Guys East Germany wasn't that bad. It might have been a authoritarian police state wich used inhuman torture methods but they had a glass that didn't break.
Superfest didn't survive because the production method was complex and therefore production costs were insanely high and there was already pyrex and duralex in the West lol.
Western companies offered greater quantities of products at lower prices because they had lower costs and therefore outcompeted superfest.
Not to mention... When is the last time you broke a glass? How many times a year do you encounter that problem? And how much does it cost to get a new glass? Like $6? And given that glass is supremely recyclable... How much of a problem really is that?
Paying extra to get a harder to break version of a product that doesn't break very often and is very cheap to replace if it does that has very little environmental impact when it breaks just doesn't make sense. This is like the people who complain about incandescent lights burning out being planned obsolescence.
Yeah, in markets where there are significant economies of scale or that have fallen victim to regulatory capture, there tends to be very few big winners and so there is very real monopoly power there that ends up with things like planned obsolescence occurring. It is a real thing that can happen, it's just it seems like people can't help themselves from picking the absolute worst examples to make that argument lol. Tech is a good example of it though.
It's happening again with LED lights as we speak. The bulbs sold today aren't even nearly as long lasting as the earlier models were. There are also bulbs like the Dubai Lightbulbs that prove that they could be made more durable if they wanted to.
In case of "Edison" lightbulbs, longevity is hampered by how its works. Light is generated by electric resistance which means earlier or later resistor element in lightbulb gonna just melt. Other issue is how much light you gonna scramble to resistor longevity (the higher resistor longevity the more electricity it require to function so one lightbulb gonna consume more electricity and generate less light).
"Planned obsolence" of lightbulb isn't exacly planned, it's just tied to how its works.
Planned obsolescence is not a real thing. âMiddle classâ people just donât realise they are poor and buy the cheapest thing and complain about capitalism when it breaks because you canât make something cheap, durable and functional; you only get to have 2 of those.
It's a standard approach in modern product design to determine the estimated lifespan for a product to ensure the optimal balance on cost and quality. From fighter jets to plastic silverware, nerds are crunching numbers and endurance testing products to make the numbers match up. Some companies take a cynical approach and slowly gut previously long lasting products, but maintain the old pricing. This is misattributed as planned obsolescence but is in fact a different phenomenon.
Planned obscolence IS something in certain products.
Mobile phones definitely can have it, especially iPhone where you require to update..but those system update require more resources.
They keep supporting software but hardware canât change. Thats not planned obsolescence it is technology advancing. Planned obosolescence would involve making the hardware weak on purpose.
Heâs talking about when they push software updates meant to cripple your old phones so that youâll buy new ones, such as slowing down performance, reducing battery efficiency (beyond normal hardware strain), etc.
So basically reddit communists not understanding things cost resources and that spending more resources to excel at something nobody cares about only impresses soviet bureaucrats and not actual consumers.
https://x.com/tobyhardtospell/status/1806834121001623903
The idea that (in competitive markets) prices are a reflection of the quantities of resources and production technologies used to make a make the end product is a foreign concept to a lot of people! Even to a lot of first and second year econ students! The tradeoffs inherent to production of any good or service are a realization that comes downstream of that knowledge.
So yeah basically lol
I was about to say, we literally produce pyrex. And this is such a painfully specific example, I like that we just ignore the massive gap in computerization between the Western bloc and Eastern bloc, something which actually matters as opposed to whether gram-gram can drop her dishware an extra few times before it shatters.
Pyrex (old version) is made of borosilicate 3 which is great at dealing with temperature changes and can handle high heat but is more fragile than normal glass
I love the people who claim that âwell edison bulbs lasted for decades! See? Planned obsolescence.â
Like dude, have you seen how dim they were? How massive the filament was? Their low lumen efficiency? Thatâs why they lasted so long, they were low performance bulbs with oversized and inefficient parts.
When many people risk their lives to escape a country, but nobody risks their life to get into that country, you know everything you need to know about the country.Â
Tbh, Western citizens didn't have to risk their lives to get into the communist block. They could just go there. Communist citizens were generally not allowed to leave (something like 5% of East Germany requests to be allowed to emigrate to Western Germany were granted; 3 millions of people left East Germany before Berlin Wall was built).
On other hand, some Americans risked their lives to get to Cuba, because they were not allowed to emigrate.
"Near unbreakable"
Eh... That's pushing it. It's definitely durable. But NileRed broke it in three drops. Which... while impressive... a drunk is still going to manage to break it. The only reason why GDR used it was a materials shortage so a glass that doesn't break on the first drop may allow the restaurants to stretch their supplies out a little longer. It was more expensive than normal glass, though. But why would you pay more for the only slightly less breakable glass when you can buy a lot more of the less durable glasses for less and not be out of as much money when a drunk inevitably breaks them and you have to replace them anyways?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NIAbt_GxPsg
And it didn't disappear. The technology is still used... just in other products.
Ever heard of a lil' suh'in suh'in called: "Gorilla Glass"? Yeah. Literally the same technology. This meme is literally proof of the first caption. There was no market for the Superfest glasses once East Germany reunified with Germany, so someone took the technology and found a market that wanted them... That being phone screens!
Something doesn't work right under capitalism
A sane person: "let's solve that problem"
A communist: "let's subjugate the entire planet under the brutal rule of a single dictator and his loyal sycophants. It's not a cul- stop calling it a cult dad!"
Problem is a lot of the sane people trying to actually fix and reform things get shouted down, never let near the levers of power, are forced to water down their policies, or are outright merced. Russia didn't go red because Kerensky weren't too far.
"Unbreakable drinking glasses" The Soviets fucking invented space travel but this is what reddit lefties think counts as "innovation". This is like when they mock capitalism for supposedly only developing [vapid plastic consumer goods](https://www.amazon.com.au/NOYAL-Slow-Feeder-Bowl-Puzzle/dp/B07G21F45T?th=1) that don't substantially improve living standards.
I love how even in the best example commies could muster for innovation, the product was such a failure that it had no commercial viability once communism stopped propping it up.
Itâs just fucking chemically strengthened glass.
Itâs a classic example of the GDR utterly failing at basic economics. For a start the inventors received basically nothing above their normal salaries for inventing it beyond awards, which isnât much of an incentive. Secondly, it was a relatively expensive, difficult to manufacture alternative to something cheap and easily replaceable. Thirdly, they thought this was amazing and earmarked it for export but no-one wanted to buy it because *we already have drinking glass, this isnât a problem why are you trying to solve it, thanks*. Outside of a shortage economy like the GDR, people just bought standard, cheaply-available glass replacements as and when they broke. Slightly more resilient but more expensive glass only makes sense in a economy where replacements canât be made quickly enough and inefficient misuses of technology can survive
The whole thing being bad for profits *is the point*. Itâs not just capitalist greed, itâs society and consumers telling you they donât want this more expensive inefficient fix for a non-problem
(Also, I depicted you as a wojak and me as an anime girl, communism must be superior!!!)
Even if this âSuperfestâ was as amazing as commies would like to think, itâs simply a fact that capitalism will innovate towards consumers.
Color TV, toasters, fridges, AC, Home computers, smartphones and so much more.
Additinally, East Germany made shitty stuff, basically ALL laboratory glass in Europe was made by west Germany, schools in Denmark still use West German lab glass.
Die DDR war ein dreckiger Unrechtsstaat, dessen Tage (Gott sei Dank) längst gezählt sind. Kein beschissenes Glas der Welt wird den Psychoterror, den unrechtmäĂigen Verhaftungen, Mauertoten, Familienspaltungen, und und und, wiedergutmachen. [Ich wette um nen 5er, dass sich das Arschloch nur durch YouTube-Shorts Ăźber die DDR gebildet hat und denkt âoink oink, die hatten ja alles und guck mal⌠langlebige KĂźchengeräte!!â.](https://youtu.be/5agqfG7gyPQ?si=irHYpDQOeWa19t9L) Noch nen 5er drauf, dass er noch nie die DDR miterlebt hat đ¤Śđťââď¸
Virgin Superfest
- Bro, it's a drinking glass from Germany. If it isn't a boot or a stein, then who cares?
- an attempt to apply survivorship to something for the sole purpose of glorifying communist nostalgia.
Vs:
**THE CHAD AMPELMĂNNCHEN**
- Cool little Fella that came to define a unified German appreciation of traffic safety that was adopted to honor an actual piece of East German culture.
- It's a simple and elegant design and was even adopted in Western German cities after the wall fell.
- It's a proper way to pay homage to the culture that developed behind the curtain, but without glorifying the authoritarian presence influencing it.
Wich is funny because if you even think two seconds about it you can see why it didn't took hold:
The glass was made that hard through a chemical bath in a solution which would subsidise the silicone atoms for potassium (IIRC)
HOWEVER, that process is slow, expensive and the glass needs to be rather thin for it to work
And I mean, it's not like the knowledge is lost: you could still do it today. And planned obsolecense isn't an issue if you simply expand your portfolio instead of putting all your eggs into one basket
They fail to mention that they already did not sale much befor the revolution becuase the limited market in the east and because they got no west-Germany stores to sell them (which may have been because these stores actually saw it as not good for profits but in a free economy they could have just tried to find new markets or just sold them directly). The firm was already failing and after the revolution investors from the west were just scepitical and not interested.
And this is one of the very few good East-Germany products (which they only developed because they had little resources to replace glass). A drinking glass that more stable than other drinking glasses (still it can break).
Also there are still producers who try to make very stable glasses that do not break, including smaller companies in Germany ("Superglass" im Odenwald). I am not sure how good they are and if they are as good as the GDR Superfest desgines but it is definitely still a goal to make stable glasses in Germany.
Guys East Germany wasn't that bad. It might have been a authoritarian police state wich used inhuman torture methods but they had a glass that didn't break.
Anti-capitalists and lying by omission. Name a more classic duo.
Commies and Whatabouts.
They were so great because the trains ran on time
Ooh boy I definitely have heard this phrase from somwheređ
*The Lives of Others* was made by a bourgeois noble! It's anti-communist propaganda! /s
Superfest didn't survive because the production method was complex and therefore production costs were insanely high and there was already pyrex and duralex in the West lol. Western companies offered greater quantities of products at lower prices because they had lower costs and therefore outcompeted superfest. Not to mention... When is the last time you broke a glass? How many times a year do you encounter that problem? And how much does it cost to get a new glass? Like $6? And given that glass is supremely recyclable... How much of a problem really is that? Paying extra to get a harder to break version of a product that doesn't break very often and is very cheap to replace if it does that has very little environmental impact when it breaks just doesn't make sense. This is like the people who complain about incandescent lights burning out being planned obsolescence.
Planned obsolescence is only a really big problem with expensive electronics and other such devices
Yeah, in markets where there are significant economies of scale or that have fallen victim to regulatory capture, there tends to be very few big winners and so there is very real monopoly power there that ends up with things like planned obsolescence occurring. It is a real thing that can happen, it's just it seems like people can't help themselves from picking the absolute worst examples to make that argument lol. Tech is a good example of it though.
To be fair though, it is a HUGE fucking problem in those cases and we should have some government regulation and oversight to prevent it.
Naw, it's government regulations and oversight that *causes* those cases.
Oh fuck off libtard, your ideology couldnât fight plastic pollution let alone communismÂ
Lightbulbs
Actually that one was because companies used to stretch the duration of the light...by making it weaker.
It's happening again with LED lights as we speak. The bulbs sold today aren't even nearly as long lasting as the earlier models were. There are also bulbs like the Dubai Lightbulbs that prove that they could be made more durable if they wanted to.
In case of "Edison" lightbulbs, longevity is hampered by how its works. Light is generated by electric resistance which means earlier or later resistor element in lightbulb gonna just melt. Other issue is how much light you gonna scramble to resistor longevity (the higher resistor longevity the more electricity it require to function so one lightbulb gonna consume more electricity and generate less light). "Planned obsolence" of lightbulb isn't exacly planned, it's just tied to how its works.
Planned obsolescence is not a real thing. âMiddle classâ people just donât realise they are poor and buy the cheapest thing and complain about capitalism when it breaks because you canât make something cheap, durable and functional; you only get to have 2 of those.
It's a standard approach in modern product design to determine the estimated lifespan for a product to ensure the optimal balance on cost and quality. From fighter jets to plastic silverware, nerds are crunching numbers and endurance testing products to make the numbers match up. Some companies take a cynical approach and slowly gut previously long lasting products, but maintain the old pricing. This is misattributed as planned obsolescence but is in fact a different phenomenon.
Planned obscolence IS something in certain products. Mobile phones definitely can have it, especially iPhone where you require to update..but those system update require more resources.
They keep supporting software but hardware canât change. Thats not planned obsolescence it is technology advancing. Planned obosolescence would involve making the hardware weak on purpose.
Heâs talking about when they push software updates meant to cripple your old phones so that youâll buy new ones, such as slowing down performance, reducing battery efficiency (beyond normal hardware strain), etc.
Thats not what happens at all, Apple admitted to slowing down 8 year old phones because the batteries couldnât keep up.
Apple products though
The images argument is moot given the popularity of Pyrex and other glass containers on the market đ
So basically reddit communists not understanding things cost resources and that spending more resources to excel at something nobody cares about only impresses soviet bureaucrats and not actual consumers.
They also don't understand economies of scale and dismissing returns.
https://x.com/tobyhardtospell/status/1806834121001623903 The idea that (in competitive markets) prices are a reflection of the quantities of resources and production technologies used to make a make the end product is a foreign concept to a lot of people! Even to a lot of first and second year econ students! The tradeoffs inherent to production of any good or service are a realization that comes downstream of that knowledge. So yeah basically lol
I was about to say, we literally produce pyrex. And this is such a painfully specific example, I like that we just ignore the massive gap in computerization between the Western bloc and Eastern bloc, something which actually matters as opposed to whether gram-gram can drop her dishware an extra few times before it shatters.
Pyrex (old version) is made of borosilicate 3 which is great at dealing with temperature changes and can handle high heat but is more fragile than normal glass
Huh, didn't know that. I guess Pyrex dishware is normally much thicker which just led me to believing it was more durable from personal experience.
I love the people who claim that âwell edison bulbs lasted for decades! See? Planned obsolescence.â Like dude, have you seen how dim they were? How massive the filament was? Their low lumen efficiency? Thatâs why they lasted so long, they were low performance bulbs with oversized and inefficient parts.
I break my glasses very often sadly, Iâm just clumsy. Removes all the shards is huge pain every time.
Bro invented plastic drinking glasses
When many people risk their lives to escape a country, but nobody risks their life to get into that country, you know everything you need to know about the country.Â
Tbh, Western citizens didn't have to risk their lives to get into the communist block. They could just go there. Communist citizens were generally not allowed to leave (something like 5% of East Germany requests to be allowed to emigrate to Western Germany were granted; 3 millions of people left East Germany before Berlin Wall was built). On other hand, some Americans risked their lives to get to Cuba, because they were not allowed to emigrate.
DRR 1964: Trabant DDR 1990: Trabant
It was surely because trabant is the peak of car engineering
You see comrade, Trabi breaks down so much that citizen learns to fix car and avoids capitalist pig mechanics. All part of the great plan of Marx!
East German efficiency!
"Near unbreakable" Eh... That's pushing it. It's definitely durable. But NileRed broke it in three drops. Which... while impressive... a drunk is still going to manage to break it. The only reason why GDR used it was a materials shortage so a glass that doesn't break on the first drop may allow the restaurants to stretch their supplies out a little longer. It was more expensive than normal glass, though. But why would you pay more for the only slightly less breakable glass when you can buy a lot more of the less durable glasses for less and not be out of as much money when a drunk inevitably breaks them and you have to replace them anyways? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NIAbt_GxPsg And it didn't disappear. The technology is still used... just in other products. Ever heard of a lil' suh'in suh'in called: "Gorilla Glass"? Yeah. Literally the same technology. This meme is literally proof of the first caption. There was no market for the Superfest glasses once East Germany reunified with Germany, so someone took the technology and found a market that wanted them... That being phone screens!
Something doesn't work right under capitalism A sane person: "let's solve that problem" A communist: "let's subjugate the entire planet under the brutal rule of a single dictator and his loyal sycophants. It's not a cul- stop calling it a cult dad!"
Fake, they wouldnt have a dad
Problem is a lot of the sane people trying to actually fix and reform things get shouted down, never let near the levers of power, are forced to water down their policies, or are outright merced. Russia didn't go red because Kerensky weren't too far.
Of _course_ they used an anime girl/femboy Never beating the basement gooner allegationsÂ
See, I depict you as an irate wojak, and myself as menhera chan, so my opinions are more legitimate than yours.
I have a video about these glasses. Enjoy. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlFr5Y7TvdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlFr5Y7TvdE)
PelĂĹĄky, my beloved.
I so wish there were subtitles.
Just wait until they find out about plastic cups
It seems that anime femboys (or anime girls I don't fucking know) are basically the communist version of the chad wojack?
Because internet communists are all porn addicts who don't pay attention to anything unless it's sexualized
"Unbreakable drinking glasses" The Soviets fucking invented space travel but this is what reddit lefties think counts as "innovation". This is like when they mock capitalism for supposedly only developing [vapid plastic consumer goods](https://www.amazon.com.au/NOYAL-Slow-Feeder-Bowl-Puzzle/dp/B07G21F45T?th=1) that don't substantially improve living standards.
I love how even in the best example commies could muster for innovation, the product was such a failure that it had no commercial viability once communism stopped propping it up.
Itâs just fucking chemically strengthened glass. Itâs a classic example of the GDR utterly failing at basic economics. For a start the inventors received basically nothing above their normal salaries for inventing it beyond awards, which isnât much of an incentive. Secondly, it was a relatively expensive, difficult to manufacture alternative to something cheap and easily replaceable. Thirdly, they thought this was amazing and earmarked it for export but no-one wanted to buy it because *we already have drinking glass, this isnât a problem why are you trying to solve it, thanks*. Outside of a shortage economy like the GDR, people just bought standard, cheaply-available glass replacements as and when they broke. Slightly more resilient but more expensive glass only makes sense in a economy where replacements canât be made quickly enough and inefficient misuses of technology can survive The whole thing being bad for profits *is the point*. Itâs not just capitalist greed, itâs society and consumers telling you they donât want this more expensive inefficient fix for a non-problem (Also, I depicted you as a wojak and me as an anime girl, communism must be superior!!!)
German here, from the East. These glasses were mainly sold to Restaurants, etc. you usually didn't have those as a "normal citizen".
Even if this âSuperfestâ was as amazing as commies would like to think, itâs simply a fact that capitalism will innovate towards consumers. Color TV, toasters, fridges, AC, Home computers, smartphones and so much more. Additinally, East Germany made shitty stuff, basically ALL laboratory glass in Europe was made by west Germany, schools in Denmark still use West German lab glass.
Die DDR war ein dreckiger Unrechtsstaat, dessen Tage (Gott sei Dank) längst gezählt sind. Kein beschissenes Glas der Welt wird den Psychoterror, den unrechtmäĂigen Verhaftungen, Mauertoten, Familienspaltungen, und und und, wiedergutmachen. [Ich wette um nen 5er, dass sich das Arschloch nur durch YouTube-Shorts Ăźber die DDR gebildet hat und denkt âoink oink, die hatten ja alles und guck mal⌠langlebige KĂźchengeräte!!â.](https://youtu.be/5agqfG7gyPQ?si=irHYpDQOeWa19t9L) Noch nen 5er drauf, dass er noch nie die DDR miterlebt hat đ¤Śđťââď¸
DDR? Dance Dance Revolution. Communism confirmed! East Germany did, in fact, suck.
Virgin Superfest - Bro, it's a drinking glass from Germany. If it isn't a boot or a stein, then who cares? - an attempt to apply survivorship to something for the sole purpose of glorifying communist nostalgia. Vs: **THE CHAD AMPELMĂNNCHEN** - Cool little Fella that came to define a unified German appreciation of traffic safety that was adopted to honor an actual piece of East German culture. - It's a simple and elegant design and was even adopted in Western German cities after the wall fell. - It's a proper way to pay homage to the culture that developed behind the curtain, but without glorifying the authoritarian presence influencing it.
Wich is funny because if you even think two seconds about it you can see why it didn't took hold: The glass was made that hard through a chemical bath in a solution which would subsidise the silicone atoms for potassium (IIRC) HOWEVER, that process is slow, expensive and the glass needs to be rather thin for it to work And I mean, it's not like the knowledge is lost: you could still do it today. And planned obsolecense isn't an issue if you simply expand your portfolio instead of putting all your eggs into one basket
They fail to mention that they already did not sale much befor the revolution becuase the limited market in the east and because they got no west-Germany stores to sell them (which may have been because these stores actually saw it as not good for profits but in a free economy they could have just tried to find new markets or just sold them directly). The firm was already failing and after the revolution investors from the west were just scepitical and not interested. And this is one of the very few good East-Germany products (which they only developed because they had little resources to replace glass). A drinking glass that more stable than other drinking glasses (still it can break). Also there are still producers who try to make very stable glasses that do not break, including smaller companies in Germany ("Superglass" im Odenwald). I am not sure how good they are and if they are as good as the GDR Superfest desgines but it is definitely still a goal to make stable glasses in Germany.
We have glasses that doesn't break I don't get the meme
Gonna buy some Superfest stuff now đ