A speculation about outsourcing -

[hedgehog]

9. Sometimes plastic serves a vital purpose -

for example - my thirty year old stand mixer has a small plastic gear in the drive train. If the beater is jammed or overloaded, the gear breaks. It's a lot easier and cheaper to open up the mixer and replace a plastic gear than a burnt out motor!
Planned obsolescence has two meanings. One is silly; for example adding tail fins to a car or new gimmicks to a cell phone to make last year's model look old fashioned and worthless. The other type of planned obsolescence is to design a product for a certain life span and select components accordingly. For example, if you figure a radio should last 10 years, you don't install a switch that will last 20 years. All that does is add cost to the product without increasing its usefulness.