There are lots of goals one can set. Pushing one's limits, punishing oneself, keeping up with the faster group, ... or riding a little more often, or riding a little farther, or having more fun riding ... or saving up for more expensive gear, or getting more out of less gear.

Demeaning others' goals for being different is kind of silly. Ride 'til you drop, or ride slower than walking speed ... who cars? And whose business is ti. Does anyone Really think there is only one "proper" way to use a bicycle?

So far as feeling any obligation to keep the industry going ... garbage. I have a pair of 35-year-old bikes. I have a 2017 bike. if I never buy another new bike for the next 35 years (should I improbably live so long) then no one else will be able to buy a bike, ever?

Trash. If over the next ten years no one wanted bicycles and over the next fifteen the industry dried up to barley supplying bikes for racers ... in the U.S. .... do you really think the Rest of the World ( I know, for Americans the rest of the world is an island the size of Delaware where people don't know how to use fire or speak language, but ... ) is going to stop buying and riding bikes?

Do you think everyone with a torch will forget how to weld? As for carbon fiber .... people have been building carbon-fiber model airplanes for years ... I guess people can figure out how to make bikes if they want.

After all .... in 1969 there was no mountain-bike industry ... but people looked at motorcycles and at Schwinn cruisers and did some sketching ....

And in any case, there are enough bikes in the world now so that everyone who wants can ride for the next fifty years if production stopped in ten. People wouldn't be able to get the latest newest each season ... but no one really needs that anyway.

Remember back in the day when a person ... Bought a Bike?

Not one a year, not one a season, not seven in ten years ... people bought bikes ... and were done buying bikes. Then they ..... rode bikes ... Amazing.