This is something heared a lot but don't forget that in a voluntary driven exchange the consumer defines what has to be built.

Maybe people want cheap sht (not when asked, but when pish comes to shove and they spend actual money) instead of expensive but long lasting stuff. Also sometimes wjen you design somethon you need to define a timespan otherwise you can't define some characteristic (a wall thikness of you think aboit corrotion or something like that, number of open-close cicles of a hinge, etc...) though I got the point with consumer electronics