What really is the difference? If you know a plastic cog has a 90% chance of breaking after 6 months you're effectively planning on it breaking. You're basically arguing that intent matters more than the effect of creating disposable products.
Yes that's the entire point of `planned` obsolescence. The word itself quite clearly signifies a requirement for intent to be there. If you make your product as cheaply as possible and because of this it does not last long does not mean it's planned obsolescence. It's just a cheap product.
Not really. You can buy a hammer made out of metal, or a plastic one for half price. The plastic one will break long before the metal one would. Is the manufacturer "planning" for breakage? Or it is just a side effect of the product being cheaper?
Real planned obscolescence is making software that requires online authentication and then switching off the auth servers 3 years in so that the customers have to buy a new version. That's a deliberate action.
> Is the manufacturer "planning" for breakage? Or it is just a side effect of the product being cheaper?
It can be both.
I was in a hardware store looking at painter ladders and noticed many of them had the two sturdy metal ladders kept together by a piece of plastic. Pretty much everyone would think they were extremely durable, while actually the weak link would soon wear to make the entire product useless. Was it incompetence or planned obsolescence? I have no idea, still I wonder why I spotted the problem in 5 seconds straight although I am no engineer.
It's the classic question of "Reform or Revolution?"
These systems were built as incremental mitigations to old problems. I don't think it'll change until they collapse under their own weight and people switch over to something else completely.
