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DiaMat2040 t1_j10jr83 wrote

Reply to comment by Fyvrfg in My mom’s 50 year old magnifier from the CCCP era. The star is a state quality mark of the USSR which works as a certification of quality. by daanikp

google planned obsolescence and why companies do it. also, why would a planned economy create cheap crap?

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Fyvrfg t1_j10kp0x wrote

It would create cheap crap so they could reach their quota. Soviet cars were pieces of shit you had to wait 5 years and more to buy. Even then everyone wanted a western one. Same thing with household appliances and clothes. "Soviet quality" is a myth carried by russian nationalists. Nobody wanted to make quality stuff, it just had to be acceptable

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BananaPeely t1_j10nohw wrote

The same incentive for planned obsolence drives quality

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BoilerButtSlut t1_j11x70b wrote

Planned obsolescence isn't a thing.

Source: am engineer.

To answer your question, they made junk because there wasn't any incentive to make anything good: the economy was closed. You couldn't import anything, so there was no competition. If there were only two TV makers, and no one got fired or lost their jobs because one TV was worse than the other, well it's just a race to the bottom to make it as shitty as possible.

I've used soviet-era stuff. My family lived with it for decades. It was garbage. It's not a coincidence it disappeared or broke shortly after everything opened up.

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