It's not so much that humans have limited lifespans, it's just that corporations have profit incentives to offload costs. Treating toxic byproducts is massively

It's not so much that humans have limited lifespans, it's just that corporations have profit incentives to offload costs. Treating toxic byproducts is massively more expensive than dumping them in the wilderness, and if management doesn't live near the dumping ground they're less likely to care about the costs. There's even a name for this type of behavior: negative cost externalization. There are even situations of negative externality[1] where the value of the externalized costs exceeds the profit gained so that the net productivity to the nation is negative. Since the company never need pay those costs and they're applied to society as a whole, however, the company is still motivated to do it. I wonder what Adam Smith would have said about the tragedy of the commons. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative