> Businesses that can't do at least some basic form of cost-benefit analysis will likely end up going out of business under a series of projects that don't make financial sense.

You can't execute an estimate and make money with it, so they are waste in a lean sense of waste.

There are usually cheaper* ways of dealing with the problem than producing estimates.

Where I work now I don't think I have ever provided a written estimate (and no one else has) for my work.

Who does estimates for the time to produce all these estimates?

* Estimates have subtle costs and benefits apart from the time to produce them.