American real estate broker Bernard London’s 1932 paper “Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence” postulated a need for a built-in, “life-span” for all goods, clothes, and even homes, in order to maintain a cycle of productivity, employment, distribution and economic growth.

(Hmm. Seems familiar, doesn’t it? Can we think of any industries or companies that follow this model?)

At the time, following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the US of A was in the economic doldrums. Which had generated a knock-on effect, both economically and politically, throughout the entire world. Personal income dropped, prices plunged, and profits and tax revenue crashed.

Market confidence was non-existent. Consumption had slowed, crop prices had collapsed and, rather inconveniently, people were using things for longer than they would normally. They were even, (oh the horror), repairing stuff.

Well, that wouldn’t do at all. Bernie theorised that, combined with a modicum of tax relief, the government needed to impose, at the moment of manufacture, an arbitrary point of obsolescence on everything that wasn’t degradable. Five years for a car maybe. Perhaps twenty-five years for a home.

Bernie-pants even suggested that anyone who held onto goods for longer than was deemed necessary, should be taxed on their thriftiness.

No. Everybody needed to buy, buy, buy, and spend, spend, spend. Get production moving, increase employment, crank up the economy, and bring in those much-needed profits and tax revenues.

Unfortunately, the “Bernienator” was a little hazy on what to do with obsolete goods other than using the term “junk-pile”.

Whilst all that Mr London envisioned didn’t come to pass, the economic model of a constant turnover of consumption and obsolescence is clearly the modern standard. Replace the words junk and pile, with scrap and yard, or recycling and centre, and everybody climbs on board the consumption train.

TOOT! TOOT! All ABOARD! Next stop, extinction.

So, what else can we take a look at?