There's also the opposite strategy. Making a cheaper product of lower quality at lower costs. The better quality product loses sales and advantages of mass adoption, and often can go out of business. The lower quality product is now the dominant one in the market. The resellers can freely raise prices now, to match the better products price and greatly increase profits. The public is now stuck with a lower quality product being the only thing available at same price.
Eg. I went to look at dishwashers at Costco, and the thinest of the metal used amazed me. You could bend things with two fingers. I shopped around, and bought some Samsung model, looks space age, but its pretty terrible at actually washing dishes. The marked for Dishwashers optimized for profit, and appearance of being functional. But at this point, I'm pretty convinced a GE dishwasher from the 70s was better.
In the case of a dishwasher, I wonder how much environmental regulations factor into that. Modern dishwashers use less water for a cycle, but they also do a poorer job of actually washing dishes. So, what do you do? Prewash? Run multiple times? It's also concerning that the regulations on dishwashers are going to get tighter yet in the US if the certain organizations get their wish.
Likewise with toilets. Low flow toilets are mostly terrible and do a terrible job at flushing. Literally the only thing they're designed to do. If you have to flush 2-3 times with a low flow and maybe even involve a plunger, are we really ahead?
Just to add one more factor, what happens overtime in old toilets is that sediment stone develops on the inside, and causes enough friction for the toilet paper to catch and plug up. So you can probably except even shorter life span from the new toilets as they flush less water, so more likely for that stone to develop. So you're more likely to need to replace the toilet in the future. Also the flushing mechanism is proprietary, so if anything goes bad, more likely to have to replace the toilet.
Really debatable if having to replace toilets more often is environmentally friendly. It will make more money for the toilet manufactures.
> what happens overtime in old toilets is that sediment stone develops on the inside
An easy way to get rid of that is to go to the hardware store and get a jug of muriatic acid. Then research the hell out of how to use it safely before you even think of opening it. Then pour a bunch in your toilet.
Eg. I went to look at dishwashers at Costco, and the thinest of the metal used amazed me. You could bend things with two fingers. I shopped around, and bought some Samsung model, looks space age, but its pretty terrible at actually washing dishes. The marked for Dishwashers optimized for profit, and appearance of being functional. But at this point, I'm pretty convinced a GE dishwasher from the 70s was better.