Obsolescence and Manufactured Scarcity
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 2010-09-03

Technological advances, product revisions, new features, and novel editions render successive generations of products obsolete. Consumerism encourages owners to rid themselves of their possessions and replace them with newer, more gleaming, status-enhancing substitutes offered by design departments and engineering workshops worldwide. Cherished values of narcissistic competitiveness and malignant individualism play an important socio-cultural role in this sempiternal game of musical chairs.