Conversations with my plumber

The three story house I live in here in Toronto needs heating. The Canadian winter is cold. Since we believe in sustainability which is basically just another word for doing things properly, we recently installed air tight double glassed windows and a new heating system. The heating system, however, is flawed. We chose it because it uses less water, which is heated and pumped through the radiators on each floor. It is a new design.

The plumber just came over and told us that this heating system doesn’t work that well. Each year, he says, companies that design these things bring out “new” models that are different than previous systems and even require new parts. This means that plumbers need to supply their customers with parts that are incompatible with their old geiser, which costs a lot of money – exactly as the business making these things hoped.

We find the same thing with computers. A desktop is basically a motherboard and power supply, RAM, a video card and a hard drive. Each new generation of computers, and they have improved significantly in performance, requires hardware that cannot be fit into the old system (even the case) because the manufacturers know that people want new computers (perhaps the old one was designed to become obsolete in 5 years) and that they will spend money to make it. Unfortunately, you need to throw out all the old shit – that new CPU wont fit on the old motherboard, even though it easily could!

Government needs to regulate industry. And not at the general will of the people as this is usually done, but because we need to do things properly – otherwise we have problems. Wouldn’t you want government to strictly regulate your local nuclear power plant? Why are the other things we build less important?