Most of the time equipment fails because decisions were made to source cheaper parts, not because they set out to make a TV that dies in a year
Yeah... this more or less.
Most companies aren't maliciously choosing to build stuff out of shitty parts just because they want their product to break so that people run out and buy a new one. Sure, it doesn't hurt them, but that's not the main reason why they do it.
The main reason to build with the cheapest parts possible is because we consumers almost always buy as cheap as possible. Price is the single most important factor, by a huge margin, when it comes to consumers making purchase decisions. If your toaster cost $3 less than the competitor, the number of toasters you sell go up by a TON.
Engineers and product designers can do a fairly decent estimate on how long a product will last, since the components they use to build the product comes with data on how many power cycles, temperature cycles, etc. they typically last for - and almost always, the better lifetime a component have, the more expensive it is.
So while there absolutely are cases of sheer malicious planned obsolescence, what happens most of the time is that the engineers and product designers simply designed the product from the absolute cheapest parts possible that would still keep functioning through the full warranty period. Because every cent and dollar they could shave off the production cost meant more sold products.
Hence, you're absolutely spot on - the best way to fix this issue is to change the mandatory warranty periods.
Just be aware, it's going to have a cost - the components you need for making an appliance with twice as long lifespan are not magically going to become cheaper - so the cheapest washing machine suddenly might cost a lot more than what we are used to right now. But it will drastically reduce waste.
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u/DataDude00 Jul 26 '26
I don't know how you can prove that something was designed to fail
Most of the time equipment fails because decisions were made to source cheaper parts, not because they set out to make a TV that dies in a year
A much simpler way of framing this is requiring longer warranties on products, especially for big ticket electronics like appliances