The documentary is about the planned obsolescence lined throghout the light bulb. The fact that the bulb's life invented by Thomas Edison in 1878 lasted about 1500 hours and the current bulbs's life are 1000 hours shows us the whole problem. 140 years passed and the bulbs's lifetime shortened by 500 hours. There was time when it was 2500 hours before the planned obselescence. Or who really knows when did this thing come to our world. The narrator says inventors were doing researches and they did a light bulb lasted 100,000 hours but it didn't reach the general market. Some may say it is because of that might was too dark or not environment friendly, but I don't think it was the reason for not letting them to the market. On the other hand, if the bulb would be much more lighter or environment friendly I might say it's more acceptable, but bulbs aren't much more effective than it was back in the 19th century.
And this is just an example. Or we might say a sample for other goods. There are a lot of things (or we could say every goods) that consciously built for early obsolescence like mobiles, TVs, furnitures(?), houses(?), vacuums and so on.
I think this is a problem of our society. People on Earth became too gold diggers. We (or not we but the gold diggers (I think approximately 90% of people)) put money to the 1st place on our value system (prioritize money too much). There are so many things happening in the world that we can't, or don't want to realize that are for making more and more money. Almost everything infected and invented by money, like religion, wars and so on. Just think about it someone borns to Congo (poorest country in the world), and someone to Dubai and that will impact them lifes like one of them will 30% die from hunger, does anything, and one of them will have a beautiful house by doing nothing. And they can't do anything about it because they born to that country.
So the planned obsolescence is about "quantity over quality". As an engineer wants to sale their products it's a enormous invention, but as a human... Multinational companies product more goods with less money and they sell them at the same prize like it would be the best quality they could do. Moreover, the products's lifetime is shorter, so people will buy more often them, which comes with more money. So poor people spend their money, got by hard work, and companies get more rich by these people's money. But it's the 21st century and that's how life's going.
So the planned obsolescence is about "quantity over quality". As an engineer wants to sale their products it's a enormous invention, but as a human... Multinational companies product more goods with less money and they sell them at the same prize like it would be the best quality they could do. Moreover, the products's lifetime is shorter, so people will buy more often them, which comes with more money. So poor people spend their money, got by hard work, and companies get more rich by these people's money. But it's the 21st century and that's how life's going.