Have you ever actually used a long-life incandescent lightbulb? They suck. It's like your bedroom is lit by the miserable little lamp in your oven. That's because Tungsten lighting has inherent tradeoffs between life span, and every other desirable characteristic. Brightness, spectral quality, and energy efficiency all improve as you make the filament thinner, and thus less durable.
The Phoebus cartel is an example of planned obsolescence, but it's a bad example for your argument because it made lightbulbs much, much better at their intended purpose. Consumer number-gawking incentivized manufacturers to make their product objectively worse, and the cartel solved that problem.
No I haven't - has anyone? It sounds like you have, so I won't argue. I am no expert on what the actual consumer impact of the Phoebus Cartel was, maybe it wasn't a great choie of example. Wikipedia doesn't make it sound positive for consumers overall:
> Regulators in the UK and some independent engineers have noted that there are benefits to shorter bulb lifespans, as shorter-life bulbs can be brighter for the same wattage. Nevertheless, both internal comments from cartel executives and later findings by a US court suggest that the cartel's direct motivation for the change was to increase profits by forcing customers to buy bulbs more frequently.
The Phoebus cartel is an example of planned obsolescence, but it's a bad example for your argument because it made lightbulbs much, much better at their intended purpose. Consumer number-gawking incentivized manufacturers to make their product objectively worse, and the cartel solved that problem.