Godammn vacuum cleaner broke. Took it apart, its just a part of the brush roller that is broken. Should be an easy fix. But they don't sell spare parts for my vacuum. They never have, they just want you to buy a new one. So one little easily replaced plastic bit makes the whole thing into non-functional mostly plastic waste. The vacuum is even clearly designed to be easily repaired, it's one of the most intelligently laid out appliances I've ever seen.

But it's not profitable to sell spare parts, so I have to send this thing to a landfill if I can't figure out some ghetto fix. This intentional wastefulness is one of the things that pisses me off about capitalism nearly every day.

  • furryanarchy [comrade/them,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Because CFLs were designed after their form factor was designed, and it's really expensive to make a good ballast that small. Florescent tubes have the ballast mounted separately, and it has room to be as big as it needs to be. The ballast in a CFL has to be cheap enough to be disposable with the lamp itself when it goes bad, and small enough to fit, which means it has to sacrifice lifespan and effectiveness at it's job. An inefficient ballast wears out the lamp faster, and itself degrades faster.