@jwcph@edavies@yngmar The cartel, while it had some shady practices going on, was trying to get in front of people focusing on the wrong metric and making bad choices.
Because by the time light bulb production was automated and they were cheap enough that the operating cost exceeded the purchase cost, a long-lasting light bulb was literally a bad deal. They only made sense to use where it was hard to change light bulbs, as for general purpose lamps more frequent replacement was better.