There are at least a few additional options to those three to consider here:

- The manufacturer doesn't so much want it to break, but rather, they expend no effort avoiding short lifespans, even where trivial. With enough components the chances then of including one or an interaction of two that happen to last not much beyond your guarantee grows rapidly.

- smaller/lighter/simpler or in some other way less durable components are cheaper (due to lower waste), or possibly more efficient (due to less unnecessary mass to move/cool/heat/whatever), so there's a tradeoff that leads to more easily visible and testable attributes being prioritized even if the tradeoff wouldn't be worth it were everything transparent and all customers completely informed.

- throwaway items actually are more efficient, because small savings accrue from not worrying about longevity, and repair has costs and wastes of its own (i.e. the premise is misleading)

- some combination of all of the above.

Personally, I suspect the difference between planned obsolescence and unplanned is in practice nil - you need quite the dysfunctional organisation (and possibly planned dysfunction ;-) ) to get everyone involved to so completely disregard longevity.

I'd say it's certainly possible to get everyone involved to pursue profits in such a way as to accidentally completely disregard longevity.

I think it's possible too. But also think it's a little implausible nobody realized what was going on: longevity is too important (if only for guarantee purposes) for producers to have completely forgotten about it - well, most of em anyhow. And given how commercially self-serving the outcome, and how actively firms strategize for all kinds of income flows, I can't really buy the idea that it's all a benign unfortunate accident. It's possible; sure - but it wouldn't be my first guess for most non-tiny firms anyhow.

It doesn't take "nobody" to realize what was going on; it only takes the decision makers to either not realize it or to actively decide for profit against longevity.

Imagine a situation: Investors say: give me investment returns! People in charge say: give me profits! People making decisions say: profits or quality! People conducting day-to-day operations say: worry about regulations first, then profits, then quality! People doing the work say: this quality is poor, but I need my job and don't want to rock the boat!

Maybe it's just anecdotal evidence, but that's generally been my experience over the past 10 to 15 years of doing things

Yeah, I agree completely. I just think that kind of behavior deserves a certain small amount of opprobrium ;-).

My uncle repairs appliances. A couple of factors that he's encountered in his years of experience: 1. Energy star compliance. Many of the pumps now use far less power but are more prone to burnout. Keeping a fridge door accidentally open too long is much more detrimental to pumps than it used to be. 2. Firmware. Never been an issue with older fridges but it's now another point of failure.

There's certainly many more but those are some of the most common ones he runs into.

I don't believe in full fledged Survivor Bias here. Too many people were naturally angry at recent devices. They all noticed a substantial regression. Especially since you also naturally expect companies to have mastered and made progress and provide something better.

In my electronics/audio experience, the market twist the design toward shittier components that provide acceptable function with a few marketing buzzwords (HD audio, 24 bit audio) that will make people buy something; where their old gear was clearly superior in terms of quality. It's a reflex to think economies of scale provide improvements and progress.

I think the budget options available now didn't exist in the past either; components are cheap now — you may be able to get a fridge for $300 that lasts 5 years, but 50 years ago your only option might be paying the equivilant of $2k for something that lasted 30 years. Today I'd guess a $3,000 fridge lasts longer than a $300 one, and most people are buying a $300 fridge (if someone can prove otherwise, I'd be happy to be proven wrong).

Even a $3000 fridge only has a 1 year warranty these days, and speaking from recent experience spending $2k on a fridge does not make it more reliable - in fact most refrigerators are made with the same internals and body but minor tweaks and sold at 3-5 different price points under different brand names (see Whirlpool - Frigidaire - Kitchenaid). Nothing that's changed between the different brands changes the reliability, only the aesthetics.

So on a component level in terms of the cooling elements: the $3,000 and the $300 are essentially the same to a consumer?

Is there no market for a refrigerator produced with high-quality components? or does higher-quality component price outpace the gained longevity?

What about so-called "commercial grade" appliances — surely they should have a longer lifespan?

Miele offers long warranties. It's simple: Buy the appliance with the longest warranty and disregard other things.

Commercial is different. I'd guess things like serviceability and a local repair network to be the most important qualities there. And although mean time between services are important, commercial also disregards stuff like noise.

> and the ones we see now are just the survivors (Survivor bias)

No, old gear was definitely constructed better. I've repaired many appliances over the years and stuff from the 60's was built to last with a noticeable degradation in quality over the 70's and the 80's, since the 90's it's pretty much a constant. There is absolutely no way that a household appliance made after 1975 lasts for 60 years.

Do you think it's a natural market behavior that enticed manufacturers to aim at entry level market by cutting corners AMAP then realizing it also increased frequency of renewal thus making even more economical sense ?

Personally I believe this is the default behaviour of unrestricted market competition. Under competitive pressure, companies try to cut costs by gradually optimizing the product into the cheapest version that still sells - which in the end will be so tight on tolerances that it'll break quickly.

I suppose at some point there were business people who noticed that planned obsolescence creates repeat purchases, and that pricing is an arbitrary thing so they can sell the same hyper-optimized crap on different price tiers and people mostly won't notice - but I think the main driving force wasn't malice, just the usual thing that happens in the market economy.

In this way, I see the period of 1960s - 1990s as a time of discovering new ways to cheap out on materials and construction. After all, optimizing for manufacturing costs takes time and lots of smarts. Barely working crap doesn't happen by default (conversely, and this reminds me of the discussions around Juicero teardown, the initial design of any working appliance will likely be heavily overengineered).

yeah I know that cutting cost is almost a definition of business, I meant the fact that in the same time it forces a different rhythm that is very self sustaining; it's a double win, and I wonder how long they knew that fact. It's probably a naive question, I remember seeing old quotes about "if doctor cured you of all, they'd be jobless" or one about Michelin "they knew how to make 10x better 10x cheaper, but why should they release that".. it's just the dual.

The cost of disposing goods is not borne by the manufacturer. If it were, you might start seeing products that last longer.