Andrew

“Industrial innovations are costly, and managers must justify their high cost by producing measurable proof of their
superiority... [P]eriodic innovations in goods or tools foster the belief that anything new will be proven better. This belief has become an integral part of the modern world view. It is forgotten that whenever a society lives by this delusion, each marketed unit generates more wants than it satisfies. If new things are made because they are better, then the things most people use are not quite good. New models constantly renovate poverty. The consumer feels the lag between what he has and what he ought to get. He believes that products can be made measurably more valuable and allows himself to be constantly re-educated for their consumption. The "better" replaces the "good" as the fundamental normative concept.”
― Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality