FWIW I think this is technically survivorship bias, not confirmation bias (but maybe the latter is a form of the former?)
I do agree, there is probably a lot of shit from the 70s that stopped working early on. On the other hand, I do feel like planned obsolescence is a thing. Look at Instant Pot. They’re going bankrupt because everyone already owns an Instant Pot and they all still work.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/06/instant-pot-bankrupt-private-equity/674414/
The problem in my eyes the failure is in the private equity firm that bought them trying to draw blood from a stone, not the Instant Pot.
If you make a great product, you don’t go bankrupt. You just keep making that product. Many mature brands like Coke or Tide have low single digit growth rates because they only grow at the population growth rate. People do not “need more Tide”, despite what the latest commercial says.
I don’t know the details, but it sounds like the brand was mismanaged:
weighed down by more than $500 million in debt after years of supply-chain chaos and limited success expanding the Instant brand into other categories of household gadgetry
The title of the article sounds incorrect. You can’t fail because of a great product, but you can mismanage it. Especially if you are a private equity firm who tried to use debt to grow right before a pandemic.
