Waiting for the Real Business Model

Bulb manufacturers lobbied the government to ban cheap and liked incandescent light bulbs in favor of much more expensive alternative bulbs. Is there business model really based on the one-time turnover of bulbs?

Instapundit notes that lobbyists partnered with Greens to get the government to pass a law to benefit a specific industry--bulb manufacturers dissatisfied with their low profit margin on traditional incandescent bulbs.

It's really for our benefit, we're told. The bulbs will last so long that many of us will be passing them down to our children.

So they say.

I have difficulty believing that the business model for the bulb manufacturers is really to reap a windfall of one-time switch-overs and then rely on new construction for the revenue stream after that.

I mean, they do claim we'll basically never need to buy new bulbs for decades at a time.

Because of that, I suspect that the bulbs will not last anywhere near the length of time they say they will to make them cost-effective over the now-banned bulbs.

And if they do? Well, look forward to the day when lamps change bulb design or electrical circuitry every 5 years to make us buy new bulbs because our old ones are obsolete.

Hell, they'll probably make them little computers and the bulb software will be changed every 18 months. Then you'll find that your 3-year-old $20 bulb using Bulb Vista does not work with that snazzy new lamp running on Bulb 8.2.