Incandescent light bulbs that last longer are less efficient. That's just the physics of tungsten filament lighting. If you want longer lasting bulbs then you have to burn more coal at the power plant to get the same amount of light.
In many parts of the world electricity for lighting was billed separately from electricity used for other purposes. During the first stage of electrification the electric company converted your home or business from gas to electric lighting and then charged rates similar to gas. This rate might be set by government regulation.
If you wanted to use electricity for other purposes those additional outlets were wired on a separate meter and this electricity generally cost more. The idea was that people using electricity for newfangled technologies other than lighting (electric toasters and such...) would pay the capital costs of building more power plants and increasing the capacity of the electric grid.
In some place it was illegal to connect anything but a light bulb to a lighting circuit. You could have your electric service disconnected if you got caught with one of those adapters that lets you plug an appliance into a light bulb socket.
Setting the standard for incandescent light bulbs at 1000 hours leveled the playing field for light bulb manufacturers and allowed them to sell more bulbs but it also reduced the amount of coal burned to power lighting circuits.
In 1951, Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission in the United Kingdom issued a report to Parliament and noted that:
"As regards life standards, before the Phoebus Agreement and to this day the general service filament lamp was and is designed to have, on average, a minimum life of 1,000 hours. It has often been alleged—though not in evidence to us—that the Phoebus organisation artificially made the life of a lamp short with the object of increasing the number of lamps sold. As we have explained in Chapter 9, there can be no absolutely right life for the many varying circumstances to be found among the consumers in any given country, so that any standard life must always represent a compromise between conflicting factors. B.S.I, has always adopted a single life standard for general service filament lamps, and the representatives of both B.S.I, and B.E.A., as well as most lamp manufacturers, have told us in evidence that they regard 1,000 hours as the best compromise possible at the present time, nor has an evidence been offered to us to the contrary. Accordingly we must dismiss as misconceived the allegation referred to above."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
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