There is no such thing as planned obsolescence. What is a thing is pricing products to the market, making things that are “good enough” but that the buyer doesn’t expect to last forever. If you need a pair of scissors to open an occasional parcel or cut something, you can get by with a cheap pair. If you are someone who makes a living or has a hobby that requires them as a tool, you will reach for the better ones. But both exist just as both needs do.
Same with car brands or bicycles or cameras, what have you. If you buy a Chevrolet, you have no right to expect whatever a Cadillac offers. Think of something you use every day, and ask yourself if it’s the very best you can buy. Is it something you could only buy once and never need to replace? If so, good for you. If not, why not? Assuming price is the reason, why are some cars or bicycles or cameras more expensive? Simply put, you don’t get as much at the lower price points. Lower quality materials, fewer features, lesser quality (more lax inspections/fewer rejects), that sort of thing.
Does anyone really believe that manufacturers design products to fail? Or do they simply not build in as much durability as a way of meeting a price target? Durable goods like the examples above and more besides don’t come with a time limit: in many cases they can outlive the original buyer, with care. One doesn’t have to look hard to find 20 or 30 year old or older cars still on the road. But their owners have made that happen, where today’s owners are not concerned about maintenance. Accordingly — to meet the market — carmakers will offer long service intervals, since they know people won’t bring their car in for even an oil change that can take just a few minutes. So how do they stretch the service interval? Instead of a 4-5 quart oil capacity, they might design in a 10 quart sump, and allow the larger quantity of oil to carry the burden. Think about that, as we ponder how we can slow climate change.
And many families have washing machines or other appliances that many others would have replaced. Too often what is called obsolescence is simply hunger for the new shiny version…a washing machine that can sense how dirty the clothes are or a car with more features, a phone or computer that runs as fast as the old one when it was new. None of that says obsolescence to me: it all sounds like consumer choice in the marketplace.
Do companies make new products, hoping you’ll buy them? Of course. Do they sometimes find it uneconomical to support old shavers or home entertainment equipment? Of course. But that’s not planned obsolescence: that’s just progress, of a sort. We don’t always get better stuff, to be sure, but it’s up to us to make the choice to move with the times or analyze our needs and make sure we get what we want.
Most of the things people say are now obsolete are not at all: unless they have consumable parts, they probably work as well as they ever did, even if everything else has changed around them. 20 years ago, no one imagined vinyl records would re-emerge as an audio format, but here we are. They survived cassettes and CDs and are thriving in the media-less streaming era. Yet how many people said their old turntables and receivers and speakers were obsolete?
So no, there is no such thing as planned obsolescence. No one has yet found a switch or timer than renders a product inoperable no matter how well maintained or serviced it was. Why you will find is consumers who get bored with what they have or envious of what their neighbors have. This is one instance where consumers do own the responsibility for their choices. We can’t stop climate change through individual action but we can make better purchasing decisions that might make a difference.