I should be a bit clearer here; the TTL is an upper bound on how long it can be cached. Caches are free to consult more frequently but not less frequently. That said, out of respect for upstream cache operators and authoritative servers, most DNS caches honor TTLs as best they can.
Advocating to do things against agreed-upon standards without a compelling reason and without giving due consideration to the adverse consequences is one of the hallmarks of a bad engineer. Even Microsoft played nice with Internet standards for the most part (although with some notable exceptions at the application layer that got them well-deserved criticism).