Over the course of the past week I’ve been mulling over what sort of vacuum to purchase for my modest apartment space. To say the least, it was a painstaking process of Internet research, trial by fire, and simply taking advantage of generous retail return policies. I was happiest when it was finally over.

Deeply engrossed in vacuum research one night, I had to ask myself: is it tough to find a good vacuum because the economy is bad, or is the economy bad because one cannot find a good vacuum? It would be a gross understatement to postulate the economy is bad simply because of bad vacuums. The problems I experienced in the realm of floor care are merely evidence of a much larger problem.

Marketing campaigns, corporate profit margins, and materialism are some of the driving forces behind why it took me so long to find a good vacuum cleaner. Moreover, they have contributed to the economic downturn. Marketing campaigns today constantly attempt to drive the notion into people’s heads that what they have is never as good as what just came out.

Sustainability is lost in the process. Marketing obsolescence gives way to manufactured obsolescence and vice-versa. The more we design goods to fail, the more goods people must buy, and the more we masquerade incremental product releases as revolutions the more goods people feel they need.

Case in point, the razor blade wars. I witnessed razor blades go from 1 to 5 blades and then some over the years. There’s some logic behind having more blades, but at some point it becomes unnecessary. Nonetheless, I recall throwing out a 1 blade razor for a 2 blade, and today I own a 5 blade. Guilty as charged.

The same problem is evident in the housing market. Make it easy for people to own real estate and play up their desire to own homes, and you’ve suddenly got thousands of people with homes that cannot really afford those homes. Market real estate as the holy grail of prosperity and now you’ve got it even worse. We’re all paying today.

Quick fixes and a throw-away mentality are a recipe for disaster. If there’s one thing I admire most about the past, it has to be the notion of sustainability. Need to service your refridgerator, you call a friend or a repair man and he has the parts to fix it in a couple of days. Unfortunately that is becoming increasingly difficult by the day.

Today you buy a service plan that you would otherwise never use for an exorbitant fee that goes right into the pockets of the middle man. Besides, if you’ve got a fridge that’s just 3 years old, they just don’t work as well as they do today. The idea that a man ought to take good care of the things he owns is nearly lost upon us, and if it is not lost it is sadly slipping out of our reach.