From a substack titled ‘Craftsmanship’:
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In 2017, an idealistic and relatively unknown French activist sued tech behemoth Apple, Inc., over its “alleged” practice of designing iPhones to fail after just a few years. She wasn’t the first environmentalist to challenge Apple—but when she won, it became big news. Since that watershed moment, Laetitia Vasseur has become a formidable force in the movement against planned obsolescence in her home country, founding her own NGO (non-governmental organization) and orchestrating campaigns that led the French government to essentially ban planned obsolescence—the first nation in the world to do so.
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Good work by the activist, and great work by the French government. But it isn’t really environmentalism, it’s just French. The “doctors” of 1789 gave France perpetual immunity against INNOVATIVE DISRUPTION.
I’ve called it the Foy Rebellion. The spirit was still alive in the ’60s and ’70s, as documented by Allan Watts among others.
French cars, from the 2CV to the Dauphine and R8, were designed to be owned for a long time with easy and cheap self-maintenance. The cars were ‘alive’ in the sense of adapting naturally to age and wear.
The need for this law implies that France has been drifting away from its acquired immunity. Now they’re back home. GOOD.
Polistra's Mill 