I am not sure that toasting technology has gotten orders of magnitude "better". Energy in toast out. I also don't think it was necessarily a conscious decisio

I am not sure that toasting technology has gotten orders of magnitude "better". Energy in toast out. I also don't think it was necessarily a conscious decision to make disposable toasters (or cell-phones or effectively computers), just that a market segment opened up and overtook others. We might blame consumers, but we can only blame them in aggregate for incenting a trend to continue by buying into it.