Who wants to drive a car whose manufacturer is so scared of the car crashing that they fit it with seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, laminated glass, etc.? I would gladly pay extra fees to be in the parachute plane (hell, catching them deploy in the transparent plane would be a YouTube hit!).

Yes but typing out uuuuuu would be a pain.

It's not that the printers don't last, it's that they are sold as a loss leader.
When your 3-year-old printer runs out of ink, you see that the new one with additional features (wireless, LCD display, etc.) goes for not much more than buying a new one.
A quick search shows that to replace the ink cartridges for my current printer is about $50, the new similar model is $60 or the fancy one with fax, network, document feeder, etc. for $80.
I don't agree that the ability to buy toner/ink would be a big issue -- there's a lot of $ in toner and ink sales. Take the HP Deskjet 500c (1991) -- ink is still for sale on the HP website.