> Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis. They also seem to be poisonous.

No one should be surprised that people will pay more for the exact same thing over time. People want to get as much as they can as quick as they can. If you spend $100 for a cast iron pan now instead of $30 for a Teflon pan, then you have $70 less money to spend on other stuff. The average person doesn't care that over the long run they could spend $1000 on pans instead of a $100 pan that lasts a lifetime.