Yeah, this disposable economy is in large part thanks to the destruction of the middle class. If the bottom 80-90% got their "fair share" of the economic pie again, people could actually afford quality (and save money in the long term).

I'm not as doomerish about the future. If people can be educated on what the real problems are, it can be fixed. As long as social media stays relatively free and unmanipulated, it is inevitable. What I'm seeing currently is an educational revolution, even if everyone likes to rip on social media.

AI is a wildcard however, not sure how it will change things, could go either way. Since open source models are just a few months behind at worst, things could go better than expected.

Another factor is that once technological development starts to slow down, companies have to compete on quality. The gap between cheap smartphones and flagships used to be huge, but since smartphones mostly don't change anymore the gap has become really small.

Basically as technologies mature, the only unique selling point that is left is quality and reliability. Once we run into the physical limits of computation by the end of the century (unless efficiency growth slows down), devices will stop being so disposable. Then a device you buy 30 years later won't be significantly better than the 30 year old one. In the past a 30 year difference roughly translates to a 30k times difference in performance. That's why electronics are so disposable.

I think smart devices will eventually either mature to reliablity and minimum necessary features or we'll return to dumb devices again.