As a designer, I'm not fine with people designing things to break on purpose. That's pretty well the definition of bad design. I'm also not okay with costing the end user more money in the long run.
Unfortunately, most things are made flimsily now. My old printer was about 15 years old, and I held on to it because it had huge cartridges, which are still readily available. I used to repair it myself, as it was as much mechanical as electronic. So it wasn't good at printing photos, but I'm not big on taking photos.
2 months ago it finally died and I bought a new Brother, with loads of buttons and messages on the front. I know exactly which parts are going to break off first, because it takes an elephant to pull out the paper tray. And if anything electronic goes wrong, there's no way to fix it.