> Lightbulbs that last longer can't burn as bright, will use more electricity and do cost more.

Bah. Even if that's true now it's not inherently true.

> Nothing stops any company from creating long-lasting lightbulbs and they do in fact exist

Common-sense and self-interest stops them from making longer-lasting bulbs cheaper. We are discussing this on a thread about a lightbulb cartel, are we not?

I'm not saying all businessmen are evil or anything like that, I'm pointing out that various forms of more-or-less deliberate obsolescence and waste are endemic to our economies. This is hardly controversial.

> most consumers don't mind swapping phones on a regular basis

To hell with what "consumers don't mind" it's wasteful. Close the loop: imagine what goes into making one of those things and what happens to it after you're done with it.

> technological progress

The display is better, the super computer is thinner and lighter. I get it. It's incremental improvement on the Tricorder from Star Trek.

But Apple isn't making new phones every N months because "consumers don't mind" but because they want to make even more money. They have more cash than Scrooge MacDuck. And they know they can get people to hand over hundreds of dollars a pop just to track that sweet "technological progress", just like sports sneakers.

I'm kind of in awe of the Apple Store. It's like a cattle call. People line up, the technician plugs in the diagnostic widget and performs the sacrament, then tells them how much money to put in the box to make the magic stone work again.

Apple is beyond planned obsolesce. Not only have they installed a digital shopping mall in the purses and pockets of Jane and Joe Average, they have trained their users to return again and again to keep "fixing" their malls.

Now, I wouldn't mind but for the waste! We are surrounded by waste.

If you go into your kitchen and kneel down in front of the fridge and open the door you'll feel a wash of cold air pouring out. Warm air is rushing in at the top to replace it. This happens every time you open your fridge. You pay for the electricity to cool that air.

Why are refrigerators built like cabinets rather than drawers?

Pilot lights in heaters and stoves.

Gasoline is what's left over after all the other useful things in petroleum are extracted. After all the high-grade fuel and plastic and whatnot are made, the leftover oil is treated and sent to the gas stations. Cars and trucks function, in part, as a waste disposal system for the oil industry.

You can put a spark plug in your tail pipe with a switch on the dash and send twenty-foot flames shooting out of the back of your car. People used to do it for kicks. This works because the carburetor doesn't fully "atomize" the fuel: there are blobs and streamers and these do not burn completely in the engine and are flushed out in the exhaust. There are dozens of "magic" carburetors and carburetor mods that can improve your gas mileage.

I collect ideas, like some people collect stamps or butterflies. It's fun, but it's also frustrating, because I started to realize that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. There are all sorts of technologies that are completely neglected that would be so cool to have available. Light bulbs that last twenty or thirty years are nothing.

The bottom line is we live in an inferior timeline largely to to venality and ignorance. "Planned obsolesce" is a real thing and a curse.