While its true that disposable consumer goods are a problem, I feel like you're attempting a dogpile via rhetoric rather than really engaging with the spirit of

While its true that disposable consumer goods are a problem, I feel like you're attempting a dogpile via rhetoric rather than really engaging with the spirit of the grandparent's post. Folks weren't even remotely concerned with industrial or consumer waste "in those days" historically, and actually produced quite a bit. What's more, many of these products you're describing used dangerous chemicals or materials that caused many problems. And if we're really harping on writing utensils, all but the cheapest mechanical pencils easily outlast and outperform the lousy (and pointlessly expensive and historically mildly toxic) historically yellow pencils. And for consumer electronics, its interesting to note that the non-replacement policy happens because the components are often so minimal and optimized. It's not clear that we should apply the lessons of physical deployment to software, as the art and science of software is still developing from infancy at such an amazing pace. Modern software (even the bad stuff that us trendy to hate) tends to be remarkably better, prettier and often even faster (albeit at the cost of volatile memory) than even relatively well-thought-out older software from average developers. Give the future a little credit, would ya?