LED vs Incandescent Bulbs

Stockpiling incadescent bulbs instead of spending time doing research to find LED bulbs with a better light spectrum?

The dirty secret of LED lighting is that while LEDs themselves last a long time, they only do so in the presence of good power supply design and good thermal design. If you cut corners on the power supply or thermal management, LEDs will burn out much quicker than older lighting technologies. The majority of consumer-grade LED "bulbs" available today are shitty on both counts, AFAICT.

Your anecdata is bad. Even after the conspiracy was discovered, incandescent bulbs still had a much lower life expectancy than LED lights.It's simple physics :-)

Why are incandescent light bulbs inferior, exactly?

Incandescent lights are still widely available if you still want them. Nonetheless, modern high quality LED lights can actually exceed the colour rendering index of incandescent lights, though they tend to be a little more expensive. I don't think it's a big deal to pay $15 for a bulb that will still be there in 15 years.

The efficiency of an incandescent lightbulb is directly proportional to its lifespan. Long-life incandescent bulbs are a false economy.The problem with LEDs is simply that people buy based solely on price. A Yuji high-CRI LED lamp is genuinely indistinguishable from an incandescent lamp, but you'll never see one in a hardware store because they're slightly more expensive.https:

I'm surprised they still use glass incandescent bulbs instead of LEDs. Perhaps it's cheaper?

This is a problem with LED lights, but it's not a problem with the technology.LED are expensive now, but the price/performance ratio and efficiency are improving rapidly. And as the other poster said, when designed in properly into new installations they can have excellent performance. But their lighting and heat dissipation characteristics are so different that they really don't do well when retrofitted into fixtures that were designed for incandescents or fluorescents.The problem is that

"Only the LEDs I have in table lamps have survived more than five years. All enclosed bulbs die from cheap components and heat damage. "Part of the problem is trying to make LEDs work in our preexisting lighting systems which requires components to make a low voltage DC light work with our existing AC wiring.https://hackaday.com/20

Three led lights in my flat went within 3 months after I moved in. But some time ago I had an incandescent bulb that lived for years.With bulb it depends on how/how often you power cycle. A good way to extend its life is to not power cycle it and to underpower it. Dimming a bulb also saves electricity and easier on the eyes.With LED it is up to manufacturer. People say LEDs are cheaper but those leds are exactly the ones you have to keep buying. And good LED prices can go pretty high