#865- The Phoebus Cartel & The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy

Oh bed of the Aarre, Hello, and welcome to the show.

This is the Cult of Conspiracy, and my name is Jonathan. I'm Jacob Jacob. Are we uh, what are we getting into today? Sir? You're kind of surprising me with this one.

Yeah, yeah, this is completely in the dark for all the good cold memories. Jonathan has no idea what we're about to talk about. And it's a good one. It's a very good one.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

So there I was, you know, i'd be looking into history and doing a little research into things, and right for this particular one, I was I was looking at actually a Guinness World record, Right, did you know that there is a light a light bulb that has been continuously burning in a firehouse in California for like over one hundred and ten years.

Or something of that.

Yeah.

Yeah, And so they got me thinking, right, why is it that we don't have light bulbs that do that anymore? So, yeah, I mean I understand the old adage, though they just don't make it like.

I used to bump a buh.

But that being said, where's all the other light bulbs that were made back in that time? And why aren't they still being used? What is the situation of this? So I did a little bit of digging. Have you ever heard of the Phoebus Cartel?

I feel like I know where you're going with this, but I can't say that the Phoebus Cartel rings any bills.

So what if I told.

You in the early nineteen twenties, every global electricity company, not just electrics specifically, the big names in electronics and electricity and all of this got together and they decided that they are only going to make light bulbs that could go for a thousand hours, And if you make a light bulb that goes longer than that, the cartel themselves will find you unto oblivion. Would you think that this is fucking crazy? Or would you think that there might be something to this.

I'm not gonna lie to you, dude. Before my third eye busted all the way open, I would have thought there's no way they're all in on it.

They all know.

The same old adage right with pretty much everything else. But yeah, it's not even a surprise. It's not a shocker. It's almost to the point where I expect it.

So this is a really great example of planned obsolescence right when you make something that is built to run to failure and you know it's gonna fail, but you do it anyway.

Typically this is done.

For older technology in light of newer technology, right out with the old, in with the new. So you build things to only go for so long because you think the technology will catch up by that point, YadA, YadA, YadA.

The nineteen twenties, no one.

Thought that there was gonna be a better way to light your home than the light bulb. There was no other theories that were being proposed at this time. So, you know what, I'm just gonna let all of the data speak for itself here. I'm gonna go ahead and share the screen and for anybody that would like to see what we were talking about. I got a couple of videos. I'm gonna play a couple of articles. We're gonna talk about this is the phasing out of the light bulb.

Dude. Before I even get into that, I want to just say, what a range synchronicity that you're talking about this today, because I literally just got done going down a super deep dive rabbit hole. As far as our eyes ability, uh to have like the amount of frames per second that our eyes can perceive, which is like twenty four point one frames per second and that and you wouldn't think, you would think it's continuous, right, you wouldn't think it's in frames like you know, like a

Slow mo on your iPhone has a higher capability than your own eyeballs.

That's correct.

Yeah, it's so crazy. But anyhow, Yeah, if you want to be able to see this, this, these articles, our faces, anytime we have guests, any of our video, you want to be able to support us. The best way to be able to do that is to go to patreon dot com slash Cult of Conspiracy Podcast. We appreciate all the good cult members who come to choose and do so. If you go over there, you'll be privy to to getting the shows a couple of days in advance, sometimes even up to a week in advance. You'll be able

All right, So all that being out of the way, let's learn a little bit about this light bulb in California that has been burning for over one hundred and twenty years.

All right.

It currently holds the Guinness World Record for a light that is continuously gone.

Let's listen in.

They just don't make them like they used to.

This adage applies to this light bulb, which has literally been flickering longer than Henry Kissinger, who just turned one hundred, has been alive.

It has been glowing over this garage in California.

It's Livermore pleasanton Fire Department since nineteen o one.

Nineteen oh one, we believe, is when the light bulb was done by Dennis Bernal, who owned the Livermore Power and Water company, and he was going out of business and was selling his business, and he donated the light bulb to the fire department.

Retired Deputy fire Chief Tom Bramle should know. He's affectionately known as the Guardian of light.

You're not allowed to touch it, by the way.

We don't even dust it off.

He was surprised five years ago when the thing had been burning at that point for only one million hours. After being around the bulb for fifty years, Brammel says he's only aware of a couple times it has been out, a major one in twenty thirteen after he'd already been retired for a decade.

Oddly enough, if it wasn't the light bulb, it was an uninterrupted power supply. What we did is we bypassed the UPS system with an extension court at that time when a light bulb came back on.

Other things, this little light out shone World Wars one and two, the moon landing twenty two presidents, even a global pandemic. The durable light bulb was made in Shelby, Ohio, and made its mark in the Guinness Book of World Records. Ripley's Believe It or Not and a General Electric.

It puts out about four watts of light, but it's a sixty watt light bulb that Shelby Electric had to develop his hand blown. The filament is carbon filament, and the filament is about half the size the thickness of your hair.

Small, mighty, and durable enough to stand a test of time.

I suspect that this light bulb will continually burn another one hundred years.

For Inside Edition Digital, I'm Stephanie Officer.

All right, now, let's talk about a couple of things that we're just said. It really is.

It really is, so let's break it all down before we get into that. Though she said a global pandemic, keep in mind that she probably meant the Spanish flu because this was burning before the Spanish.

Flu even hit America.

I know she mean COVID, but I'm gonna assume that she meant the Spanish flu. That's how old this thing is, Okay, nineteen oh one. They filled it in there, or they screwed it into that socket. And keep in mind there are those that it will say, oh well yeah, if you turn it off and turn it back on, it will never come on again. That's happened multiple times. The most recent was twenty thirteen when they had a power outage.

It's pretty impressive that they've only had one power outage since twenty thirteen. But it is a fire station, so maybe they always have like continuous power or something.

They've had multiple instances of the light going off, but the most recent was twenty thirteen.

Gotcha, gotcha. And even still if their power goes out, I'm sure a fire station has backup generators, so oh for.

Sure, for sure.

But so I know what everybody's gonna think, Oh, well, that's just the one oddity, right, that's that's the one light bulb on earth. And I mean even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, right, maybe the power company that built this light bulb, they accidentally

Get ready for this.

M Brown A birthday party for a light bulb sounds bizarre, and it is, but you didn't know one of the oldest light bulbs is right here in North Texas.

Here's Tiffany Leu.

Here's the thing about light bulbs. No matter how bright the water d or lumens, no matter what shape or size, they almost always burn.

Out, maybe a year if you're lucky.

There's only a few exceptions in the world. One of them inside the Stockyards Museum, two.

Hundred and nine years old Steeve burning.

And in two days it's turning one hundred.

Ten welb birthday.

This is the second oldest light bulb, put up in nineteen oh eight at the now demolished Palace Theater.

It barnes all day, all night. We never tourn it all.

Volunteer James Madwell says it has one older sibling at one hundred and six teen years in Livermore, California.

In fact, I was out there last month and I went I got to see it, So I've actually seen both the world's oldest light bulbs.

And there are a few theories of why they last so long. Here's option A.

The film is made out of tungctionen Option B. Some people say it was because it wasn't mass produced, it was handmade.

They were handmade and Option C.

Shelby Electric Company had around three hundred people employed. Ninety percent of those people were women.

Take your pick. Yeah, quality were no matter what you choose.

When you leave here, you can tell everybody that you saw the.

Light in Fort Worth.

Tiffany Lew Channel eight News.

Okay, now let's break this one down.

He was trying to get some ass with that last one.

Oh you know this, you.

Know this now, all right, the oldest light bulb. They know that it's a carbon filament. He is saying that it's possible that this one is a tungsten filament. I don't know if that was even a filament that they used in earlier light bulbs.

Who's to say, right, either way you go with it.

There is not just one we know of at least two of these light bulbs that were made in the early nineteen hundreds before World War One.

That are still burning to this day.

So yeah, okay, we could say that possibly, well, they just built them different back then, right, they've built them at a higher quality. But then why don't we see more of these light bulbs that are from back in the day that we could be still using to this day.

Yeah, let me just reiterate on that tungsten situation. So, yes, tungsten was used as a filament in light bulbs by nineteen twenty. Haven't been introduced in the early nineteen hundreds. Due to its superior efficiency and longer lifespan compared to earlier materials, the development of tungsten filaments significantly improved the performance of incandescent light bulbs.

Okay, there you have it. So this was tungsten, who knows? Yeah, that's possible, all right, So who knows?

Right?

But then something happened, like you just read before nineteen twe it.

Was used, but it stopped.

They stopped using better, more efficient, more long lasting materials. Now I can't keep a light bulb burning in my house for more than a year if I'm lucky. Okay, So what happened when did everything go to the side of this is gonna burn out way quicker because it's a money making operation rather than a lifespan and production operation. Now, I want to introduce everybody to the Phoebus cartel.

Let's talk about it.

In Geneva, Switzerland, Just before Christmas nineteen twenty four, there was a secret meeting of top executives from the world's leading light bulb companies Phillips International, General Electric, Tokyo Electric, OSRAM from Germany, and the UK's Associated Electric, among others. They formed what became known as the Phoebus Cartel, named after Phoebus, the Greek god of light. There all these companies agreed to work together to help each other by

So remember earlier we heard that the light bulb in the firehouse was made by the Shelby Electric Company.

You've never heard of this company.

Because it went out the bigger conglomerates bought it up. There were a lot of these, for lack of better words, mom and pop shop operations. When it came to all appliances and new technologies and all these things back in the day. But the same way that always happens in big business, the bigger conglomerates rather scoop them up, rebrand it, take over all their licensing agreements, and they tweak it to make it more of the general electric Look right, AEI look and all these things.

And back in that time, like the first guy was saying, I mean it was, they were glowing blowing glass manually.

By a hand, dude, hand blown glass light bulb.

Which you're only gonna get with like bongs and pipes nowadays, you know.

Basically, But then you see what I'm saying.

There's no way that they could keep up with an industrial demand, especially as we go into the roaring twenties. So these big companies bought up all those little ones, and these were pretty much the last men's standing. Now it wasn't technically a monopoly, but they were all owned by the same types of people who were all members of the Phoebus cartel.

Let's keep going.

For example, in nineteen twenty three, Ostram sold sixty three million light bulbs, but the following year they sold only twenty eight million. Light bulbs were lasting too long, eating into sales, So all the companies in the cartel agreed to reduce the lifespan of their bulbs to one thousand hours, cutting the existing average almost in half. To enforce the thousand hour limit, each of the manufacturers had to send in sample bulbs from their factories and they were tested

Okay, so before we continue, what are your thoughts as of this moment. It sounds crazy right to any new conspiracy head out there that's listening to this, Like, okay, wait a minute, you're seriously telling me that all these light bulb companies, all these electronics companies, they all got to be together in a global cabal, a literal cartel. They even called it the Phoebus cartel, for fuck's sake.

Really yeah, Well, and then Ford learned from them as well, and so did the iPhone. I mean, do you remember the last time the iPhone got a significant update that couldn't have been had on a you know, on a twenty ten iPhone?

Planned obsolescent suit that's absolutely yeah.

And even just sticking on the iPhone here for a second, like the literally the one of the things that they do is because the updates they take up space and they take up memory. It's my it's my opinion they actually do that on purpose, because with every update, your phone is losing less and less power and memory and

Well, I mean, we could argue if it started with other industries and things like that. I just found the light bulb conversation and that's what started me on this.

So, and that's the thing. There's traceable evidence of this.

You can look at the Osram company sixty four million in sales in nineteen twenty three nineteen twenty four. That was a fraction of the sales they had. Even though the demand was higher, their sales were lower. Why because they made their products too well and they didn't have repeat customers, not to the scale.

Yeah, you have like light bulbs that get broken.

Yeah, you'll have things happen and sometimes the filament will go out, but not as much as it should if they're going to have a money making operation.

Well, so let's look at it from like a different perspective though. I mean, if you're the company, and like, if you have the technology to be able to build a light bulb that lasts potentially for rev why not just charge more for that one and then make the ones that are a thousand hours cheaper? You know, Like, why not make them both? I mean, you can really double fist it on both ends at that point.

You could.

But I'm gonna give you a phrase that we used to use in my former employment industry. We make dollars here, not cents, Okay, And what I mean by sense is like common sense. Okay, we are here to make dollar bills. We are not here to make sense of the situation. Do what you're paid to do. Okay, let's keep going here. And that was the thing. Wait, why are we doing it this way? This way is so much smarter and easier and would save time. Hey boy, we make dollars,

Okay.

So if you are a company that is making a product to make money, you're here to make dollar bills. You are not here to do for the good of mankind. To your point about why wouldn't you make like the everlasting light bulb? It'd be a one time sale. How would you make enough money off of that one time sale to justify keeping your business running for the next twenty thirty forty years. How much would that light bulb cost? What realistically, if a light bulb costs just throwing it

It'll be a really good year for you.

But that'll be the only year where you have that type of income, the occasional one that breaks or something like that. Sure, but that's not going to be enough for your stockholders. That's not going to be enough to pay your boarder directors. They're yearly dividends. That's not gonna be enough to pay your employees and the insurance and all of these things. You want to have continual revenue flow. You can't have continual revenue flow off of a one time sale, you see what I'm saying.

I mean, you could just keep on advancing it though, Like the light bulb really hasn't changed all that much in one hundred years, you know what I mean. I know that they have led light bulbs and all the different cool kind of light bulbs, but for the most part,

I don't know, but that's my point, right.

They have light bulbs that are different colors, and they have them that can do strobe lights and all these things. But again, it's not about the one time sale, and there's only so much advancement that can be done in the way of an incandescent bulb.

We will talk about LEDs.

That is another conversation, especially as we're going in with the Phoebus Cartel and all these things.

But it became an issue for them.

They realized that if they wanted to continue to make money year after year, they couldn't do it off of the one time sales. And you had all these mom and pop shops that were making way better quality light bulbs to the tune of over one hundred and twenty years that bitch has been burning. There's no way the ge could make money making products like that. So they got together and created the Phoebus Cartel. I got the

All right. The Phoebus Cartel was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between nineteen twenty five and nineteen thirty nine. The cartel took over market territories and lowered the useful life of such bulbs, which is

Company industrial poorlo development debt charge. Basically, it's French for Phoebus PLC Industrial company for the development of lighting.

Although the group had intended the cartel to last for thirty years between twenty five and fifty five. It ceased operations in thirty nine with the outbreak of World War Two. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continue to be sold at one thousand hour life, standardized by the cartel.

So let's break this down real quick. You remember how I said that it couldn't be a monopoly. Right now, we don't have AEI in America, but we have General Electric, and we have Phillips, you see what I'm saying. And they have Tonguesgram and Osram in Germany, and they have enough company that it's not considered technically a monopoly. But if all of them are all incahoots with an international cartel,

Now allegedly, allegedly they.

All stopped operation in nineteen thirty nine with the pickup of World War Two, even though the group was intended to go from nineteen twenty five to nineteen fifty five. But why are they still using the thousand hour standard if the group went by the wayside. I am personally of the belief that the Phoebus Cartel is still currently in operation, although I do believe that they.

Have shifted gears to the LED. Again.

We will talk about that one towards the end of the episode.

So what are your thoughts at this.

Moment, bro, Yeah, I'm not really surprised. I think that probably there's the majority of companies that sell a product that eventually expires outside of food, and you could probably argue the food industry as well, but I think that there's the majority of the majority of companies that sell not everlasting products. Which name a company that does sell an everlasting product. I think that, yeah, they probably all you know, put this in, you know, in their construction

There's a difference, absolutely, and there's reasons for that, right, So they could dissuade future scientific explorers away from the things that they know work. They'll fund research into who they already know it's a dead end project, but they're gonna send these people off on a wild goose chase for something that they already know is not gonna work because they already know it does work.

Right.

There's a whole conversation we had for that. But even further in the pharmaceutical conversation. They found a cure for AIDS a couple of years back. You remember hearing about this, and they were able to mass produce it for like ten dollars a pill.

It was insane.

Then some wealthy white dude I forget what country he was from, bought all of the rights and patents to it and is now selling it for ten thousand dollars a pill.

Is it the cure to AIDS or HIV?

Excuse me one of them?

I think HIV because some people have discussed that AIDS is fake and actually it is gay. But yeah, some people actually say that, no, it's only AHIV, that there is no such thing as AIDS. I don't know. That's a conspiracy out there. I don't know too much about it, fair enough.

Okay, it may have been HIV. It's been a while since I didn't my research into that. But the guy marked it up at a one thousand percent markup, and well even more than that, honestly, But beside the point.

When you can corner the market, you can do.

That exactly exactly, And he was trying to get rich off of the product itself.

He wasn't banking on the repeat customers.

Right, for an industry that is banking on the repeat customers, you got to make them come back for more. And if your companies are the only ones making light bulbs, and you're all in cahoots to make sure that all light bulbs can only burn for a thousand hours period, you've cornered the market. And if they don't buy from ge, they'll buy from Phillips. These are the only two at

I mean, maybe the first official one. People were probably doing it unofficially for a while, I would imagine, sure.

Sure So.

On December twenty third, nineteen twenty four, a group of leading international businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that would alter the world for decades to come. Present were top representatives from all the major light bulb manufacturers, including Germany's Osram and the Netherlands Phillips, France's company of Lamps. I think is what it translates to, and the United

Sure, sure, either way you want to call it. Yeah, they had worldwide dominance over this market. And the thing you said earlier, like it's just light bulbs, right, But to them, this was Tesla's mona Lisa right. I know Edison got the credit for it. He was a fucking plagiarist at best. But this was their thing. And it's not like this is the only thing they did this with ge made a lot more than light bulbs, dude,

Will What about your boy William mineheart, is that a monocle? He's repping right there? Or am I tripping?

Um?

I think it might be glasses, but it very well might be a monocle. Dude.

This is the early nineteen hundreds and this was big money boys. That's who knows.

Yeah, that's before they went over the ears. You just squint it all day to keep dunbitches in.

You could get it fitted to where it would fit perfectly on your eye, but like, yeah, it was a whole thing. You don't just walk around with your monocle attached to your face. Usually, like would hold it up to read a thing.

Maeah.

So the cartel's grip on the light bulb market lasted only into the nineteen thirties. It's far more enduring legacy was to engineer a shorter life span for the inc deescent light bulb. By early nineteen twenty five, this became codified at a thousand hours for a pear shaped household bulb, a marked reduction from the fifteen hundred to two thousand hours that had previously been common. Cartel members rationalized this

It isn't easy being a.

Light bulb maker. In the early twentieth century, the rapid spread of electrification and the introduction of new light forms of lighting like bicycle lamps, car headlights, and street lights did not offer nearly limitless opportunities for inventors and entrepreneurs, but as thousands of manufacturers vied for market share and a technological edge. No single company felt assured of stable

So how about you create Germany.

Germany was the people that brought about the planned ops to lescence, but not just Germany, right, So they got this little thing over here, says circling the globe, And let's talk a little bit about some of the other players here circling the globe. Phoebus Cartel enjoyed a truly global reachich The US company General Electric itself not a member,

But you also.

Understand that the British group, this was back when the British Commonwealth was still very very poppin', So Australia was a part of the the Associated Electrical Industries. Okay, so pretty much everywhere on earth that spoke English aside from America had their light bulbs come from this group. Then you had China and that covered pretty much all of Asia was concerned. Oh my bad. Tokyo was also in this conversation. France and Germany and Hungary were all over

This wasn't group right.

So the fact that all these countries from around the world can all conspire together to reduce the life of said light in order to make more money, you know, it's it's not that crazy. Now, whenever you look down at Antarctica with the Antarctic Peace Treaty and everything, we don't know what the fuck's down there. We don't know, We have no idea because you have what was it sixty three countries that are conspiring to hide information from you.

So keep in mind also, this conglomerate, this cartel was started after.

World War One had ended.

So all the old ways of thinking of the Royalty of Europe and all these things, they were gone.

They were gone.

Big business was allowed to pump out and thrive in ways that it had never been allowed to before unless you were relatives of somebody. That's how that worked. Now, money talked, bloodlines were important to certain people for other reasons. I'm not going to negate that, but in the realm of big business and industry, money spoke way larger than if you claim to be cousins to earl fluptiflaw from this Essex region or some shit.

You see what I'm saying.

Oh yeah, well it's as alliance is among light bulb makers were not exactly new. The Verchestafel. Holy shit, that is a word.

You killed that one. But I have no idea where we're going with this one.

Holy shit, verkoff stell, verniter gloom think came fabricn, bringing out.

The fluct hymen.

Context, the fluke hymen.

Yeah, bro, that is what this word looks like. Glue lempin fabricn. Jesus Christ.

Okay, that was a eurotrip reference for anybody that doesn't know, so Jesus Christ. Yeah. So anyway, that company, for instance, was a European cartel of carbon filament lamp manufacturers that formed in nineteen oh three to stabilize industry ties. It was rendered superfluous when in nineteen oh six, two European companies introduced a superior light bulb whose filament was made

All right, So with that being said, remember how I just said after World War One the old power structures all over Europe they were gone.

Now was the way of a new system. So they had quotas.

Even though they could produce twice as much, they were required to only produce this much. Why because they didn't pay their extortion fee to the local what they would call the patent pool basically their industrial monarch for lack of better words, that say no, we're not allowing you to make any more than this, So you had to make your money off of what you were allowed to sell. Now that they were out, it was all gas, no brakes,

Let's get after it, boys, Boom boom boom, go go go.

Except for the fact that they were making their products way too good. So although they could make twice as much, they couldn't sell twice as much, so they had to do some about this.

None of these efforts, though, had quite the reach and ambition of the Phoebus Cartel. On paper, it sounded entirely benign. The document that companies signed to join it was called the Convention for the Development and Progress of the International

That's a great motto to go by. Right, That's a great mission statement for this organization, except that it's not exactly accurate.

It covered all electric light bulbs, used for illumination, heating, and medical purposes. In addition to the companies mentioned earlier, its members included Hungary's Tunguesrim, the United Kingdom's Associated Electrical Industries, and Japan's Tokyo Electric. The US company GE, one of the prime movers behind the group's formation, was itself not a member. Instead, it was represented by its British subsidiary

So it's fascinating, right, Yeah, GE wasn't a part of it. Oh, we're not associated with the global Cabal. It's just all of our underlings are a part of the cabal. And then as the years go on, we're gonna buy out all of the people that we don't already own that are a part of the global Cabal.

So I think g G now has actually gone bankrupt. I believe, I don't know. I know that a couple of years ago, whenever I was playing the stock market that you can get a fucking ge stock for. It was like super cheap, like three bucks. It didn't even make sense how cheap it was. And because it was, it was, I guess they were talking about how it was gonna be bankrupt and so they were going to bring it to the pink lists and all this other shit.

Wow, I hadn't heard about that, And be honest with you, that's that's fascinating. But all right, so looking at this picture right here, this is one of their showrooms.

Okay, all of.

These companies, the ones that we've listed, would send in at least one of their light bulbs for quality testing, you know, the QA and QC of it. They would fill they would fill up this room with them and essentially they would make sure that they are all burning at the brightness that is required, they are burning out at the time that it's required, and that none of them are too good or too bad. It's making sure that it's a uniform across the board. In theory, that

I am a believer of this.

But if you're building your products specifically to fail at a certain point, then you're already screwing your customer base right off the rip.

Oh you know what, I just looked up their general electric stock price. It's at two hundred and sixty eight dollars a share right now. It wasn't It didn't get down to three. It went down to thirty, like thirty five or thirty one dollars or something like that. And then they had what you would call a reverse split, which would essentially cut the amount of stock shares that are available in double the price if it was a two to one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyhow to oversee national light bulb markets and their respective development in global trade, PHOEBUS established a supervisory body chaired by Minehart of OSRAM. The cartel's other main activities were to facilitate the exchange of patents and technical know how, and to impose far reaching and long lived standards. To this day, we still use the screw type socket devised by Thomas Edison back in eighteen eighty and designed or

Were on go huh, oh, who could have seen that coming a mile away?

Others were uncovered more recently when I and the German journalist Helmet Hoge. Hoge is that whenever you got the two dots above an oh, is that emphasize one to know.

I wanted to say, it makes the hard own noise. I think I'm not an expert of the German language. When you start putting dots over vowels and lines through them and writing letters backwards, it very much us.

I speak American, hell I barely.

Speak English anyhow, this gentleman and the German German journalist Helmet Hoge delved into the corporate archives of Ozram and in Berlin, jointly founded in nineteen twenty by three German companies. Ozram remains one of the world's leading makers of all

So they would have gotten away with it if they wouldn't have kept such meticulous notes of their research to screw over their customer base.

You know, yeah, you know. So the cartel took its business of shortening the lifetime of Bob's every bit as seriously as earlier researchers had approached their job of lengthening it. Each factory bound by the Cartel agreement, and there were hundreds, including GE's numerous licenses throughout the world, had to regularly send samples of its bulbs to a central testing laboratory in Switzerland. There the bulbs were thoroughly vetted against Cartel standards.

So basically, they got fined for doing too good, and they got fined for doing too bad. They wanted to be one uniform thing across the board, and they're basically saying like, bro, if you're gonna find us for doing business too, well, how is this beneficial for us? Meanwhile, it was more like beneficial or not. You better do what we say or we'll shut you down. That's how cartel works. This is basically mafioso's style business. And again

Here's that option as well. Maybe there will be a fire of sorts.

You know, electrical fires happen every day, and add an electronics factory. Man, that is that is crazy. Did you hear about what happened in Tokyo?

That?

Oh man, it's exactly exactly.

There were continual reports of Cartel members attempts to restore the burning time of their bulbs to the old levels and defiance of the watchful eyes of Phoebus. At one point, some members, oh surais surah?

Surreptitiously?

Is that how you say that?

Yeah?

Surreptitiously.

I've never heard that word in my life anyway, Some members surreptitiously introduce longer lived bulbs by designing them to run at a voltage higher than the standard line voltage. After the Phoebus Development Department's customary report of voltage statistics revealed such products enhancements, ant On Phillips head of Phillips complained to an executive at International General Electric. This is

Basically, he's saying, listen, my boy, we spend a lot of time and effort to make the products burn out at a certain time. Now you got these do gooders over here that are trying to make things that can outshine our bulbs. This is not good for business. This is not good at all. We got to shut that down.

Yeah. Well, hey, dude, I mean it used to be that you used to only be able to find reggie on the streets. Now you can't find it anywhere. You know. Eventually, people, you know, just forget about things. The good old times. Those uh, those those old Willie Nelson cigarettes, They ain't around no more.

You know.

To that point, Let's say it's a drug to give it to another, you know, situation that might be similar. All Let's say that all of the drugs in your street, and let's say the the coke market, you can't find coke that hasn't been stepped on.

Okay, it's just not a thing.

Then all of a sudden, you got some new guy on the block that is selling one hundred percent pure cocaine.

Oh no, no, not on this block. I'm sorry.

Now, all my customers are going to you, and they're getting a better fix than what I've been giving them for ten years.

Oh no, we're gonna have to shut that down right now.

Or they start selling meth. It lasts longer, it's cheaper, and it's easier to get your hands on.

That's true, that's true, But I mean, I guess it depends on what the coke is cut with right, because if you cut it with heroin, then you're gonna make way more of an addicted customer base than anything.

So they can go get the one hundred percent pure all they want.

Okay, maybe that wasn't an exact apples to apples comparison, but that's my point. The cartel was looking at these guys as like, yo, you're my boy. You're not gonna come up in here and make some long lasting life balls.

We're not gonna go back into the meyer.

That was the free market where everybody's trying to make a better product.

And that's what you know.

Well, at the end of the day, reign supreme on who gets the business because we need repeat customers. You can make you up ten thousand hour light bulb. How is that gonna help me pay my chairman? How is that gonna help me pay my bills? Oh no, no, you're not taking food off of my table.

Yeah. Well, they're like, because we got that baking soda. That so stupid.

That's always so stupid. But yeah, it plays well.

It plays well.

As this episode reveals, tweaking a light bulb's rated voltage was one way to modify the product's life. Another was to adjust the current, as GE engineers did to decrease the lifespan of its flashlight bulbs. A GE flashlight bulb in the pre Cartel days was designed to last longer than three changes of batteries. This lifespan was then cut to two battery changes, and in nineteen thirty two, the GE Engineering Department proposed that the bulb lasts no longer than one battery. Ain't that a bach?

Can you imagine that if you go for a flashlight and as soon as the batteries run out, the bulb has to be changed out.

I mean it sounds about right. I mean, I don't know the last time I used a flashlight to death?

You know?

Fair usually just use your phone. Well, which is interesting, how come the flashlight on your phone never goes out?

It's led.

These don't last forever, though, damn near the last A little while so two, a GE engineer named Predo wrote in a memo and saying we would suggest increasing Mazda lamp number ten from point twenty seven amps to point thirty and thirteen point fourteen and thirty one from point thirty to point thirty five. This would result This would result in increases of candle power of eleven and sixteen percent, respectively.

Yeah, you see, it's small tweaks, and this is what the engineering marvels of this type of technology is a small tweak in the amperage and a small tweak in the wattage will actually double down in making even more repeat customers happen. Yeah, it's a brighter flashlight, and the consumer that's buying it is like, oh man, look at this.

This new flashlight is so much brighter. It's so much better.

Never mind the fact that the bulb was gonna burn out quicker and the batteries are gonna get drained faster. That's beside the point. The consumer feels like they just got hooked up. In reality, they just got doubly screwed.

Yeah. Well, the cartel's justification for these changes was that at the higher current levels, the bulbs produce more lumens per want alas more current means not only more brightness but also higher filament temperature and therefore shorter life. Indeed, much of the cartel's life limiting research focused on the filament, including its material, its shape, and the evenness of its dimensions. Over the course of nearly a decade, the Cartel succeeded

Absolutely. Now this is also a key factor.

They were the Much of the Cartel's life limiting research focused on the filament, including its material, its shape, and even in the evenness of its dimension. If you have ever noticed when you have a light bulb burnout, you notice it almost always burns out at the exact same point. Have you ever looked at the filament on a burned out bulb? Yeah, and yeah, I understand the film. It's that the little squiggly piece in the middle. I get

It's almost it's about a third of the way.

If you were to like draw a straight line that is the filament, it's about one third of the way beyond the point of contact.

It's almost like.

They built it the quote unquote evenness of its dimensions. They made one spot a little thinner, knowing that once it got hot enough over time, because metal metal loses.

Its strength over time.

Right, if you take some metal, heat it, cool it, heat it, cool it, heat it, cool it, and you do that over and over and over again, Eventually it's gonna snap.

The historicity of the metal is going to break.

You do that for a small filament, and you do it in such a way, You design it in such a way to where there's one little spot. To the naked eye, you're not gonna see that it's any thinner, but under careful observation.

You definitely could see it.

And you do that as a standard across all light bulb filaments. Now you have it to where no matter what, it's gonna go down. This is what they were paying the vast amount of attention to.

Which is actually amazing that you don't have. I mean, I'm sure they have to exist, just you know, random normal people creating their own light bulbs. I imagine it's not that hard. If you go back and look at the old blueprints or something like that, you blow your own blast, you learn how to make in piece together the filament and everything else. I mean, I'm surprised there isn't some random rogue etsy company that's doing that.

I mean, you could.

It's not like this as some sort of like super If you were to make your own light bulb, somebody's gonna come knock on your door because you're cutting into their business or anything like that. You have this type of thing, but it's expensive, right, It's a lot of extra work to do something that you could go to the dollar store and buy for a dollar.

Right, Yeah, I mean I get it. But yeah, So anyway, it says, of course, given the collective ingenuity of the Cartels, engineers and scientists, it should have been possible to design a light bulb that was both bright and long lived, but such a product would have interfered with members desire

So that's another interesting point, right, the fact that the costs of manufacturing were dropping, but the Cartel maintained more or less stable prices and therefore higher profit margins. So let's say that light bulb is being sold for a dollar. It might cost the company a quarter to make it, just throwing out a number here. So as technology progressed, it got to where that light bulb would cost actually

Yeah, man, it's pretty crazy. Just like how I'm trying to find the average household income in the United States. Oh okay, I'm not worried about that. I was trying to see how much a light bulb cost back then, but I couldn't look it up quick well.

I mean, not all houses had electricity also, right, we're talking about the early nineteen twenties into the nineteen thirties in America, most houses had power ran to it. But I mean that's not a worldwide thing. It depended on where you were at. I mean, hell, even to this day, one in ten households in Russia don't have indoor plumbing.

Right. But you also gotta understand also depending on.

If you were more towards the city or were you in rural America and you were using still gas lamps. Until the nineteen fifties, it varied, but overall, as a standard, more and more people around the world had electricity ran to their households. Christmas lights became more of a thing, not just candles that were burning in the window. It was absolutely becoming. It's for progression, right, It's the way

This was powering whole cities, whole counties. It's a thing. It absolutely was a thing.

And this is why we're never like we could be advancing so much faster, Like if you really think about it, like we should not be running on like gas and oil anymore. Like the technology is there to wipe it. I mean, of course you're still gonna need oil for plastics and everything else. But I'm talking about just using for fuel that should have been done with probably sixty seventy years ago.

Bro, whenever we created nuclear power that should have replaced all of this. But here we are, We're still using mostly fossil fuels to power our homes. It's ridiculous to me.

So what nuclear power that was created back in the sixties.

No, we just learned about down that other episode.

Remember it was actually nineteen Oh shit, now you got me now you got me. It was like nineteen thirty two, the first time they actually made a nuclear reactor. That's not Oppenheimer though, No, no, not a nuclear bomb. No, no, no, it's the same thing like when you said with rockets, right, Parsons made a rocket in the nineteen twenties, but it wasn't a rocket that could carry a payload. That didn't

It was a different thing.

Yeah, we made nuclear power before they had a nuclear bomb. It was kind of using the same principle, but one is being used for power and one is being used for you know, global power, if you will. But that different conversations for different days. No, I'm with you. We have the technology and the capabilities to have way cheaper and more efficient electricity. Hell, Nikolai Tesll was able to make this shit jump for miles with no wires. We

I actually think that it's not even it wouldn't even make it cheaper, It would just make it free, especially if you're pulling on what Tesla was talking about, how you can essentially just pull it from the ether right like you know, you go up high enough, there is electricity that's always there if you have some kind of antenna that you know, whenever you're riding around, you're always going to be underneath the sky unless you're going through

Always, dude, as we have said a million times and we will say a million more times, follow the money.

That's how it always breaks down.

As the cartel continued a policy of artificially elevated prices, competitors spotted a golden opportunity to sell cheaper, if often inferior quality goods. Particularly threatening was the lot of inexpensive bulbs from Japan. Although Tokyo Electric was a cartel member, it had no control over the hundreds of smaller, family

Daniel absolutely and again, we can't have all these do gooders getting in the way of our profit margins.

Something's got to go.

However, as Phillip's historian ij Blanken has noted, these cheap bulbs weren't necessarily a bargain, owing to its greater current consumption. The true cost of using one of the poor quality Japanese lamps. Measured over the life of the lfe of the lamp was many times greater than whatever the consumers had saved by buying a cheap lamp rather than a Phillips one. Powerful and influential though it was, the Phoebus Cartel was short lived. Within six years of its formation,

So before we continue, allegedly the Phoebus Cartel was short lived because all the countries that we have listed today have you noticed all went to war with each other in World War two, Tokyo Electric, the Oswin Company, AEI, which is the British company, and ge the American company.

So how crazy is it? Walk with me here? How crazy is it.

That these big companies, these big countries all went to war with each other, and after the war their entire industrial complex was shelled to shit. And then after the war they were no longer able to manufacture the same amount of goods that they once did because the manufacturing facility was no longer there. So then they all had to come play ball with whatever company and country still had a manufacturing basis. Now a lot of them rebuilt.

It is essentially grandfathered in at that point. You didn't even necessarily need any paperwork. It was just kind of like everybody.

Knew right exactly exactly so.

Though long gone, the Phoebus cartels still cast a shadow today. That's true in part because the lighting industry is now going through its most tumultuous period of technological change since its invention of the incandescent bulb. After more than a century of dominance, these bulbs are now being phased out

So before we get into the is as to prove further hold on ok ok that's more of a like what his sources worth. Yeah, so I would argue that again the Phoebus Cartel might have gone by the wayside on paper, right, But again let's talk about this. The Netherlands, they weren't really involved with World War two too much, but we still have the Phillips company today, the UK, France, Brazil which that was a ge company. China they got

How many of them actually could? There was a few.

They decided to dominate the market, and they have for the entirety, leading up to fluorescent bulbs and leading up to LEDs for the last I would argue a century. It's very difficult to find an incandescent bulb that is rated to last longer than a thousand hours. That is still something that you have issues with to this day.

So and also just think about it like this too. So they were trying their hardest to try and minimalize the life of the light bulb so that the consumer will continue to buy more. And now they're creating light bulbs that will last longer than you are living in your house or in your apartment or whatever. Usually you change one light bulb map, you ain't got to worry about it again, right, especially if you're using LEDs now, think about it like that, they're no longer worried about

Possibly, but I mean they also operate differently, right, So LED stands for light emitting diode and it's like a byproduct of the diode doing its function. It does produce light and a very low amount of heat, which is

Right.

So LEDs do hold a different function, but they also are not necessarily better. It depends on what you're trying to use them for. And I know people are gonna argue about that. Listen, I'm not saying that they are not brighter and quote unquote cleaner light and they last longer and all that until the point that the article made. You're not gonna notice the difference if your LED bowl burns out at nine years as opposed to fifteen years.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're you're not even gonna worry about it. I mean I every time I go and even change like my wiper blades on my car, I'm like, I don't remember the last time I changed them. And so you're not gonna think about a warranty like, oh, this only lasted, you know, six months, and it says right here that the guarantee is gonna last a year

Absolutely So, Now with all of that being said, we got to keep that third eye all the way open, as we do. And there are those that say that this entire conversation the Phoebus cartel is a complete hoax, It's complete Internet bullshit and all of this, never mind the fact that there is receipts, never mind the fact that you can see who the cartel members were and what they were doing in four what purpose? Okay, they still are gonna throw shade towards it, because that's ridiculous.

I'm gonna read it here.

It says the planned obsolescence of incandescent light bulbs is largely a myth. You never mind everything that we just read in all the verified sources. They're just gonna say, no, Dad, that's not what happened. While there are plenty of real examples of planned obsolescens with incandescent light bulbs, there are engineering trade offs between longevity and efficiency. Basically, the longer lasting a bulb is the dimmer and less efficient it is.

Jonathan?

Just off the top, I don't. They're used less frequently. He literally said it right here. How often does your oven light get turned on? As opposed to your kitchen light over your table? The light bulb and your refrigerator only operates for a few seconds while the door is open and then it goes off again. Now, how long does it take for a few seconds opening like that to go one thousand hours?

Yeah? Okay, I mean yeah, it's gonna take forever for a thousand hours of you opening and shutting, I mean most of the time. Like if you leave your refrigerator door open for longer than ten seconds, or if like your kid goes into your fridge and it's like he's just like standing in the fridge and standing in the door for longer than ten seconds, You're like shut that fucking door, like you're letting.

All the cold out, you know, exactly. And the whole thing about closets.

The light in your closet is probably the same one that's over your kitchen table, but again, it will last longer than the one over your kitchen table because it's only used while you're in your closet. This hit in a rough service bulb. It's a regular bulb. This This is what I'm saying. So even the people that are throwing the shade make no sense out loud, but let's go. If you read the report by the British Monopolies Commission quoted in this article, you'll find that they came to

But here's the problem.

The Phoebus cartel isn't necessarily a monopoly because monopoly laws can only be applied within one country. I don't think there are international monopoly laws that apply whenever you're talking about countries that went to war with each other. I mean, it's like international war crimes laws and things like that. It's not the Geneva Convention. It's fucking light.

Bulbs, dude, right right, I mean it's like, if you that's like calling Facebook a monopoly, right it all, it's overarching every country. You know, most countries are using it, and maybe you could call it a monopoly in that sense, but I don't think that's the correct term.

It's not because there are other social media apps that also bridge the gap and are in all other countries.

I guess Meta not Facebook, But still, okay.

Okay, fair enough.

Meta is a international company, but it's not necessarily a monopoly. There's all kinds of social networks that you could be using instead of the metaverse. So the same way, there's all kinds of You don't have to buy a Phillips bulb, you don't have to buy a ge bulb.

You can buy a Tokyo Electric bulb.

But nobody's paying attention to what the business meetings are of the conglomerates that go on behind closed doors. And what's the same thing with banks? Yeah, okay, so you don't have to bank with Capital One. You can bank with Chase, you can bank with Regions, you can bank with it doesn't matter name your bank, it doesn't matter. They all answer to the Builderberg group. They all answer

Whenever you have options that you have the options.

And how can you prove that your mom and pop bank down the street is in cahoots with Capital One? You can't, right, but you're probably gonna go with the bigger bank because they'll give you better rates depending what you see. What I'm saying, it's it's not technically a monopoly, even though the big dogs in the conversation are all in.

Cahoots, right, right, it's it's the overarching law. I don't want to say law, but just the the guideline. So it's like even the banks they have to deal with like the was it the FCC or something like that right to where there are certain laws that you can't like you have to charge a certain percentage or you can't charge up to it past a certain percentage or something like that. But yeah, I mean they're all essentially doing the same thing, and that's how they stay in business.

Agreed.

And then there was somebody that actually, uh answered to this I wanted to read here. It says the whole before, during, and after the Phoebus card Cartel, rather incandescent lightbulbs were and still our standardized to a thousand hours. Why because it happens to be a good trade off between longevity inefficiency.

Too low life. They didn't.

They find members who produced lights that lasted longer regardless of bulb efficiency, because that decision is Yeah, because the decision to limit life bulb life to one thousand hours had obvious financial benefits for the cartel members.

I think it's a pretty generous.

I think it's pretty generous to think that this policy was solely based on wanting what is best for consumers.

God, some people, Dude.

It's agreed. I agree with this guy.

He's saying that there's no way that this was Oh, it was just the perfect trade off of longevity inefficiency. If that's the case, then why didn't they find them for making because they wanted the standard quality, right, they sent them all to that quality assurance and quality control guy who's going to make sure they're not burning too bright and doing all this.

They're burning out when they're supposed to.

If you had a company that was making bulbs that would burn out at five hundred hours, why didn't they find that guy?

They didn't.

Okay, they find you if you made one that lasted fifteen to two thousand hours. It was never about making a quality product. It was making sure that it met a certain standard and did not go beyond it.

Right, So I misunderstood that, he goes I think it's pretty generous to think that this policy was solely based on wanting what was best for consumers. Yeah. I agree with that.

One hundred percent.

So it says there was still an anti competitive cartel or it was still a competitive cartel. The Phoebus cartel wasn't just about light bulb lifespan, but also bulb price. They also used their power to increase the price of bulbs. The fact that they converged on a practical trade off in terms of lifespan and energy costs doesn't change their anti can competitive nature. Well, you don't have to be anti competitive if you're all on the same page with

They're the same price.

Even though one could cut out the other one right one could sell it for fifty cents a drink right now to knock out the other one from the market. But they're not gonna do that. It's not because they're gonna lose money. They're not worried about it. The beverage industry makes way more money than what they know what to do with. They're doing it because it maintains the standard. They're in cahoots with each other. You see what I mean.

Yeah, like what Walmart did to kmart rip those the blue light.

Cell Indeed, talk about lights. There you go, youat on colored bulbs.

There it is now the conversation about new Phoebus, the led cartel brother It is a short one. It's not a very long article, but I thought it was interesting as we're talking about how I'm still of the belief that the Phoebus cartel didn't go anywhere.

They may have rebranded, they may call.

Themselves something else these days, but the elites, for lack of better words, the powers that be the made sure that the standard was maintained at a thousand hours for the last century. I think that that has gone by the wayside in favor of LEDs. But again, it's not gonna They're not going to lose their power grip. They're just gonna shift gears and take over the LED market. Let's learn about it.

So clearly, LED bulbs seem to be in the grip of what appears to be a neo Phoebus arrangement of reducing the lifespan of a bulb. On discussing the issue with those who manufacture the LED bulbs, the clarification that came out of this packaged LED bulb had the LED lighting with a driver. The LED lighting has promised thirty thousand to fifty thousand hours of life, but the driver

So to that point, the driver inside of the light emitting diode bulbs that could be swapped out relatively cheaply, but they don't want that. They want you to go buy a replacement bulb. So I don't know if you've noticed this. So I mean even the LED bulbs, Yes, some of them are rated for thirty thousand to fifty thousand hours or whatever.

Okay, I have a lot of LED bulbs in my house.

I cannot tell you how many of them I have had to change, and you could tell when they start getting ready to go out, they start like flickering like crazy. Then they might work, sometimes they might work others. All of these things and it's only after like a year maybe of it being used.

Period.

Why are these LED bulbs going out when they're supposed to be so much long lasting.

Well, they're not made to a high quality.

Because once again you don't want a one time purchase, you want repeat customers. It's all a part of the cartel's movements.

Yeah, yeah, it's just not noticeable. And going back to the people that were saying that it was just some kind of myth or some conspiracy, there was receipts like they left behind documentation stating it was a thing. And if it was just a weird theory, then how do you have specific people in specific companies in specific countries all coming together to all make this the same exact bulb but at a reduced lifespan, at probably about the

Absolutely not, absolutely not.

But that's the thing they're saying that the Phoebus Cartel was largely a myth, although the group itself did exist, and there is a paper trail to this. But when you look at the fines that were a crue to certain companies and for what they like, what they were issued for, it was never for making a product that wasn't good enough.

It was always for products that were too good.

You're fucking up the flow of income here, bro with your do good or attitude.

We can't have all that and that again was in the nineteen twenties.

This is back when, to give you a spectrum of the timeframe, prohibition was a thing in the United States. The mafia was doing bootleg operations and bringing in Canadian whiskey. This is when al Capone made it big. This is when a lot of the mafia families were making their moves. This is when well Daddy Kennedy, right, JFK's dad made his big money.

Right.

This went right before the stock market crashed in nineteen twenty nine. This before all of these things happened. People still bought light bulbs, even in the Great Depression. This was seen as a need for people, not a want or a luxury item. So this company, this cartel rather got together and had this business model and had this plan,

Yeah. I imagine there was a couple of suicides involved as well.

You know, I don't know that for a fact, but I wouldn't be surprised. I'll be honest with.

You, but I think a lot of them a lot of these mom and pop shops that were making these high quality bulbs. I think they just kind of got shut down and or bought out. It's way easier without having to be dirty about it, right if you got a like the Shelby Electric Company that got bought out by GE So, yeah, they could make a light bulb that has and is still burning for one hundred and twenty years. And I love how the hater acted like

It's not that's not a hoax, that's not It honestly blows my mind that there are actual people out there that are full on anti conspiracy. Like it doesn't matter what conspiracy it is, they are full on against it. And it's like, they what are you fighting on? Behalf of the people that created all of these all of these stories? Like is that what you're doing? You know? It's like are you are you mad at people for coming up with an original thought? Like what are you really fighting for?

It doesn't make sense to me. I'm gonna be honest with you.

Now, we could read a little bit more about the Phoebus cartel over here we talked about the history and the purpose.

Well, actually that looks I guess the entire thing.

Actually, did you have something else that you want to go on LED? Because I got a couple of different articles I want to go over.

We can.

Honestly, the last thing I had that I wanted to talk about was like planned obsolescence and how that works. But we don't have to necessarily talk about that. It all kind of ties together with this. We get the idea, right, you make a company, or you make a product that is only rated for a certain amount of time so that you can get a repeat.

Customer out of it.

It is very unethical, extremely unethical. But this is business being decent and morality and ethics and all that that goes by the wayside here in favor of making more money.

Yeah. Yeah, So this is an article from Scientific American. I don't think that they're going to get into everything, which is why I have several articles pulled up on this topic here. This is something that I don't buy LED light bulbs for this reason. What we're about to read right now, because they are Once you understand what they're capable of doing. You'll never want to buy another LED light bulb. They are fucking They're horrible for your mind.

Title on that guy.

His little moniker on his door to his office pretty much takes up the entire glass. But anyway, yeah, yeah, but as we try to find better products that do not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we have to be vigilant about toxicity hazards. This guy and other UC Irvine researchers tested several types of LEDs, including those used in Christmas lights, traffic lights, car headlights, and

So just that low is enough.

Well, I mean, that's if the bowl breaks and you deal with the matter with your bare hands, though I would think.

I mean you get into a car crash, you know, yeah, fair enough. Meanwhile, white LEDs contain the least lead but still harbor large amounts of nickel. Another heavy metal that causes allergic reactions in as many as one in five of us upon exposure, and the copper found in some LEDs can pose an environmental threat that if it accumulates in rivers and lakes, where it can poison aquatic life.

Just on that article alone, I get it right to say that having an LED in your car, in your home.

That's as of that particular article.

Doesn't necessarily mean that it's dangerous, but if it does break, then you need to wear protective like gloves and a mast to clean it up.

That's not ideal.

But what's more dangerous of that is the manufacturing of the LEDs. This place is going to produce a lot of waste with that much arsenic and lead being used in the manufacturing thereof.

So I get where they're going with.

This, right, Yeah, you can look at that, But what I was really trying to get to was the hypnos the hypnotic effect of LEDs. So, if you really think about it, one of the main reasons why LEDs are so energy efficient is because they're blinking on and off so rapidly that your mind can't even catch up to it. Right, that's the idea. Because it's really only using half the energy,

On your own.

And could flickering LED exposure over time lead to subconscious conditioning without our awareness. So, with the increasing reliance on digital screens, mass exposure to LED flickering patterns could have unintended psychological effects. While some uses such as meditation apps and therapeutic devices are beneficial, the potential for abuse in marketing, entertainment,

Yea.

So oh and then it's pretty interesting. It's funny because I literally just watched this movie earlier. This is one of my son's favorite movies of all time. Well, the Incredibles one and two, both of them, but dude, and don't even have a favorite. I think they're both just awesome. Yeah, but this was Elasta girl whenever she was getting hypnotized, whenever she put those glasses on. I can't remember the name of the guy. Uh well, no, it was the

Yeah, the sister who was the mastermind of it all.

Yeah, yeah, which was basically and then locas she's doing like flashing lights on her eyes hypnotically, right, yep. So if it says exploring the healing, I don't care about the healing potential. I just want to get into the dangers. So this is why this is another thing.

There's healing potential to LEDs.

Yeah, they have like red light therapy, you know, which is good for like weight loss and shit like that, and there's other forms. It's all about the frequency in which it's emitted. So there are certain unnatural frequencies and then there are certain natural frequencies. So the natural frequencies, you know, almost like the rife machine. You can tune it one way to make your headache go away, and you can tune it in another way to make you

Way, right, Real Rife Technologies go check it out. If you want to see what the hell he's talking about. I'm telling you as a first person account the technology works.

Go check it out Real Rife Technology.

Use promo code cult at checkout to get a discount and free shipping moving on.

Ten percent off indeed, which adds up honestly, because they are kind of expensive machines, but they're worth every damn penny yup. So then I was like, all right, wait a second. I remember people talking about how there are purple lights and the led lamps that are out on their streets they are turning purple. You remember people talking about that.

Oh dude, I just had this conversation with somebody the other day. I was driving down Airline, Dude, Matt and Rugeluisiana, and there is all kinds of car lots on either side of the road. I'm driving by the Nissan dealership, I see the Range or the lamber Over dealership whatever, and then I see the Toyota dealership and you could clearly see how over these parking lots there next to

Well, and they'll have you believe that it's not really a big deal. It was hard really trying to find out why they were purple, and then I found this article and it made it all make so much sense. So basically, this guy, he did some digging into this whole thing trying to figure out why because he couldn't find any information on it. He was going to the counties or the parishes or whatever and trying to get

Gamma?

Gamma? Okay, what is the light spectrum over here? The electromagnetic spectrum of visible light purple is gamma rays. Okay, so gamma being the deepest hypnotic that you can possibly be, and LED lights are turning purple sending off gamma waves. Now, okay, so you want to talk about deep hypnosis, that's what's going on. And if you really think about it, I guarantee you I'm gonna stop sharing the screen here for but I personally guarantee you that this is absolutely on purpose,

The hypnosis is a thing, though, so I guess you would if you were being told to under a deep hypnosis. But to your point, on average, I would assume, Nah, you're gonna be more docile, You're gonna be more calm, right.

And this is something that I noticed here recently at so the I got a Planet Fitness in Katie, right, And in that whole parking lot there's like a bunch of other stores as a whole shopping mall basically, and that whole parking lot is full of all these purple lights. And I'm like, at first, you're like, oh, that actually looks pretty cool, you know, because it's a little different.

I mean, it can only help the hypnosis at that point.

Right, right, But anyway, but just think about it like this, your LED lights, and that's in all techno, All electronics are using it. So like this computer that we're looking at, your phone, your TV, your iPads, all that stuff is all LED, right, And you want to talk about the hypnotic effect and such as, especially whenever you bring in neuromarketing, I mean, they're getting you in every possible way that

I'm gonna call bullshit on that, not on what you're saying on they turn purple when they're starting to go bad. This entire parking lot of this dealership had purple LEDs at the entire like. There wasn't one that was a different shade that wasn't by accident. And there's no way that all these bulbs just so happened to be going out at the same rate at the same time, even if they were all made from the same manufacturing and all of that.

There's at least gonna be some dissemination. There's gonna be.

Some that are a little more and some there a little less. That is not what we're seeing here. That's not at all I have.

That's that's what Acuity has to say for itself. And that's just one company, right, A big ass company though if they're the ones that are creating all your LED lights on the in the street lamps. But I don't know. I just think that that there has to be something to it, because how does one company get the contract to serve all of America's public roads?

So I just looked up who owns Acuity, because I'm thinking that's got to be owned by ge, that's got to be owned by somebody like this.

They're not.

They are a publicly traded company and they have as a board of directors that runs them in all of this. But to your point, the contract that was awarded to them for like interstates and things like this, right you had to have You had to either a have a real good connection in DC and or suck the biggest dick to.

Get that kind of a contract.

Whenever you have so many other companies that can make light bulbs for it probably cheaper to do it in that way. There's no way unless and also I don't know when that contract is awarded, especially because LED and those are still to this day scene as a far

I don't know, but.

Anyway, it's I don't know, it's just interesting looking into the deeper things like that though, you know. So what I was seeing is is that common refresh rates, such as the LEDs like their their the hurts. So the refresh rate is measured in hurts. It indicates how many times per second the screen updates its image. Common refresh updates.

It compares to as a pose, Like what do you.

Mean, Well, I was just looking at the the LED pulse frequency and I think that it varies depending on device and light and stuff like that. But that might have to be a whole nother show because I'm really interested in the actual frequency because if you find out what the frequency is, you can find out what they're targeting.

Yeah, you know, I'm with you now to go back to a point you made earlier, right, you were talking about how why does your phone have an update at a certain point? Why do these things with technology all have it to where basically, if you don't update a certain way, or if you don't do a certain thing, it's going to be considered obsolete. And then they just won't offer updates to some of their older model phones. They're like forcing you to get the latest and greatest technology.

What do you think?

Sure, it's widely held that certain gadgets, cars, and other tech have deliberately short lifespans to make you shell up out to replace them. What's the reality They don't make them like they used to. As the idiom goes, so it would seem for the centennial light, and astonishing record setting one hundred and fifteen years after someone first flipped it first flipped it on, this light bulb is still fainting or faintly shining in a fire station in Livermore, California.

It's gotta be right, got to be. You want to spend more money.

You feel like you're not doing your part to society if you're not spending more money.

Clearly, but yeah, So fundamentally, firms are reacting to the tastes of the consumers, says a professor of finance and economics at Yale University. I think there are some avenues where businesses are kind of tricking the consumer, But I think there are also situations where I might put the fault on the consumer. There you go.

Of course, there are some examples where that's a fair point, right. There are some examples where you have a thing that is working just fine for you, but you're going to go buy the newest thing anyway because you want to keep up with the Joneses.

There is something to be said for that.

I'll give you this, but that's not the conversation with light bulbs by any means. Now they're gonna talk about the cartel, but not as much as we just talked about. They kind of look at it from a different angle, which I did appreciate.

Sticking with light bulbs as a product, they provide amongst the most emblematic case studies of planned OPSO lessons. Thomas Edison invented commercially viable light bulb circuit eighteen eighty. These early incandescent bulbs, the centennial light included relied on carbon filaments rather than the tungsten that came into widespread use

Okay, that's a fair point.

The business model changed, however, as the light bulb consumer or customer rather base grew more mass market, greater sums of money could be reaped. Companies figured by making bulbs

Right, which I mean to be fair.

The British were involved with that, with the AEI, so they were as much a part of this as anybody else.

This cartel is the most obvious example of planned obsolescence origins because those papers have been found, says Giles Slade, author of the book Made to Break Technology and Obsolescence in America, A History of the Strategy and its Consequences. Holy shit, talk about a book title. The practice cropped

But this practice is in fact still alive and.

Well in various forms, from subtle to unsubtle. Planned ops lessons still very much exists nowadays, from so called contrived durability where brittle parts give out, to having repairs cost more than replacement products, to esthetic upgrades that frame older product versions as less stylish. Goods makers have no shortage of ruses to keep opening customers' wallets.

Absolutely, and in that same context, there is a picture of an iPhone I could not agree more.

For a fully modern example, consider smartphones. These headsets often get disco after a mere couple years use, screens or buttons break, batteries die, or their operating systems, apps and so on can suddenly no longer be upgraded. Yet a solution is always near at hand. Brand new handset models pumped out every year or so and touted as the

It shit's getting more and more expensive by the day, even though again the cost of manufacturing is going down and down.

It's crazy how that works out.

Microchips, light sensors, or batteries can disable a cartridge well before all its ink is actually used up, forcing owners to go buy entirely new, not at all cheap units. There's no real reason for that, he says. I don't know why you can't just go get a bottle of cyan or black ink and you know, squirt it into the reservoir. You would think that's.

A very good point.

You could only get one cartridge, go buy re fillable ink and then just fill it yourself. But absolutely not. That's not gonna make these printer companies any money.

Taken this way, planned ops lescence looks wasteful, according to the According to Cartridge World, a company that recycles printer cartridges and offers cheaper replacements, in North America alone, three hundred and fifty million not even empty cartridges end up in landfills annually. Beyond waste, all that extra manufacturing can degrade the environment too, of course, obviously, though some of these examples of planned ops lescence are egregious. It's overly

I mean, yeah, that's a fair point. However, at what cost?

Right We're talking about how things being made cheaper means they'll break sooner. When they break, we don't pay to have them repaired. We throw them away, which fills landfills, which hurts the earth.

So you see what I'm saying.

Yeah, it does create jobs because you have to consistently make more products. You have to consistently feed the market. But again, at what costs down the road? It yeah, anyway, I.

Mean, look, we can keep on going on and on, but we pretty much get the idea. Planned obsolescence is a thing that companies are absolutely using to stay in business. And whenever all these companies are going around and they're saying that they care so much about the environment, they care so much about global warming, they care so much about,

Absolutely, and especially in the tech industry.

Bro we're talking about how LEDs are so damaging to manufacture. We're talking about how light bulbs and when you throw them away you don't recycle those. I mean, I'm sure somebody will, but we already know the recycling industry is a complete hoax. For anybody who hasn't heard that episode, go back and listen to it is mind blowing.

But that's the whole point.

These tech companies tout themselves as being so green, they're giving so much.

It's a complete green company, and it's not. They're not even close.

The entire quote unquote green movement is all a conspiracy in and of its so planned obsolescence. And there you could argue that it started with the Phoebus Cartel.

I would argue probably not, but it.

Is at least the first example where there is a rack record that you can trace over the years to be what it is. Then, even after they were allegedly disbanded, you still didn't have a bulb that would last longer than a thousand hours by standard. So regardless of whether you want to say that they were still in action or not, I personal believe they were. Their effects were still felt as an industry wide standard. So the point that they were trying to get across still got across

There's no two ways about it.

The Phoebus Cartel, although it sounds ridiculous, is absolutely historically backed and factual and started the obsolescence conversation right, the planned obsolescence of goods in manufacturing that we are still feeling the effects of today.

Just think about it like this. If you think that it's silly that the Phoebus Cartel in some sort of manner is not still operating, just look no further then the government that tells you that Operation Mockingbird ceased to exist in nineteen seventy six.

Okay, really yeah, how interesting because right now currently you could turn on multiple news websites and news casts depending and they will be reading off of the exact same script.

Yep, yep. So so look no further. Just open up your eyes, that's all, and get rid of your fucking led bulbs. This is a public service announcement that these are not good for you. They will cause you to slip into a hypnosis. Of course, you know, we can't all just go completely led free, led free, as for your TVs and your phones and everything else. This is

I don't know, if the flicker rate, I don't think so maybe sunglasses maybe, I don't know, I mean maybe, but.

Yeah, good cult members.

That's why I thought this would be an excellent episode to bring about. Okay, we are a America anyway, We are a nation of consumers, and yes, a portion of that is because of us and our culture of trying to keep up with the Joneses. But at the same time, Plan Dobs lessons is a thing. They could build a car that will last you fifty years. Hell, they used to. You look at all these old studio bakers and these old buicks from back in the day.

They're still rolling strong.

However, you get a car that was made from ninety five to now, that thing is on its last leg more often than not. Right rolling started, Yeah, absolutely, it started with the Phoebus cars.

Hell.

So oh, and this is not something we can necessarily break the mold of We're kind of in this system, but we need to be made more aware of it. But you know, there is a system that you can try to break out of and that is our current financial system. The best way to do that would be to invest in gold and silver bullion. And for the best way to get started in the investment of gold and silver bullion and minted coins, you come check out the link in the description below and come check out

Hey, he's gonna get you all lined out.

And we thank all the good cult members that are going and taking on their financial freedom in this way. Listen, talk to your financial guy, talk to your tax guy, ask them, hey, what do you think about investing in silver and gold? Is this a wise investment? Is it crazy? Is it just a fad? I promise you every one of them is going to tell you that you need to at least have some of your nest egg invest

Another way that.

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