Powered by glolg
Display Preferences Most Recent Entries Chatterbox Blog Links Site Statistics Category Tags About Me, Myself and Gilbert XML RSS Feed
Monday, Aug 03, 2009 - 01:14 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- -
The Washing Machine

changelog v1.14
---------------
* Existing blog entries normalised to have compulsory line endings after double line breaks (implications in returning summarised search results).
* Tab-to-search functionality in Google Chrome implemented.
* Some miscellaneous edits in previous posts, e.g. the 4O uni major data, and addition of an occ-quote.
N.B. blog policy: errata may occ-ur in previous posts without explicit notice/timestamps etc, where they are minor and do not detract from the original thrust of the post. Spelling/grammatical mistakes of course fall within this category.


The old Sanyo washing machine finally gave up the ghost this week, after a decade's service and some months of the most frightful random banging noises. Most probably, the balancing mechanism failed. Grandma voted it out of the house, and we now have a spanking new Toshiba. I'll miss winding the dial on the Sanyo.

Back to bunnies, bunnies bunnies bunnies:



A freaking sweet "unsaveable" penalty kick by Nani, even as United lost the Audi Cup to Bayern on penalties (note ball bouncing out of the net):


Source: Redcafe


And the attention-seeking Mr. Ham actually swallows the whole stalk moments after this photo was taken. A career as sword-swallower awaits? Should have taken a video clip...


mmmmppppffffhhhh


The local news continues to helpfully throw up issues related to those recently covered here. On food security: buy/rent foreign farms, or lock-in prices with foreign suppliers. Not only that, more precious local land will be set aside for food production. A laudable attempt at diversification, but if history is anything to go by, the most important part of the equation is staying relatively richer than major food-producing countries.

Productivity concerns - the productivity of local workers is falling, says the NTUC sec-gen. The first solution stated is to "develop new markets", which seems to indicate that the problem is recognized to be on the demand side. No sense churning out ten washing machines, if only one can be sold (yes, the price can be dropped, but only up to a certain point).

In fact, the short-term cause of the fall in productivity is said to be due to employers retaining workers (saving jobs), although the jobs aren't quite there. In other words, borrowing the scenario used to illustrate the problem, one may have orders for only 80 washing machines per day, which say eight workers can adequately fulfil. But since one had ten workers, and doesn't want to fire them, each worker produces somewhat less than he can.

So, labour productivity in this case is not an issue with laziness, or declining technology, or mismanagement - one could develop a process that allows workers to manufacture washing machines at twice or thrice the speed, at the original cost, and that wouldn't help labour productivity squat (okay, it could if wages are a large component of total costs, since the factory could then conceivably lay off half or two-thirds of its workers and maintain identical production capacity). Put another way, improvements in production tech can't make a difference if people just aren't buying.

Now back to the Sanyo washing machine. An interesting observation on consumer durables is that, quite often, good workmanship is often detrimental to sales. There was an old Mitsubishi (if I recall rightly) fan in my room that had lasted for some thirty years, and superficial looks and perhaps some small efficiency gains aside, there was little reason to replace it - electric fan technology, unlike computers and handphones, hasn't advanced much.

Would the company have been better off producing fans that lasted on average say, five years, before falling apart? Not if other companies continue making comparable fans that last 30 years, since consumers would soon ditch them. But if the major electric fan, or washing machine, producers colluded and cut the expected lifetime of their products by half? Would that not paradoxically double demand, since consumers would have to purchase twice as many fans/washing machines over any given timespan?

Perhaps not, if consumers recognized the reduced lifespan and decreased their willingness to pay correspondingly, or even fell back to manual fanning/washing if they felt sufficiently shortchanged (unlikely, since fans and washing machines are relatively cheap). I'm not too sure if many consumers would know the lifespan of such durables, or factor such knowledge adequately into purchases, though - ten years, thirty years, big deal? This effect may be aggravated by having only a few personal anecdotes as advice when making a decision (small sample sizes), and the low number of/long time differential between purchases.

Even then, lower productivity being desirable is probably a fallacy anyway, for the economy in general - the extra effort and materials used to replace the fans and washing machines could have been channeled into other goods and services. Once the demand for essential (or close-to-essential) durables is satisfied, we can always produce frivolous luxuries and make everyone even happier. That is, if people want to buy that stuff, which isn't quite the case right now...



comments (0) - email - share - print - direct link
trackbacks (3) - trackback url


Next: Increasing Muggosity


Related Posts:
Economics Thus Far
Open Bookame
STATE FAIL
Fishy Philosophizing
Dog Year Ahoy

Back to top




3 trackbacks


Linkback by LwEi's World

....glys.com/favicon.ico'/bert's blogThe Washing Machine1 day agoinput type='hidden' v...


August 4, 2009 - 01:31 SGT     

Trackback by venus factor

venus factor - [bert's blog]


May 23, 2014 - 19:29 SGT     

Trackback by Rival Knights unlimited

Rival Knights unlimited - [bert's blog]


June 14, 2014 - 09:04 SGT     


Copyright © 2006-2024 GLYS. All Rights Reserved.