It may even be a superb bit of misdirection, but I'm not going to sit back an hour and watch it, since it seemed so unpromising...
Longer lasting incandescent light bulbs are less efficient. The thousand hour target was set as a standard that balanced efficiency and the willingness of customers to replace bulbs. The physics is pretty simple. The filaments of more efficient incandescent lights run hotter and don't last as long. A bulb that is only expected to produce an inefficient dim orange glow can last a hundred years. If you run an ordinary incandescent 120 volt bulb at 90 volts it won't be as bright, but it will last a very long time. In the USA "Long Life" bulbs are simply 130 volt bulbs that will last a long time on 110-115 volt power systems.
It's very similar to how standards for "regular" gasoline were reached. Higher octane gasolines enable the use of higher compression engines which are more efficient, but more expensive to build. These higher compression engines also emit more oxides of nitrogen, and in the age of leaded gasolines, more lead. High octane gasolines are also more expensive to refine. It's no conspiracy that "regular" U.S. gasoline has an (R+M)/2 octane of 87, or that common cars are built to use this fuel. Governments, auto manufacturers, and oil refiners came to a common agreement.
In a lot of ways Henry Ford invented "planned obsolescence." He paid keen attention to his replacement part business. If some replacement part was rarely ordered, he'd tell his engineers to cut costs on the manufacture of the part until the replacement rate for that part was similar to other parts. If a part was replaced too often, he'd order his engineers to beef it up.
What happened was we got cars that had to be "serviced" every 3000 miles, and weren't reliable transportation beyond a 100,000 miles. Best you buy a brand new car before the 100,000 mile mark or you'd often be stuck on the side of the road as parts randomly failed.
That was most certainly "planned obsolescence," a conspiracy between the big three U.S. automakers, and it wasn't broken until foreign companies like Toyota and Volvo upped the ante with 300,000+ miles engineering targets for major components.
= new reply since forum marked as read