Every once in a while people argue about whether 'planned obsolescence' is a real thing, and I think that discussion completely misses the point. The two typical claims are:

1. Companies actively limit the lifespan of products, so that you will need to buy a new one after a while, to increase profit.
2. Things break down after a while naturally because components wear out, that's not intentional, manufacturers just use good-enough components to cut manufacturing costs.

But like. What is actually the difference between these two? They both have the same goal (maximize profit), and the same end result (things break sooner because of that).

And in the latter case, the manufacturer has no reason to try and actively improve the lifespan; it'd cost them more in component cost, *and* reduce sales. Nobody is going to sign off on that in a company.

So why does it matter which of these two is 'correct'?

However you look at it, whichever of these is 'correct', the conclusion is still the same: the profit maximization incentive of commercial manufacturing leads to products that break sooner than they need to, and sooner than they could have done if quality components were used.

The environmental cost is the same. The end-user frustration is the same. The labour exploitation increase (due to increased manufacturing capacity) is the same. All of the bad consequences are the same.

What matters here is that the incentives of for-profit manufacturing are the cause of these problems. Whether that involves 'planned obsolescence' or not is an irrelevant implementation detail.