“With Coca Cola, for example, they said: Why should we use a glass that doesn't break? We make money with our glasses. […] The dealers said understandably: Who would saw off the branch he was sitting on?”
The amazing thing is how not only did a long lasting light bulb get designed early on, but that the later bulbs were designed to fail specifically after a given point (1000 hours). That's precision.
I also blame Edward Bernays, the father of consumerism/consumption.
I found this to be a great video discussing why lightbulbs are engineered the way they are. TLDR: reducing lifespan increases efficiency and light quality
The lightbulbs thing was (possibly) different. There's some physical limits on the performance of lightbulbs so the time to failure test was more of a proxy to make sure bulbs of a certain wattage were outputting similar strength and color light.
I don't know if there were other reasons this glass tech didn't catch on besides the obvious capitalism issues, but the lightbulb thing is definitely a misunderstood piece of trivia.
Also has led to a vibrant market for old Pyrex, made with borosilicate before they switched to soda-lime. Borosilicate is generally much more resistant to thermal shock (though there are some advantages to soda lime, but the big reason is that it's cheaper)
I discovered the difference the hard way in college when I shattered a pyrex measuring cup by pouring boiling water into it. Four cups of boiling water and glass shards everywhere!