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The agony of the end of planned obsolesence....
Books are made to be durable. Paperbacks less so than Hardbacks, but the fall-apart after 2-3 reads just doesn't sell. (It's been tried several times in the last 70 years.) The internet/used book concept has just made the durability a major competitor to new, due to the new ease of location of title. (The inability to find an individual title out of literally, millions of titles, had kept down the durable used competition.) The only answer it e-book that cost less than shipping. But publishers don't want that, due to piracy fears. Well, that market is going towards the new only sells for a short term and old titles don't sell at all.
Information is not the only place this is problem. 1. Commercial airplanes. The only reason Airbus and Boeing sell so many new aircraft is that they are sufficently fuel-efficent to pay for the swap out. Otherwise, the airlines wouldn't spend the money for the swapout. 2. (Much more politically incorrect) Guns. A typical gun is engineered to last several hundred years of light use (the inherent fail point is when the barrel wears out, which is measured in number of bullets fired, usually around 10,000). That's why there are no big gun makers today. They are continually competing with their own (and other defunct manuacturers) product.
Imagine a car that lasts 30-40 years with very little maintenance (and electric cars may reach that point someday), The production of cars would drop to a 10th (or less) after the initial swapover. And CFL light-bulb that last 10,000 hours, ect. ect....
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