first - I didn't say that you would or wouldn't. I said it isn't "surviorship bias", the reliability and repair-ability difference is absolutely real.
And I don't use a 1960 fridge, mines about 3 years old - why? because the old one broke and I had to get a new one quick (I could not afford the time to repair - plus the old one was post-2000 junk anyhow), I like auto-defrost, and the other monkeys that live in the house need ice+water in the door, or they'll throw poop at me.
At a 4% interest rate, and .12$/KWh, a modern fridge @450KWh/yr for 10 years costs NPV -$933 for electricity and say -$1000 to buy it. And old fridge @1800KWh/yr for 10 (more) years costs -$1750. So you'd save about $200 with the ancient fridge, not counting having to manually defrost it.
And before you say it - there is no "repairing over and over". You need to put about that $200 into like it every 20-30 years, every other generation you hand it down to.
Still if electricity doubled in cost, or you just like auto-defrost, or live with other monkeys, it's probably not worth it. But the difference isn't "vast". It's pretty negligible because on the whole, fridges don't use a lot lot of power.
So - why can't we have a basic $1000 modern efficient fridge that is repairable? because - you'd keep it for 30-50 years and that'd be the end of that business. But what if that company was then encouraged to make a better fridge next year. It's an interesting unintended side-effect of right-to-repair and other repair-ability measures. Instead of buying a new fridge because I have to, I should buy a new one because it's 2x as efficient and it's a better value proposition when faced with rising power costs. It'd spawn the right kind of obsolescence not fake bad design obsolescence.
> first - I didn't say that you would or wouldn't. I said it isn't "surviorship bias", the reliability and repair-ability difference is absolutely real.
Sorry, wasn't challenging that part, just bringing up an adjacent point. I apologize, I should've been clearer. I definitely believe the difference in reliability and repairability.
> At a 4% interest rate, and .12$/KWh, a modern fridge @450KWh/yr for 10 years costs NPV -$933 for electricity and say -$1000 to buy it. And old fridge @1800KWh/yr for 10 (more) years costs -$1750. So you'd save about $200 with the ancient fridge, not counting having to manually defrost it.
Thank you for doing the math here and making a convincing case for it. That's actually quite a bit better than I thought. However, electricity is already up to .25$/kWh in some states, and probably only going to increase in the years to come as fossil energy becomes scarcer. That changes the math a bit, but not drastically so I suppose. Refrigerators don't use all that much power to begin with anyway, considering the utility you get out of it.
> And before you say it - there is no "repairing over and over". You need to put about that $200 into like it every 20-30 years, every other generation you hand it down to.
Conversely, modern fridges in my experience aren't THAT unreliable either. If something breaks it's usually the ice maker or like a door seal, and many people will just let that stay broken. It's rare to see the actual fridge part break completely... in my very limited experience.
> Still if electricity doubled in cost, or you just like auto-defrost, or live with other monkeys, it's probably not worth it. But the difference isn't "vast". It's pretty negligible because on the whole, fridges don't use a lot lot of power.
Hah, sorry, I see now you've said the same thing.
> Instead of buying a new fridge because I have to, I should buy a new one because it's 2x as efficient and it's a better value proposition when faced with rising power costs. It'd spawn the right kind of obsolescence not fake bad design obsolescence.
This would be nice. FWIW, I know of a company that hand-builds ultra-efficient fridges out of a small town in America: http://www.sunfrost.com/
They're not very big... hard to compare with the mass-manufactured Chinese stuff... but just glad there's SOMEONE out there still making old-world hardware.
And I don't use a 1960 fridge, mines about 3 years old - why? because the old one broke and I had to get a new one quick (I could not afford the time to repair - plus the old one was post-2000 junk anyhow), I like auto-defrost, and the other monkeys that live in the house need ice+water in the door, or they'll throw poop at me.
At a 4% interest rate, and .12$/KWh, a modern fridge @450KWh/yr for 10 years costs NPV -$933 for electricity and say -$1000 to buy it. And old fridge @1800KWh/yr for 10 (more) years costs -$1750. So you'd save about $200 with the ancient fridge, not counting having to manually defrost it.
And before you say it - there is no "repairing over and over". You need to put about that $200 into like it every 20-30 years, every other generation you hand it down to.
Still if electricity doubled in cost, or you just like auto-defrost, or live with other monkeys, it's probably not worth it. But the difference isn't "vast". It's pretty negligible because on the whole, fridges don't use a lot lot of power.
So - why can't we have a basic $1000 modern efficient fridge that is repairable? because - you'd keep it for 30-50 years and that'd be the end of that business. But what if that company was then encouraged to make a better fridge next year. It's an interesting unintended side-effect of right-to-repair and other repair-ability measures. Instead of buying a new fridge because I have to, I should buy a new one because it's 2x as efficient and it's a better value proposition when faced with rising power costs. It'd spawn the right kind of obsolescence not fake bad design obsolescence.