There are two basic reasons for this outcome. First, primary producers are not obliged to pay the real costs of waste disposal, and consequently, they make little or no provision for recovery and reuse of material resources. Second, while material-intensive growth has adverse environmental implications, this is not normally a corporate manager's concern. The firm's behavior is constrained by competition. Prevailing incentives require manufacturers to continuously seek bigger product markets, even though the end result of this shared strategy may be disastrous for all.
Profits are a strongly nonlinear function of capacity utilization.
This induces firms to do everything possible to maximize sales, while discouraging design of products for long life and low maintenance. Alternatively, in the spaceship economy of the future, where resources are finite, most material products should be treated as long-term assets. To minimize costs, material goods must be recovered, repaired, reused, and remanufactured whenever possible. Firms should be given the incentive to design products to facilitate this process. Important questions about a transition to a service economy must be addressed.