but I already read it, so
Speaker 2: basically acuity. They all start out as white lights and
Speaker 2: then when they start to go bad, they turn purple
Speaker 2: and acuities like, well, that's just because of you know,
Speaker 2: so and so that's just a cause and effect, you know,
Speaker 2: not really any particular reason until until you look a
Speaker 2: little bit deeper and you find out that there we
Speaker 2: were just talking about LEDs being hypnotic, right, Well, what's
Speaker 2: even more hypnotic, which we literally brought up just a
Speaker 2: couple episodes ago. Remember how we were talking about the
Speaker 2: four stages of consciousness with beta, alpha, theta, and delta. Well,
Speaker 2: what was that other one that we mentioned?
Speaker 4: Gamma?
Speaker 2: Gamma? Okay, what is the light spectrum over here? The
Speaker 2: electromagnetic spectrum of visible light purple is gamma rays. Okay,
Speaker 2: so gamma being the deepest hypnotic that you can possibly be,
Speaker 2: and LED lights are turning purple sending off gamma waves. Now, okay,
Speaker 2: so you want to talk about deep hypnosis, that's what's
Speaker 2: going on. And if you really think about it, I
Speaker 2: guarantee you I'm gonna stop sharing the screen here for
Speaker 2: but I personally guarantee you that this is absolutely on purpose,
Speaker 2: because if you really think about it. Whenever you're in
Speaker 2: a deep trance, are you gonna do any crime? You're
Speaker 2: gonna steal them from anything, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like if you're if you're in such a deep like
Speaker 2: think about it. Whenever you're super stoned, right, you're gonna
Speaker 2: go rob a car. Hell no, somebody passed me the cheetos. Right.
Speaker 3: The hypnosis is a thing, though, so I guess you
Speaker 3: would if you were being told to under a deep hypnosis.
Speaker 3: But to your point, on average, I would assume, Nah,
Speaker 3: you're gonna be more docile, You're gonna be more calm, right.
Speaker 2: And this is something that I noticed here recently at
Speaker 2: so the I got a Planet Fitness in Katie, right,
Speaker 2: And in that whole parking lot there's like a bunch
Speaker 2: of other stores as a whole shopping mall basically, and
Speaker 2: that whole parking lot is full of all these purple lights.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, at first, you're like, oh, that actually
Speaker 2: looks pretty cool, you know, because it's a little different.
Speaker 2: Maybe it looks a little HALLOWEENI a little bit. But
Speaker 2: then you start doing a little bit of research and
Speaker 2: you find out the danger of LED Whenever they cause
Speaker 2: you to slip into somewhat of a trance. And we're
Speaker 2: not just talking about just street lights, but for this conversation,
Speaker 2: we're gonna talk about just the street lights. And so
Speaker 2: you're slipping into somewhat of a trance with the purple
Speaker 2: color added to the LED lights, which are putting you
Speaker 2: into a gamma state, which is ultimately the deepest hypnosis
Speaker 2: that you can be under. So to be honest, I
Speaker 2: almost want I mean, I don't really do in person
Speaker 2: hypnosis sessions that much anymore. I think have done like
Speaker 2: two in the past year. But if I was gonna
Speaker 2: try and find a way to deeply hypnotize somebody, I
Speaker 2: might have to get some purple purple LEDs on that ass.
Speaker 3: I mean, it can only help the hypnosis at that point.
Speaker 2: Right, right, But anyway, but just think about it like this,
Speaker 2: your LED lights, and that's in all techno, All electronics
Speaker 2: are using it. So like this computer that we're looking at,
Speaker 2: your phone, your TV, your iPads, all that stuff is
Speaker 2: all LED, right, And you want to talk about the
Speaker 2: hypnotic effect and such as, especially whenever you bring in neuromarketing,
Speaker 2: I mean, they're getting you in every possible way that
Speaker 2: they can. They're hacking your mind to put you into
Speaker 2: a trance like state, to tell you what you're going
Speaker 2: to buy, to suggest whatever you're reading on the news
Speaker 2: is even more believable now because you're in a suggestive
Speaker 2: state right and it's all hypnosis. I mean, so, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna say that we just sat here and cracked
Speaker 2: the code, because I'm sure somebody else put it together before.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting about how the LEDs turn purple after
Speaker 2: they start to quote unquote go bad, especially if they're
Speaker 2: supposed to last two hundred thousand hours or whatever the
Speaker 2: fuck it was.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna call bullshit on that, not on what you're
Speaker 3: saying on they turn purple when they're starting to go bad.
Speaker 3: This entire parking lot of this dealership had purple LEDs
Speaker 3: at the entire like. There wasn't one that was a
Speaker 3: different shade that wasn't by accident. And there's no way
Speaker 3: that all these bulbs just so happened to be going
Speaker 3: out at the same rate at the same time, even
Speaker 3: if they were all made from the same manufacturing and
Speaker 3: all of that.
Speaker 4: There's at least gonna be some dissemination. There's gonna be.
Speaker 3: Some that are a little more and some there a
Speaker 3: little less. That is not what we're seeing here. That's
Speaker 3: not at all I have.
Speaker 2: That's that's what Acuity has to say for itself. And
Speaker 2: that's just one company, right, A big ass company though
Speaker 2: if they're the ones that are creating all your LED
Speaker 2: lights on the in the street lamps. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just think that that there has to be something
Speaker 2: to it, because how does one company get the contract
Speaker 2: to serve all of America's public roads?
Speaker 3: So I just looked up who owns Acuity, because I'm
Speaker 3: thinking that's got to be owned by ge, that's got
Speaker 3: to be owned by somebody like this.
Speaker 4: They're not.
Speaker 3: They are a publicly traded company and they have as
Speaker 3: a board of directors that runs them in all of this.
Speaker 3: But to your point, the contract that was awarded to
Speaker 3: them for like interstates and things like this, right you
Speaker 3: had to have You had to either a have a
Speaker 3: real good connection in DC and or suck the biggest
Speaker 3: dick to.
Speaker 4: Get that kind of a contract.
Speaker 3: Whenever you have so many other companies that can make
Speaker 3: light bulbs for it probably cheaper to do it in
Speaker 3: that way. There's no way unless and also I don't
Speaker 3: know when that contract is awarded, especially because LED and
Speaker 3: those are still to this day scene as a far
Speaker 3: greener option than regular incandescent bulbs. So if this company
Speaker 3: was like two hundred percent green or some shit like that,
Speaker 3: maybe it was just kind of seen as a slam
Speaker 3: dunk for the government who was trying to make it
Speaker 3: look like they were going more green and more you know,
Speaker 3: all these things need to protect the earth and all
Speaker 3: the all the jargon you always hear.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's I don't know, it's just interesting looking into
Speaker 2: the deeper things like that though, you know. So what
Speaker 2: I was seeing is is that common refresh rates, such
Speaker 2: as the LEDs like their their the hurts. So the
Speaker 2: refresh rate is measured in hurts. It indicates how many
Speaker 2: times per second the screen updates its image. Common refresh updates.
Speaker 2: Now I think that this is talking specifically about your phone,
Speaker 2: but it says common refresh rates include sixty HRTs for
Speaker 2: standard displays, while higher rates like herts thirty eight forty
Speaker 2: hertz or even seventy eight sixty or sixty seventy six
Speaker 2: eighty herts are used for applications requiring smoother motion and
Speaker 2: reduced flicker, especially in professional settings, So sixty hurts. What
Speaker 2: does that go back to? Now? I want to see
Speaker 2: what it compares to.
Speaker 4: It compares to as a pose, Like what do you.
Speaker 2: Mean, Well, I was just looking at the the LED
Speaker 2: pulse frequency and I think that it varies depending on
Speaker 2: device and light and stuff like that. But that might
Speaker 2: have to be a whole nother show because I'm really
Speaker 2: interested in the actual frequency because if you find out
Speaker 2: what the frequency is, you can find out what they're targeting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I'm with you now to go back
Speaker 3: to a point you made earlier, right, you were talking
Speaker 3: about how why does your phone have an update at
Speaker 3: a certain point? Why do these things with technology all
Speaker 3: have it to where basically, if you don't update a
Speaker 3: certain way, or if you don't do a certain thing,
Speaker 3: it's going to be considered obsolete. And then they just
Speaker 3: won't offer updates to some of their older model phones.
Speaker 3: They're like forcing you to get the latest and greatest technology.
Speaker 3: You buy a computer six months from now, it's going
Speaker 3: to be obsolete technology. Right, there's a plan at place
Speaker 3: for this conversation. On the screen right now is the
Speaker 3: BBC article. As a matter of fact, it says, here's
Speaker 3: the truth about planned obsolescence of tech. I think it
Speaker 3: will be a fascinating reverse to get into.
Speaker 4: What do you think?
Speaker 2: Sure, it's widely held that certain gadgets, cars, and other
Speaker 2: tech have deliberately short lifespans to make you shell up
Speaker 2: out to replace them. What's the reality They don't make
Speaker 2: them like they used to. As the idiom goes, so
Speaker 2: it would seem for the centennial light, and astonishing record
Speaker 2: setting one hundred and fifteen years after someone first flipped
Speaker 2: it first flipped it on, this light bulb is still
Speaker 2: fainting or faintly shining in a fire station in Livermore, California.
Speaker 2: For multiple generations of us who have since swapped out
Speaker 2: more burned out light bulbs than we can remember, the
Speaker 2: centennial bulb's longevity must seem like a slap in the face. Surely,
Speaker 2: if an incandescent bulb made in the nineteenth century technology
Speaker 2: can last so long, why not a new fangled twentieth
Speaker 2: and even twenty first century bulbs. The Centennial light is
Speaker 2: often pointed to as evidence for the supposedly sinister business
Speaker 2: strategy known as planned ops A lessons. Light bulbs and
Speaker 2: various other technologies could easily last for decades, many believe,
Speaker 2: but it's more profitable to introduce artificial lifespan so that
Speaker 2: companies get repeat sales. That's sort of the conspiracy theory
Speaker 2: of planned ops A lessons a professor of marketing at
Speaker 2: Northwestern University. You'd think if anybody knew, it'd be him,
Speaker 2: but head exactly. So is this conspiracy theory true? Does
Speaker 2: planned obsolescence really exist? The answer is yes, but with caveats.
Speaker 2: Beyond the crude caricature of greedy companies wanton wantonly fleecing
Speaker 2: their customers, the practice does have silver linings to an
Speaker 2: extent planned obsolescence and it is an inevitable consequence of
Speaker 2: sustainable businesses giving people goods that they desire. In this way,
Speaker 2: planned opso lescence serves as a reflection of a ravenous
Speaker 2: consumer culture, which industries did create for their benefit, yet
Speaker 2: were hardly alone in doing so. So like, yeah, it
Speaker 2: is a thing, but they have to because you just
Speaker 2: like consuming so much.
Speaker 4: It's gotta be right, got to be. You want to
Speaker 4: spend more money.
Speaker 3: You feel like you're not doing your part to society
Speaker 3: if you're not spending more money.
Speaker 2: Clearly, but yeah, So fundamentally, firms are reacting to the
Speaker 2: tastes of the consumers, says a professor of finance and
Speaker 2: economics at Yale University. I think there are some avenues
Speaker 2: where businesses are kind of tricking the consumer, But I
Speaker 2: think there are also situations where I might put the
Speaker 2: fault on the consumer. There you go.
Speaker 3: Of course, there are some examples where that's a fair point, right.
Speaker 3: There are some examples where you have a thing that
Speaker 3: is working just fine for you, but you're going to
Speaker 3: go buy the newest thing anyway because you want to
Speaker 3: keep up with the Joneses.
Speaker 4: There is something to be said for that.
Speaker 3: I'll give you this, but that's not the conversation with
Speaker 3: light bulbs by any means. Now they're gonna talk about
Speaker 3: the cartel, but not as much as we just talked about.
Speaker 3: They kind of look at it from a different angle,
Speaker 3: which I did appreciate.
Speaker 2: Sticking with light bulbs as a product, they provide amongst
Speaker 2: the most emblematic case studies of planned OPSO lessons. Thomas
Speaker 2: Edison invented commercially viable light bulb circuit eighteen eighty. These
Speaker 2: early incandescent bulbs, the centennial light included relied on carbon
Speaker 2: filaments rather than the tungsten that came into widespread use
Speaker 2: almost thirty years later. Part of the reason the centennial
Speaker 2: light has persevered so long, scientists speculate, is because its
Speaker 2: carbon filament is eight times thicker and thus more durable
Speaker 2: than the thin metal wires and later incandescent bulbs. Initially,
Speaker 2: companies installed and maintained whole electrical systems to support bulb
Speaker 2: based lighting in the dwellings of the new technology's rich
Speaker 2: early adopters. Seeing as consumers were not on the hook
Speaker 2: to pay for replacement units, lighting companies therefore sought to
Speaker 2: produce light bulbs which lasted as long as possible. According
Speaker 2: to Collectors Weekly.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's a fair point.
Speaker 2: The business model changed, however, as the light bulb consumer
Speaker 2: or customer rather base grew more mass market, greater sums
Speaker 2: of money could be reaped. Companies figured by making bulbs
Speaker 2: disposable and putting replacement costs onto customers. Thus was born
Speaker 2: the infamous Phoebus cartel in the nineteen twenties, wherein representative
Speaker 2: it is from top light bulb manufacturers worldwide, such as
Speaker 2: Germany's Osram, United Kingdoms Associated Electrical Industries and General Electric
Speaker 2: in the United States, via British subsidiary, colluded to artificially
Speaker 2: reduced Bulb's lifetimes to one thousand hours. The details of
Speaker 2: the scam emerged decades later in governmental and journalistic investigations.
Speaker 2: That's BBC saying that.
Speaker 4: Right, which I mean to be fair.
Speaker 3: The British were involved with that, with the AEI, so
Speaker 3: they were as much a part of this as anybody else.
Speaker 2: This cartel is the most obvious example of planned obsolescence
Speaker 2: origins because those papers have been found, says Giles Slade,
Speaker 2: author of the book Made to Break Technology and Obsolescence
Speaker 2: in America, A History of the Strategy and its Consequences.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, talk about a book title. The practice cropped
Speaker 2: up in all sorts of other industries too. For instance,
Speaker 2: competition between General Motors and Ford in the fledging nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties auto market led to led the former to introduce
Speaker 2: the now familiar model year chain ranges in its vehicles.
Speaker 2: GM had pioneered a way to entice customers to splurge
Speaker 2: on the latest, greatest car to satisfy themselves and impose
Speaker 2: those in their social circles. It was a model for
Speaker 2: all industry, says Slade. Although the term planned ops lescens
Speaker 2: didn't enter common usage until the nineteen fifties, the strategy
Speaker 2: had by then permeated consumers societies absolutely.
Speaker 4: But this practice is in fact still alive and.
Speaker 2: Well in various forms, from subtle to unsubtle. Planned ops
Speaker 2: lessons still very much exists nowadays, from so called contrived
Speaker 2: durability where brittle parts give out, to having repairs cost
Speaker 2: more than replacement products, to esthetic upgrades that frame older
Speaker 2: product versions as less stylish. Goods makers have no shortage
Speaker 2: of ruses to keep opening customers' wallets.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and in that same context, there is a picture
Speaker 3: of an iPhone I could not agree more.
Speaker 2: For a fully modern example, consider smartphones. These headsets often
Speaker 2: get disco after a mere couple years use, screens or
Speaker 2: buttons break, batteries die, or their operating systems, apps and
Speaker 2: so on can suddenly no longer be upgraded. Yet a
Speaker 2: solution is always near at hand. Brand new handset models
Speaker 2: pumped out every year or so and touted as the
Speaker 2: quote unquote best ever. As another example of seeming to
Speaker 2: be blatant planned opso lescence, slay dimensions, printer cartridges, dude,
Speaker 2: I'm so fucking sick of buying that shit.
Speaker 3: It shit's getting more and more expensive by the day,
Speaker 3: even though again the cost of manufacturing is going down
Speaker 3: and down.
Speaker 4: It's crazy how that works out.
Speaker 2: Microchips, light sensors, or batteries can disable a cartridge well
Speaker 2: before all its ink is actually used up, forcing owners
Speaker 2: to go buy entirely new, not at all cheap units.
Speaker 2: There's no real reason for that, he says. I don't
Speaker 2: know why you can't just go get a bottle of
Speaker 2: cyan or black ink and you know, squirt it into
Speaker 2: the reservoir. You would think that's.
Speaker 4: A very good point.
Speaker 3: You could only get one cartridge, go buy re fillable
Speaker 3: ink and then just fill it yourself. But absolutely not.
Speaker 3: That's not gonna make these printer companies any money.
Speaker 2: Taken this way, planned ops lescence looks wasteful, according to
Speaker 2: the According to Cartridge World, a company that recycles printer
Speaker 2: cartridges and offers cheaper replacements, in North America alone, three
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million not even empty cartridges end up
Speaker 2: in landfills annually. Beyond waste, all that extra manufacturing can
Speaker 2: degrade the environment too, of course, obviously, though some of
Speaker 2: these examples of planned ops lescence are egregious. It's overly
Speaker 2: simplistic to condemn the practice is wrong. On a macroeconomic scale,
Speaker 2: the rapid turnover of goods powers growth and creates reams
Speaker 2: of jobs. Just think of the money people earned by
Speaker 2: manufacturing and selling, for instance, millions of smartphone cases. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: the continuous introduction of new widgets to earn or re
Speaker 2: earn new and old customers dough alike, will tend to
Speaker 2: promote innovation and improve the quality of the products. As
Speaker 2: a result of this vicious yet virtuous cycle, industry has
Speaker 2: made countless goods cheap and thus available to nearly anyone.
Speaker 2: In the wealthy Western countries, the Far East, and increasingly
Speaker 2: so in the developed world, many of us indulge in
Speaker 2: creature comforts unimaginable a century ago.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, that's a fair point. However, at what cost?
Speaker 3: Right We're talking about how things being made cheaper means
Speaker 3: they'll break sooner. When they break, we don't pay to
Speaker 3: have them repaired. We throw them away, which fills landfills,
Speaker 3: which hurts the earth.
Speaker 4: So you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does create jobs because you have to consistently
Speaker 3: make more products. You have to consistently feed the market.
Speaker 3: But again, at what costs down the road? It yeah, anyway, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, look, we can keep on going on and on,
Speaker 2: but we pretty much get the idea. Planned obsolescence is
Speaker 2: a thing that companies are absolutely using to stay in business.
Speaker 2: And whenever all these companies are going around and they're
Speaker 2: saying that they care so much about the environment, they
Speaker 2: care so much about global warming, they care so much about,
Speaker 2: you know, cleaning the seas of all this trash. You know,
Speaker 2: you still got This is why carbon credits are a thing,
Speaker 2: because off front, they can essentially pay to not give
Speaker 2: a fuck. Is really what the point is.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and especially in the tech industry.
Speaker 3: Bro we're talking about how LEDs are so damaging to manufacture.
Speaker 3: We're talking about how light bulbs and when you throw
Speaker 3: them away you don't recycle those. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 3: somebody will, but we already know the recycling industry is
Speaker 3: a complete hoax. For anybody who hasn't heard that episode,
Speaker 3: go back and listen to it is mind blowing.
Speaker 4: But that's the whole point.
Speaker 3: These tech companies tout themselves as being so green, they're
Speaker 3: giving so much.
Speaker 4: It's a complete green company, and it's not. They're not
Speaker 4: even close.
Speaker 3: The entire quote unquote green movement is all a conspiracy
Speaker 3: in and of its so planned obsolescence. And there you
Speaker 3: could argue that it started with the Phoebus Cartel.
Speaker 4: I would argue probably not, but it.
Speaker 3: Is at least the first example where there is a
Speaker 3: rack record that you can trace over the years to
Speaker 3: be what it is. Then, even after they were allegedly disbanded,
Speaker 3: you still didn't have a bulb that would last longer
Speaker 3: than a thousand hours by standard. So regardless of whether
Speaker 3: you want to say that they were still in action
Speaker 3: or not, I personal believe they were. Their effects were
Speaker 3: still felt as an industry wide standard. So the point
Speaker 3: that they were trying to get across still got across
Speaker 3: well after their their end date. So say what you
Speaker 3: want this good cult members is why I thought this
Speaker 3: would be an excellent episode to bring up.
Speaker 4: There's no two ways about it.
Speaker 3: The Phoebus Cartel, although it sounds ridiculous, is absolutely historically
Speaker 3: backed and factual and started the obsolescence conversation right, the
Speaker 3: planned obsolescence of goods in manufacturing that we are still
Speaker 3: feeling the effects of today.
Speaker 2: Just think about it like this. If you think that
Speaker 2: it's silly that the Phoebus Cartel in some sort of
Speaker 2: manner is not still operating, just look no further then
Speaker 2: the government that tells you that Operation Mockingbird ceased to
Speaker 2: exist in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: Okay, really yeah, how interesting because right now currently you
Speaker 3: could turn on multiple news websites and news casts depending
Speaker 3: and they will be reading off of the exact same script.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. So so look no further. Just open up
Speaker 2: your eyes, that's all, and get rid of your fucking
Speaker 2: led bulbs. This is a public service announcement that these
Speaker 2: are not good for you. They will cause you to
Speaker 2: slip into a hypnosis. Of course, you know, we can't
Speaker 2: all just go completely led free, led free, as for
Speaker 2: your TVs and your phones and everything else. This is
Speaker 2: why I wear blue light blockers. It helps with that,
Speaker 2: I mean helps with it a little bit, because the
Speaker 2: blue light is very damaging, and you know, your eyes
Speaker 2: are on your screen all night. You're not gonna be
Speaker 2: able to get into a deep rem sleep if you're
Speaker 2: not filtering out some of the blue light in that
Speaker 2: whole thing. But of course, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there is some sort of glasses or
Speaker 2: something that you can wear that would maybe dull out
Speaker 2: the flicker rate.
Speaker 3: I don't know, if the flicker rate, I don't think
Speaker 3: so maybe sunglasses maybe, I don't know, I mean maybe, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good cult members.
Speaker 3: That's why I thought this would be an excellent episode
Speaker 3: to bring about. Okay, we are a America anyway, We are
Speaker 3: a nation of consumers, and yes, a portion of that
Speaker 3: is because of us and our culture of trying to
Speaker 3: keep up with the Joneses. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: Plan Dobs lessons is a thing. They could build a
Speaker 3: car that will last you fifty years. Hell, they used to.
Speaker 3: You look at all these old studio bakers and these
Speaker 3: old buicks from back in the day.
Speaker 4: They're still rolling strong.
Speaker 3: However, you get a car that was made from ninety
Speaker 3: five to now, that thing is on its last leg
Speaker 3: more often than not. Right rolling started, Yeah, absolutely, it
Speaker 3: started with the Phoebus cars.
Speaker 5: Hell.
Speaker 3: So oh, and this is not something we can necessarily
Speaker 3: break the mold of We're kind of in this system,
Speaker 3: but we need to be made more aware of it.
Speaker 3: But you know, there is a system that you can
Speaker 3: try to break out of and that is our current
Speaker 3: financial system. The best way to do that would be
Speaker 3: to invest in gold and silver bullion. And for the
Speaker 3: best way to get started in the investment of gold
Speaker 3: and silver bullion and minted coins, you come check out
Speaker 3: the link in the description below and come check out
Speaker 3: coeocsilver dot com. When you fill out your information or
Speaker 3: homeboy Wayne Clark is going to be the one to
Speaker 3: reach out to you and give you all of the
Speaker 3: information that you need and get you squared away. You
Speaker 3: want to buy a little bit, you want to buy
Speaker 3: a lot of bit, you want to get involved in
Speaker 3: becoming a representative for the company itself.
Speaker 4: Hey, he's gonna get you all lined out.
Speaker 3: And we thank all the good cult members that are
Speaker 3: going and taking on their financial freedom in this way. Listen,
Speaker 3: talk to your financial guy, talk to your tax guy,
Speaker 3: ask them, hey, what do you think about investing in
Speaker 3: silver and gold? Is this a wise investment? Is it crazy?
Speaker 3: Is it just a fad? I promise you every one
Speaker 3: of them is going to tell you that you need
Speaker 3: to at least have some of your nest egg invest
Speaker 3: excuse me, invested in gold and silver bullion and minted coins. Again,
Speaker 3: the best place to get started would be to go
Speaker 3: to the link in the description below to cecsilver dot com.
Speaker 4: Another way that.
Speaker 3: You could support not only yourself, but us and this
Speaker 3: show and this cult as a collective.
Speaker 4: What you could do right now.
Speaker 3: Is please hit the five stars, hit the shares of like, suscribes, comment,
Speaker 3: save post, review, and shares hit.
Speaker 4: Difference of the family shares if we're here's the deal.
Speaker 4: The more activity our algorithms see.
Speaker 3: Across all of our listening platforms, the more we get
Speaker 3: promoted to more potential listeners who could that become potential
Speaker 3: cult members like the rest of you. Final ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 3: why are you ready to go check out Metamisteryes, Jonathan's
Speaker 3: other show and getting the same level of respect over
Speaker 3: there with the five star reviews and the positivity.
Speaker 4: Come check out the.
Speaker 3: CA tonight and come join each of us for our
Speaker 3: individual Patreon live episodes that we host every Wednesday night
Speaker 3: at nine pm Central. And we thank you for everybody
Speaker 3: who's already gone and done.
Speaker 2: So there we go. And with that being said, this
Speaker 2: pus another beautiful episode of the Cults of Conspiracy. And
Speaker 2: my name is Jonathan Jake, and there's one very important,
Speaker 2: extremely vital piece of information. We need you to learn
Speaker 2: just as soon as humanly possible.
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