Avoiding WALL-E's World

Felix Salmon wants some price sanity after the recession ends:

My hope is that the world which emerges from the present crisis will be one where goods, in general, have a price which is commensurate with their cost. I remember walking down Broadway last year, in Soho, and overhearing a woman coming out of H&M explaining to her friend that the clothes there were great: they were so cheap that you could wear them once and simply throw them away, without having to worry about how they stood up to washing or dry-cleaning. And although it was easy to conjure up lots of high moral dudgeon to direct at the woman in question, the fact is that incentives matter, and the prices at H&M were clearly incentivizing her to feel that way: as a general rule, it’s not good for the planet when a frock costs roughly the same as the cost of dry-cleaning it.