lowering quality to increas sales.

If an appliance manufacturer, for example, notices that its appliances last for many decades, is it moral and/or ethical for it to make them a little cheaper so that they fail sooner, so that people will have to buy new ones?

What moral or ethical system are you using to evaluate this question?

After all, when they do this, they risk people noticing it, their reputation being damaged, and sales declining.

Plus a competitor with the original high quality of the first brand may capture part of their market.

Are they morally or ethically obliged to label their product, "Average product life is now 2 years lower than pre-1998 models"?

No one would say that saving production costs in ways that do not lower quality is an ethical failing, and lowering quality might be be a way to save production costs. Does it matter if is or not? If they produce for less cost, is it moral but if they lower quality solely so that their appliances will fail sooner, doesn't that make it immoral?

Is there a difference between morally and ethically? What is it?

And is this done? I read, often here, that appliances last far less time than they used to. Or are people just imagining this, or they mistreat their appliances and compare with other people who don't?

I live alone and so did the guy I bought my house from, so I don't use my washing machine as much as more than one person does, but it's from

1979 and it still works fine, and seems as good as new. All the features work. Looks almost as good as new. 42 years. (It might have another 20 or 30 years in it?) I've heard that new ones only last, what is it, 5 years. Hard to believe. The only repair this Kenmore top-loader made by Whirlppool has needed was a drive belt. I got one but havent' put it on yet. For a while I had to push-start the spin cycle, but most of the time even that seems to have worked and today I was t here and saw it start by itself a few times. The water pump is driven by the same belt and the water comes out plenty fast.

If the companies consult with each other and all agree to do this, is this illegal price fixing***? I don't see how since it's not about the price but about the quality, unless the anti-price-fixing statute also covers quality.

***In the USA, "Illegal price fixing occurs whenever two or more competitors agree to take actions that have the effect of raising, lowering or stabilizing the price of any product or service without any legitimate justification."

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"Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors that raises, lowers, or stabilizes prices or competitive terms. Generally, the antitrust laws require that each company establish prices and other terms on its own, without agreeing with a competitor. When consumers make choices about what products and services to buy, they expect that the price has been determined freely on the basis of supply and demand, not by an agreement among competitors. When competitors agree to restrict competition, the result is often higher prices. Accordingly, price fixing is a major concern of government antitrust enforcement." "... an agreement can be discovered from "circumstantial" evidence. For example, if direct competitors have a pattern of unexplained identical contract terms or price behavior together with other factors (such as the lack of legitimate business explanation), unlawful price fixing may be the reason. Invitations to coordinate prices also can raise concerns, as when one competitor announces publicly that it is willing to end a price war if its rival is willing to do the same, and the terms are so specific that competitors may view this as an offer to set prices jointly."

Nothing about quality.

Life expectancy is always just a guess until they reach that number. Manufacturers typically design to a price point and you get what they can afford at that price. I suspect newer stuff just seems to fail more because relays and switches got replaced by circuit boards and solid state devices. Power line transients are pretty tough on them. I know every microwave that got dropped in our shop had a bad clock board. Jumper out the clock and it worked OK.

As for your old "wig wag" whirlpool, that thing is a tank and if you have one of the newer ones there is a bushing you can remove to replace that captive belt without dropping the whole mechanism. Then you are just unplugging the wires on the wig wag. I worked on a bunch of those back in the day. The only other thing that really goes bad is the pump and the timer. By now someone may be making generic timers. The actual mechanics are the same for all of them.