I'm not sure the billionaire ever cared about the durability of things. Pretty sure most of them have people managing their things, who will throw anything to the bin at the first sign of degradation.
Here's an anecdote:
As a student, I visited one Hermes (French luxury brand) manufacture in Paris. They showed us how crocodile skin was worked with to make hand bags and showed us the finished products. They had two finishes for the bags:
- with protective coating (brilliant)
- without (mate)
Without coating the crocodile skin was very fragile they told us, and even water droplets would stain the skin. We were quite surprised that anyone would spend a five figures amount of money in a bag that will get stained by anything, but the guy guiding us told us that their customers simply considered their products to be disposable item that would quickly be thrown away anyway.
Somewhat related: I have an acquaintance who maintains the IT infrastructure for a rich guy's house. Lots of smart TVs. Lots of cameras, with local data storage. Lots of IoT.
At a guess, it's a 20% to 25% gig. Something is always breaking or misbehaving. The rich guy probably notices almost none of the problems. If he had to maintain it himself, he would insist on simplifying things.
Here's an anecdote:
As a student, I visited one Hermes (French luxury brand) manufacture in Paris. They showed us how crocodile skin was worked with to make hand bags and showed us the finished products. They had two finishes for the bags: - with protective coating (brilliant) - without (mate)
Without coating the crocodile skin was very fragile they told us, and even water droplets would stain the skin. We were quite surprised that anyone would spend a five figures amount of money in a bag that will get stained by anything, but the guy guiding us told us that their customers simply considered their products to be disposable item that would quickly be thrown away anyway.