If you want a problem solved in such a way that you’ll never have to think about it again your options are:
- Removing the problem from your life
- Removing your life from the problem
- Hiring someone to manage the problem for you (and in the process creating the new problems of how to manage and pay for the person in question)
- Deciding it’s not a problem after all, or at least that it’s a problem you an ignore for now.
When we say we want a sustainable solution we’re often in practice asking for a final solution. We’re saying something like: “I want to use this small up-front investment to create a perpetual motion machine.”
Perpetual motion machines are hard to come by.
See also:
The unforgiving minute (2): the hard part / the meaning of sustainability
Cascades, tides and shifting stars in social interventions: Megan Stevenson on cause, effect and the limits of RCTs