I feel many miss the underlying point here. Capitalism isn't interested in product longevity _at all_.

It's not just like a small tweak to fix in incentives. The system is an _overproduction feedback loop_.

Its purpose is to accelerate the production/consumption rate, forever. https://twitter.com/jobyone/status/1336353034713096193

If capitalism could arrange for its products to be shipped directly from factory to landfill it would happily do so.

The economic crises of the past couple centuries have been _overproduction crises_ solved by stimulating _sufficient consumption_. To keep the flywheel spinning.

One of the biggest problems with applying "household accounting" models to economies is this: we reflexively think in terms of scarcity of goods, when that is never the problem in an industrial economy. It's lack of anywhere to put the damn things / lack of anyone who wants them.

This is why so many of the brightest minds you know can only find work in ad-tech. That's "the business of inducing artificial demand". Because if the economy's job were to produce sufficient goods and services for naturally occurring demand, it'd be done by Jan 2 each year.

This is why _inhibitory_ government regulation frequently saves an industry: it can _slow_ production enough to maintain realistic profit margins, match realistic demand, and prevent price collapses and boom-bust overproduction cycling.

This is why "paying people not to work" is the safest thing an industrial economy can do with them; because they're wielding an overproduction device that will (if left to accelerate freely) turn the entire planet into shipping containers full of unwanted sneakers and toasters.

Picture it like a nuclear reactor. It runs on feedback that must be very carefully managed, all the excess bled off of it. You need the water and control rods. Nobody asks "but what if the reactor can't produce enough heat?"; that's just .. not the really bad failure mode.