Buy the Good Plates

Rejecting the Lie of Planned Obsolescence

Hello, Friend,

July 1928 Country Gentleman. Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

In an effort to avoid excessive doom scrolling and brain spinning, I’ve been contemplating such exciting things as higher quality, non-toxic, non-stick cookware, glass food storage containers to replace plastic, and a few other household items in a (possibly misguided) effort towards healthier living. I don’t get out much and I do a lot of cooking from scratch. We have a sturdy set of stainless-steel cookware, but some things like eggs and stickier items fare better in a non-stick scenario and our non-stick pans need replacing.

A few years back, mid-pandemic, we moved into this barn apartment on the farm, and I made an executive decision. I had replaced our dishes at least five times by that point and I was really freaking tired of it. For many years, I told myself that I couldn’t afford Fiestaware. I kept buying dishes that looked like Fiestaware, but they were a pretty lie. After our move Fiesta had a sale and I leaped. I have many regrets, but buying these dishes is not one of them. I’m happy every single day when I use them, and they look as beautiful now as they did five years ago. USA made in a factory in Newell, West Virginia since 1936, Fiestaware dishes are top of the line quality dinnerware. Not a single crack or chip or stain to be found. They have been dropped and smacked and abused and proven themselves to be well worth the investment. The money saved is far greater than the cost of replacing cheap plates every few years. I’m confident these will last my lifetime. Now I’m looking for the Fiestaware of ceramic non-stick pans.

There is a point to this blather, I promise.

Queen Double Cooker manufactured by the Republic Stamping & Enameling Co. of Canton, Ohio January 3, 1922 Public Doman Wikimedia Commons

Once upon a time, American made meant quality. It still does for a handful of companies, but they are few and far between. People bought plates and pots and pans and cutlery and appliances to last a lifetime, and they did. I believe that my mother still has the same cast iron pan and Revere Ware pots with the copper bottoms she cooked with when I was young. Making quality things that last used to matter. The companies that made them were more interested in their reputation for excellence and in the next generation of consumers who would aspire to own their wares than cutting corners and paying bigger stock dividends and CEO salaries. Then something shifted and I believe it is a key reason we are where we are in this moment.

In the 1980s, the hyper consumer culture began to form after the opening of China by Deng Xiaoping and the emergence of the Reagan era myth of trickle-down economics. Corporations decided that their stockholders and bottom lines were far more important than their loyalty to their country. Labor in America was expensive. Working people fought hard for weekends, paid vacations, overtime pay, sick days, pensions, 40-hour work weeks, and workplace safety measures. All of these things were problematic to the bottom line.

Bah! How dare they! Work harder, peasants!

Without hesitation or shame, the Captains of Industry shipped their factories and the jobs overseas, while they focused on maximizing profits. The myth of free trade and the Free Market took hold. Americans were encouraged to consume mass quantities and we came to accept the new paradigm. Remember the messaging post 9-11? Get out there and go shopping! We went from being innovators and makers to being consumers and ‘takers.’ The working class ‘built that’, but the 1% weren’t happy. They didn’t want to pay taxes. They needed more money, more stuff, more power, more! As the tech age emerged, planned obsolescence took hold and, (to be fair, with tech, it is a matter of things continuously evolving and improving, though I think sometimes we get fooled by ‘upgrades’ that aren’t really all that much better) lifetime quality was replaced by the endless pursuit of the shiny, new, status symbol or the seductive lure of the cheap and disposable. People were acquiring so much stuff entire industries emerged to help them manage it. Trend cycles accelerated exponentially, and eventually, with the advent of the internet and our data mined micro-targeted reality, they went into hyper speed. With AI added into the mix, it’s only gotten more absurd. Items no longer need to last, because they are made to be tossed away and replaced mere moments after their acquisition. Who wants that old thing when they can have that new thing? Besides that old thing is falling apart. Chuck it!

Garland stove advertisement, January 9 1900 Public Doman Wikimedia Commons

If you haven’t investigated the environmental cost of our cast away culture, it’s well worth the effort. Mountains of fast fashion washing up on beaches in Africa or decomposing in dystopian hellscapes, oceans filling with giant floating islands of garbage, old cell phones and computers being shipped to third world countries exposing people and their environments to an array of dangerous toxins, our air and water and land polluted with forever chemicals and microplastics that have infiltrated every living thing. No one can escape this reality, not even the Bunker Boys.

So, here we are, on the precipice of another acceleration and firmer entrenchment of corporate culture. The new administration is gearing up to hand even bigger tax breaks to the already obscenely wealthy with a myopic, easily distracted, and self-absorbed grifter president surrounded by a creepy array of nefarious opportunists. It’s clear these folks plan to make Americans take the crappiest of crappy jobs for less money, more work time, and far fewer benefits. They’re not going to address greed-flation, either, though that’s the real culprit behind our post-pandemic profiteering. Finding the Fiestaware of pans or appliances or much of anything that we used to make in the USA is more often than not an exercise in futility.

Add to this the Tech Bro insistence on dismantling education, defunding the universities that would help us to produce more of the engineers they say they need, and relying on our tax dollars to conduct their businesses that are being run by people from other countries living here on H-1B visas. People who are underpaid, overworked, and held hostage by their corporate overlords.

Cookware Peddler, print, Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, comte de Caylus, after Edme Bouchardon (MET, 53.600.588(55)) 1746, Public Doman Wikimedia Commons

It feels a bit like the final chapter and it’s not a great feeling. We’ve been flimflammed and bamboozled, divided and distracted, demotivated and deluded. It’s long past time for people to wake the hell up and stop voting their futures away. Corporations can’t keep profiteering if we stop feeding them. We don’t have to buy their shitty products or use their crappy social media sites or consume mass quantities of toxic disposables without concern for the ramifications of our actions. The energy needed for one Instagram post is shocking, and that carbon footprint keeps expanding. AI and crypto currencies are massive energy consumers, on an expanding scale we have yet to fully comprehend.

I bet you thought this was a post about plates, didn’t you?

The thing I’ve come to understand is that buying cheap shit costs more in the long run. It costs more financially, because it wears out and must be replaced over and over again. It costs more personally because cheap shit looks, functions, and feels crappy. It costs more globally because cheap shit is toxic and destructive to living things. It costs more politically because the makers of cheap shit have purchased our elected officials to do their bidding without a single ounce of regard for the future of their constituents, this country, or the planet. Citizens United has ensured that corporations have more rights than we do, and the great corporate takeover is almost complete.

There are more of us, though. They need us. We don’t have to keep shitting where we eat. We can, collectively, fight back to ensure a better future for our children, their children, the flora and fauna, and the planet itself.

Finally, the point, and this applies to more than pots or plates, I believe it is worth the effort to invest in quality with a mindful eye towards the complexities of the impact of your consumption. I promise it will cost you (and everyone else) less in the long run. We don’t need more; we need less, and we need better. I’m also a lifetime thrift shopper, and you can find lots of beautifully made older items if you take the time to dig through the detritus. Reduce, reuse, recycle. We can stop mindlessly consuming before everyone and everything is consumed.

You, me, everyone else, and the planet, are worth it.

And with that, I have some pans to peruse.