Fluorescents were designed by Tesla to last longer than they do now

I just heard a very unsettling comment by an electrician who said, "do you know the joke of fluorescents?" I replied, "no, what is it?".
Well fluorescents were designed a hundred years ago by Nikola Tesla and they were designed to last hundreds of thousands of hours not the 20-30 they are today. However, the industry did not like that they would last so long so they designed them to be obsolete. Now I have heard of this obsolescence, but wow what a different world we are living in when the induction lights that were designed 100 years ago are now called "new technology".
 Ugh the decision to design products to break or fail earlier than planned was designed by someone that is now 6' under leaving behind him the wake of pollution, waste, etc. that this generation now has to deal with.
Where do we go with this information? We take it to heart that the choices today are at the core of how future generations will experience the world in which they live. Let's make different choices, and begin to design with the end in mind and be mindful of everything that we produce for profit may come back to bite us in the behind if we don't plan for its end of life.