What happens when everyone has a toaster?
Well then, we close up shop and congratulate ourselves on a job well done!
ummmm, no.
What we did is we invented marketing and planned obsolescence.
Infinite Demand
One of the tenants of economics is that their is infinite demand. That humans will want more and more and more.
However, this isn't true. Most people get to a point of enough stuff, and choose not to get any more. This is easiest to see in elderly people who look around their house and see all kinds of things that are now just taking up space. It might have been great when there was a bunch of kids, but now they just sit collecting dust. And piles of junk get thrown in the trash.
Of course it takes a person a while to accumulate all they want, and then to realize they have all they want. But, with the advent of tiny-homes, many young people are living life very frugal of stuff.
Another way to view this is, "you can only eat so much".
Even if that hamburger is free (BBQ, 4th of July) you can only consume so many.
If food was free, after people stocked up about a years worth, they would only eat so much. No lowering of the price would get them to eat more.
Of course there are people who cannot stop collecting junk (hoarders) but people, for the most part, just want the amount that they need. And excess is just clutter
Marketing and Planned obsolescence
Greedy capitalist pigs figured out that people really only wanted so much stuff.
And that after everyone had a toaster, oven and refrigerator, they were set.
In fact, after introducing plastic containers in grocery stores, the plastic container sales dropped, (people were saving and reusing them) and thus they turned to marketing to say, "it is ok to throw out the plastic containers you get from the store, they are just plastic". (yes, this really happened) They had to convince people it was ok to throw away perfectly good stuff.
Also, about this time the manufacturers, who has seen their sales decline, got the idea of planned obsolescence. Make things so they fall apart and aren't repairable. Next, set up marketing so that people feel not good enough if they are not keeping up with the latest style.
And so, we have clothes that last one season, and kitchens that have to be remodelled ever 10 years.
Humans weren't always like this. They had to be programmed to keep up with the Joneses.
A Change in the world
Humans all over the place are changing their buying habits.
Not so many people are chasing the latest trend/style.
Worse covaids lockdowns happened, and then inflation, and this has really put a damper on buying.
A double whammy of people switching from consumers to minimalists.
Now, what happens if someone builds they best refrigerator ever? Its panels are replaceable. All the insides can be reused or replaced, because they are all built to the same interface design. The refrigerator is built with the best technology available (and what has really changed on refrigerators lately?) If we had such a refrigerator, and it was built locally, does capitalism end?
We've built one for each person on the planet.
Great job!
Lets all go home.