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I don't think that mentality has changed at all. If anything, it's become considerably worse. We'll be experiencing the effects of lots of short-sighted quick-profit decisions being made today for decades. The quantity of discarded electronics because of a "non-replaceable" dead battery comes to mind.

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The difference today is that we have 50+ years of experiencing those secondary effects. We know what kinds of things previous items have caused and can take that as a hint at what something similar could do. In theory, we should be able to catch net negative before it is catastrophic. The manufactures can also know ahead of time that something might cost more in the long run. Of course, we'd have to have regulations that had teeth, otherwise, of course corps are going to take the now money

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