Just Buy. 

It is kind of ironic and even hypocritical to try to write about consumerism and planned obsolescence. It is really easy to criticize the system in which we are immersed in, however, to act according to your critical ideas is a whole other thing. We've been taught that the only way to achieve happiness is through consuming and through buying as much as we can. Even though it seems that some individuals are trying to change this mental paradigm in order to create a better society for the next generations, we are somehow really far from this. And this is because it is really complicated to eliminate on pillar of our system. We always end up falling in the same speech, we are supposed to resist and only buy what we need in order to stop feeding the system. But after leaving the room we immediately go out to the mall and buy things that in simple words are just a bunch of garbage with a nice design. How are we supposed to end this vicious cycle if consumerism is part of who we are as a society?
The Light Bulb Conspiracy is a 2010 documentary that illustrates how rotten the companies that control the global economy are. It shows how they design products in order to fail after a certain period of time. Through this method the can obtain more profit, while companies that create long-lasting products are condemned to fail under these big corporations. The movie shows how some objects as simple as light bulbs can elicit the origins and ideas behind this sick plan to dominate our pockets called planned obsolescence. Light Bulbs were created by the end of the XIX century, and during the beginning of the XX century companies began to produce them for commercial purposes. The interesting thing is that these first light bulbs had an average duration that goes over the light bulbs's duration we are using today. One can ask, how is this possible if there has been a lot of technological advances in the last 100 years? The answer is quite simple: Planned obsolescence and ambition.
The corporations that were producing these long-lasting light bubs found out that after a certain period of time their sales dropped. They reached the conclusion that the reason for this was the fact that consumers did not need more than one light bulb for many years, and they could keep on using the same one for decades. This served the purpose of supplying well-manufactured goods to the public, however, their most valued goal was not being accomplished. They needed money and needed it quickly and in big amounts. Their solution was to lower the quality of their artifacts and sell goods that had a determined life-span. Even though this seems like a plain and simple rob, people accepted it, and the first world-wide mafia was created.
Nowadays, planned obsolescence is not only common but it is the pattern and almost the rule. Even though many had tried to make it an obligation, laws that permit it had not been passed, showing some sort of hope for the future of our economy. The problem with planned obsolescence is that it creates a lot of problems, including social problems such as dependence, cultural problems like unlimited consumerism and economic inequalities, economic problems such as speculation and instability, and environmental problems like contamination and pollution. Why can the world see this? Are we blinded? The truth is that the world is lazy, and they, or we, do not care about anything important as long as we have our iPods and our Starbucks' coffee. The only thing we can hope for is that in the next decades people find out that apple's apple is not to be eaten, and that the boxes in our attics can make or roofs collapse over our heads. 

Image taken from the web page www.whyamericanssuck.blogspot.com

Dannoritzer, Cosima. "The Light Bulb Conspiracy." (2010). Arte France, Televisión Española, Televisió de Catalunya. Film