Working in my room last summer, the sounds of hammers and loud thuds frequented my eardrums—the effects of solar panel installation on my family’s roof. Once the process was over, I journeyed into the backyard to take a look at the new additions to my home, but one thing stopped me in my tracks. As I scrutinized the panels, I noticed a water bottle stuck under one of them and spare screws littering the shingles. It seemed careless of the workers to leave trash all over the roof. The lack of cleanliness in this instance is just one example of how businesses prioritize maximizing production at the expense of quality in a capitalist economy.
To make a product, you must extract resources, manufacture them, and then sell them to a market. Obviously, the more you sell, the more profits you reap. However, how can a company ensure longevity? The answer is planned obsolescence, or “making sure the existing version of a product will become dated.” By shortening the lifespan of a product, businesses encourage consumers to continue buying their product after it has become ‘useless’. Exemplified by the solar panel incident, companies squeeze more installations into the day and rush employees from one job to the next with the intent to make the most profit. However, the scramble leaves workers with no time to ensure the job is well done, even at the very end.
Furthermore, shoddy products are a direct result of the emphasis on quantity over quality. Maximizing production means minimizing the cost to make goods, automatically offering consumers a second-rate item. The process is similar to making a fantasy team. A team made up of the best athletes comes at a high cost, so you must work to enhance performance (profit) with less investment. This team will obviously not perform as well as the group made of elite athletes, but has likely been chosen to make the most of the money you have.
Next time you go shopping, instead of wondering why a product is so expensive, consider why another is so cheap.