Interesting video. It shows the problems with things like panned obsolescence and consumerism (the waste, the credit bubble etc) but fails to identify the real problems and instead results in a mix of pro central planning communist and environmentalist propaganda.
Keynesians claim that consumption drives the economy and that there is such as thing as underconsumption (a theory that is closely related to the Marxist idea of overproduction). The Keynesian wants to stimulate and encourage consumption by whatever means possible to 'keep the economy going'.
This theory has already been totally destroyed by the pro free market Austrian school yet the video keeps blaming the problem of consumerism (and the resulting waste) on the free market. It even goes as far as recommending a central planned Soviet style economy as an alternative.
There's 3 types of planned obsolescence:
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design: A company that sells widgets, might design this years new widgets to look totally different from last years widgets. The result is that some people will want to buy a new widget for no other reason than that they don't want to be seen using an obviously old widget.
There is nothing wrong with this. No one is being forced to buy a new widget and dump his old still functioning widget.
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planned technical failure: The cartels and the planned failures of for example printers are only possible because of government intervention in the economy. The manufacturers of printers are only able to use those counting chips in their printers because they are able to use the power of the state (through patent laws etc) to shutdown people who produce software to reset those chips.
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perceived planned obsolescence: Some product failures that are being attributed to planned obsolescence by the consumer are actually results of government regulations.
example: dishwashers:
http://blog.mises.org/15594/blaming-...ts-once-again/
http://blog.mises.org/16643/my-year-long-hell-is-over/
http://mises.org/daily/5267/Why-Everything-Is-Dirtier