Series Title: The Systems We Built, The Futures We Denied
Part I — The Paradox of Capitalism: When Progress Is Designed to Fail
Capitalism’s sales pitch is seductively simple: competition drives quality, innovation, and efficiency.
In theory, companies fight for your dollar by making the best possible product at the best possible price — and in the process, society moves forward.
But somewhere along the way, the engine of competition got rewired. The goal stopped being to build the best and became to keep you buying. Manufactured obsolescence — designing products to break or lose function far sooner than necessary — didn’t creep into the system. It became the system.
From the Phoebus Cartel’s artificial limits on lightbulb lifespans, to General Motors’ EV1 being pulled off the market under oil industry pressure, to the deliberate throttling of older smartphones — the pattern is the same. The market rewards holding back progress, not pushing it forward.
The paradox is that the very system promising innovation survives only by slowing it down. And every delay, every shelved solution, carries a human cost in lost trust, wasted potential, and diminished dignity.
Capitalism’s promise is seductively simple: competition drives quality, innovation, and efficiency. In theory, companies fight for your dollar by making the best possible product at the best possible price — and in the process, society moves forward.
But somewhere along the way, the engine of competition was rewired. The goal stopped being to build the best and became to keep you buying. What we now call planned obsolescence — deliberately designing products to fail or feel outdated far sooner than necessary — didn’t creep in quietly. It became the operating system.
In this inverted reality, companies no longer compete to make the most durable or efficient product. Instead, they align around a shared, unspoken strategy: maintain consumer dependence. Not a shadowy conspiracy — something worse. A predictable outcome of a system that rewards profit over purpose.
If a lightbulb can last 50 years, what happens to the companies that make lightbulbs? If your phone still works flawlessly after a decade, where does that leave manufacturers who depend on yearly upgrades? In practice, the market punishes those who give you the best possible product and rewards those who hold it back. This is where the paradox bites: the system that promises progress can only sustain itself by quietly limiting it.
It’s a story that spans a century, from the lightbulbs that could have lasted decades to the smartphones in our pockets today. In 1924, the world’s largest lightbulb manufacturers — General Electric, Osram, Philips, and others — formed the Phoebus Cartel. Their agreement? Cap bulb lifespan at 1,000 hours, even though designs already existed that lasted 2,500 hours or more. The motive was simple: guarantee repeat sales. The result was staggering — according to energy historians, if longer-lasting bulbs had been adopted globally, manufacturing waste from lightbulbs could have been cut by more than half over the last century, along with the associated energy consumption.
The same pattern emerged in the 1990s with the EV1, General Motors’ fully electric car. Praised for its performance and low emissions, it could have reshaped the auto industry. Instead, GM recalled and destroyed nearly all of them, citing “lack of consumer interest.” Later investigations revealed oil industry lobbying, the dismantling of California’s zero-emission mandate, and a quiet decision to shelve the technology until it could be reintroduced on terms favorable to entrenched industries. Researchers estimate that had the EV1 been allowed to scale, U.S. transportation emissions could have been cut by 10–20% within two decades — a shift that would have prevented millions of tons of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere.
Even the devices we use daily are built on the same logic. Most smartphones could be designed for repairability and multi-year performance. Instead, manufacturers seal batteries, restrict parts, and push software updates that slow older models. Apple has admitted to throttling performance in certain models and paid hundreds of millions in settlements; similar practices have been documented industry-wide. According to the United Nations E-Waste Monitor, the world generated 62 million metric tons of e-waste in 2022 alone, much of it avoidable through longer-lasting devices.
The cost of this isn’t just financial — it’s human. A family buying lightbulbs twice as often works more hours for the same result. A city that could have cut emissions in the 1990s breathes three more decades of toxic air. A worker replacing an avoidably obsolete phone diverts money from food, healthcare, or education.
Currency was once a neutral tool for fair exchange. But when governments abandoned tangible backing like gold, and corporations learned to inflate value through scarcity, money became something else: a proxy for human worth. In practice, your “value” became the sum of your purchasing power.
And desperate people — people told, implicitly or explicitly, that they are worth less — make predictable choices. They take fewer risks, accept worse treatment, and often turn on each other instead of the system that created the scarcity.
The deepest irony is that we already have the technology, resources, and skill to give everyone a decent standard of living with far less work than the current system demands. The only barrier is the will to value human beings more than the structures built to serve them. Until that shift happens, the cycle will continue — and we’ll keep paying the bill in every way that matters.
Embedded Sources:
EV1 & Emissions Impact: PBS Frontline, California Air Resources Board data
Smartphone Repairability & E-Waste: United Nations E-Waste Report 2024,
