Yes, and then they throw it out 2 years later and buy a new one.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This trope was a slight exaggeration then and is basically false now. It exists in the modern world mostly to validate purchasing decisions of the middle class.
In an industrial world where most things made in volume are quite cheap relative to incomes quantifiable results per dollar plateau very quickly and beyond that you're mostly for emotion, brand, signaling, etc.
People default to cheap not because they're stupid but because "buy the cheapest thing that will work" delivers very good results when applied to all of one's purchasing. It's the index fund of personal finance. You can do better with specialist knowledge or techniques but that doesn't scale.
I got 10 years out of my most recent Orvis jacket.
That said, I had in to the tailor a couple of times to clean up some tears in the fabric lining.
I wear that thing every day, 9-10 months out of the year.
That one replaced an earlier Orvis jacket, daily wear (even through one cool-ish summer we had down here in So Cal). The jacket is fine, the cuffs are a bit worn. I could have probably had a tailor trim them with leather and got several more years out of it.
My current jacket is identical to the previous one. I managed to find a "new old stock" version of it.
I really like the jacket (as you can guess). It's a "ranger" style, nylon shell, fabric liner, big pockets on the outside, with hand inserts as well, big pockets on the inside, other little pockets I don't use (what do folks put in those shoulder pockets?), zip up hood, jacket has zipper and buttons and a waist draw tie. It will keep the wet off, but soak through in driving rain, which is rare enough to not be an issue.
If it's really cold, I have another long term jacket from LL Bean, or I could just layer under this thing. The LL Bean jacket has not seen substantial wear like the Orvis one has.
My Jeep Grand Cherokee is over 10 years old, and I'm of the mind to keep it as long as I can get parts for it vs buying a new one at $60-80K. I love this thing. It's in excellent shape. The interior controls are all in great shape. Most anyone can keep a motor running and such, it's the interior comforts that drive folks away and are costly to fix. Mine are good, all the buttons button, knobs knob, etc.
Jeeps are not renowned for their liability ratings, but many Jeep owners keep them for a long time.
Though I did just notice my cargo cover has some rubber that's likely disintegrating (it IS 11 years old...), so I may try to hunt that down and replace it.
I disagree. There's plenty of cheaply made stuff that doesn't last very long, and other brands that focus on lasting quality, where stuff lasts a very long time. This is mostly evident in items that get a lot of use.
Yes, and it doesn't just apply to durable goods. Try doing comparison shopping between Costco and a dollar store. I guarantee you pretty much everything at Costco will be cheaper on a per-unit basis than the dollar store. So why do people shop at dollar stores? Because they can't afford the bigger up-front prices of buying at Costco!
Oh, and pretty much all of the durable goods sold at Costco will be much better quality and longer-lasting than the crap they sell at a dollar store, so that stuff follows the Vimes law as well.
I always liked the Boots Theory of Economic Unfairness. Thanks for that!
I find reading his stuff unpleasant, because of the formatting, but the content is usually worth it, so I can switch on Reader Mode.
As far as the subject goes, I used to work for a world-renowned super-high-Quality corporation, and was heavily involved in what it takes to make Really Good Stuff.
It is painful. I think most people here (anywhere, really) would refuse to work that way. It takes almost military Discipline.
But the end result is usually really good, and expensive. That little bit of extra Quality actually adds a fair amount to the bottom line, and drastically reduces the customer base.
Most folks that get really rich, do so, by making acceptable-quality stuff, at a fairly low price, and selling lots of them.
Making top-Quality stuff can make you feel good (and maybe arrogant), but it won't make the kind of money that selling dross does.
Dan Luu is missing the issue of food deserts. If you live in a food desert and you can’t afford a car then you’re not bringing home 50lb bags of beans and rice, you’re feeding yourself Doritos and instant noodles from the gas station convenience store. Never mind bringing home fresh meats and veggies!
Those are both more expensive and less healthy than cooking your own food.
I wish sites like this would develop a shorthand for things like the boot analogy and automatically replace the text with the shorthand. It's an interesting analogy the first time you hear it, but it's not as applicable to everything situation that people pretend that it is.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
— Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms