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>Sam Vimes is also renowned for his "Boots Theory of socio-economic unfairness", as posited in Men at Arms: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reason

>Sam Vimes is also renowned for his "Boots Theory of socio-economic unfairness", as posited in Men at Arms: 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 was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness. Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_socio-economic_unfairness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...

taeric 9y ago
I like this suspicion, but I don't buy into anymore. I think there is a floor to quality. However, even what we call cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period. More, if you want shoes to last a long time, I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and not wearing the same shoes constantly. I have not empirically studies this, though. So, if anyone has, I'd be delighted to see the results. I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them. I can, of course, resole them. But they are not magically doing better than the cheaper shoes I can also buy. Rotating shoes so that I wear a different set day to day makes a huge difference in how long they last.
- dazc 9y ago
  '...cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period.' Cheap quality shoes can be better than premium brand 'quality' shoes these days.
  - aaachilless 9y ago
    I find that the most cost-effective clothes are usually those that you won’t find at Wal-Mart or K-Mart nor at, for example, Sack’s Off Fifth. $50 dollar Levi’s, $100 Nike running shoes, $10 tee shirts, etc seem to last way longer than the cheapest stuff and the expensive stuff. That said, I recently started learning to sew, and am starting to believe that, for example, a $10 sweatshirt from CVS plus some sewing is much more cost effective than, say, the $50 Adidas option.
    - taeric 9y ago
      Do you have recommended improvements/modifications? Sounds like fun.
      - aaachilless 9y ago
        I wish, but I still have no idea what I’m doing, so not really. All I’ve repaired so far is a couple pairs of Levi’s that I keep tearing on my desks at school. I mentioned sweaters from CVS because I bought one for ~$9 and the seams are coming apart after about 8 months, but it seems like it will be easy to fix because it was made in such a simple way.
        taeric 9y ago
        Well, if you make any posts on the things you try, I'd be interested in reading. Good luck!
        kaybe 9y ago
        Just to save you some trouble, if it comes apart on the seams because of age and not because of shoddy sewing from the maker, it's not worth fixing - it will come apart again at a different place within the next month or so. This is especially true for jeans. At least this is my decade-long experience with fixing everything.
        aaachilless 9y ago
- wizardforhire 9y ago
  Fair enough, footwear is not the best example nowadays. I went from buying cheap $10 shoes at Walmart to only wearing Marine issue Vibram boots that would cost in excess of $200. Although the special forces boots are silent and more comfortable they only last a couple years. My current pair I've had for 4 years and they look identical to the day I got them. But they're not for everybody. However if we extrapolate away from footwear and think about cars I think the anecdote is more apt. Take for instance something as trivial as an oil change. Regular 5w30 will cost around $30 but it breaks down relatively quickly and needs to be changed if you're lucky every 3k miles. Full synthetic on the other hand will set you back $100 plus and will last at least 7k miles. When you change it you'll find with normal use that the oil hasn't really broken down within that span and you're really just changing it to remove combustion and minor engine particulates. Not to mention the engine with full synthetic will run smoother and more efficient, while the regular oil by nature will run noticeably sluggish when reaching its end of life. All of this is moot when making the choice to go full electric, but how much will that set someone back vs buying a good used car that in the most rare circumstances can hope to get less than a quarter of the life of an electric. An even more relevant example for this community I would think would be the concept of tech debt.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    $10 Walmart shoes will ruin your legs though. They are fine if you want to sit in a chair/car all day.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  > I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them. Generally speaking that's true, though I wear the crap out of my Birkenstocks and they still seem good.
  - BeeOnRope 9y ago
    I finally got Birkenstocks just because they are apparently bullet proof and comfortable, but after something like 18 months of wearing them non-stop (almost every day), they have completely worn through and are not usable. After that I had a pair of Walmart flip-flops that lasted only half the time under similar use but they were 1/10th the price. Before that I had a pair of no-name not flip-flop (i.e., velcro strap) sandals that lasted nearly 6 years of fairly continual use. There is no particular moral or conclusion here, they are just anecdotes. I just think you can't make any general rule about "it's better to buy quality than cheap" or vice-versa: it's all situation specific and depends on the quantitative costs and lifetimes. There are many examples of "it's expensive to be poor". There also many examples of where it's not, and how people have what would have been considered a very high standard of living in the past on minimal output. Many not poor people are also definitely not doing the boot anecdote thing posits: they aren't buying one set of boots and wearing them their entire lifetime. They aren't buying one set of hardwood furniture they use from their 20s until they die and they aren't buying a quality vehicle and running it for 20 years on synthetic oil.
- devdas 9y ago
  So you wear out four pairs in two years?
  - taeric 9y ago
    Easily, for some types of shoes. In dry weather, I don't care. Small holes in the shoes don't really matter much. In wet, though, it is baffling how quickly I can go through shoes. This was back when I walked about two to five miles a day. Just in the office, the same shoes can last much longer. For that matter, most of the change has been in the wet season. I wouldn't be surprised to find the shoes flat out wear faster in that environment.
- subway 9y ago
  I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and not wearing the same shoes constantly. This, a thousand times over. Shoe trees also do wonders to extend the life of footwear. It's all about letting the shoe completely dry out between wears.
antoinevg 9y ago
echo "Being able to afford good boots" | s/"good boots"/"good decisions"
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Yes, but that's fiction.
meow1032 9y ago
This quote gets posted over and over ad nauseum on reddit and HackerNews and always seems to just get accepted as truth, but realistically the entire theory depends on the relative numbers between the two things being compared. The theory makes no sense if good boots cost 5x as much as shitty boots but only last 2x as long. If the cost of most things depended only on quality then I'd find it more convincing, but especially when we're talking about consumer electronics, things like brand reputation, novelty, and user perception matter a lot.
- shados 9y ago
  A rich person can buy the cheap option. A poor person usually cannot buy the expensive option. Of course the rule doesn't apply to everything, but it applies to "enough". Buying a house is often much better financially than renting (in high cost of living areas, usually by a factor) Hardwood furniture can last several generations. Plywood stuff...not so much. Mutual funds have much lower fees if you invest a larger amount of money. Banks and credit unions give you more, cheaper services if you have more money. Borrowing money is cheaper the better off you are. You can get a better job if you can afford to be on the market for longer. And so on, and so forth. There are exceptions (my cheap ikea couch has lasted 10-15 years, while a fancy hardwood table we got started falling apart after just a few years), but you just have more options if you can afford more expensive stuff. Some of those options are vastly more cost-effective. Being poor is very expensive.
  - meow1032 9y ago
    If the point of the quote is to say that "sometimes the more expensive option is better value" it's accurate, but also is obvious, and doesn't really mean anything. To be clear, I don't think it's strictly wrong, just that it adds nothing of value to a conversation. It just gives a very specific example of when a rule holds. It's kind of like if the employment statistics come out, and they show improvement, but someone comments that they just got laid off that week. They aren't wrong, but they're also not adding anything to the conversation.
    - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
emodendroket 9y ago
If you don't use something that often then it turns out that buying a fancy one was money wasted. When I buy power tools I usually go for the cheapskate version and figure if it breaks I'll buy a better one next time.

taeric 9y ago

I like this suspicion, but I don't buy into anymore. I think there is a floor to quality. However, even what we call cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period. More, if you want shoes to last a long time, I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and not wearing the same shoes constantly. I have not empirically studies this, though. So, if anyone has, I'd be delighted to see the results. I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them. I can, of course, resole them. But they are not magically doing better than the cheaper shoes I can also buy. Rotating shoes so that I wear a different set day to day makes a huge difference in how long they last.

dazc 9y ago
'...cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period.' Cheap quality shoes can be better than premium brand 'quality' shoes these days.
- aaachilless 9y ago
  I find that the most cost-effective clothes are usually those that you won’t find at Wal-Mart or K-Mart nor at, for example, Sack’s Off Fifth. $50 dollar Levi’s, $100 Nike running shoes, $10 tee shirts, etc seem to last way longer than the cheapest stuff and the expensive stuff. That said, I recently started learning to sew, and am starting to believe that, for example, a $10 sweatshirt from CVS plus some sewing is much more cost effective than, say, the $50 Adidas option.
  - taeric 9y ago
    Do you have recommended improvements/modifications? Sounds like fun.
    - aaachilless 9y ago
      I wish, but I still have no idea what I’m doing, so not really. All I’ve repaired so far is a couple pairs of Levi’s that I keep tearing on my desks at school. I mentioned sweaters from CVS because I bought one for ~$9 and the seams are coming apart after about 8 months, but it seems like it will be easy to fix because it was made in such a simple way.
      - taeric 9y ago
        Well, if you make any posts on the things you try, I'd be interested in reading. Good luck!
      - kaybe 9y ago
        Just to save you some trouble, if it comes apart on the seams because of age and not because of shoddy sewing from the maker, it's not worth fixing - it will come apart again at a different place within the next month or so. This is especially true for jeans. At least this is my decade-long experience with fixing everything.
        aaachilless 9y ago
wizardforhire 9y ago
Fair enough, footwear is not the best example nowadays. I went from buying cheap $10 shoes at Walmart to only wearing Marine issue Vibram boots that would cost in excess of $200. Although the special forces boots are silent and more comfortable they only last a couple years. My current pair I've had for 4 years and they look identical to the day I got them. But they're not for everybody. However if we extrapolate away from footwear and think about cars I think the anecdote is more apt. Take for instance something as trivial as an oil change. Regular 5w30 will cost around $30 but it breaks down relatively quickly and needs to be changed if you're lucky every 3k miles. Full synthetic on the other hand will set you back $100 plus and will last at least 7k miles. When you change it you'll find with normal use that the oil hasn't really broken down within that span and you're really just changing it to remove combustion and minor engine particulates. Not to mention the engine with full synthetic will run smoother and more efficient, while the regular oil by nature will run noticeably sluggish when reaching its end of life. All of this is moot when making the choice to go full electric, but how much will that set someone back vs buying a good used car that in the most rare circumstances can hope to get less than a quarter of the life of an electric. An even more relevant example for this community I would think would be the concept of tech debt.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  $10 Walmart shoes will ruin your legs though. They are fine if you want to sit in a chair/car all day.
bdcravens 9y ago
> I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them. Generally speaking that's true, though I wear the crap out of my Birkenstocks and they still seem good.
- BeeOnRope 9y ago
  I finally got Birkenstocks just because they are apparently bullet proof and comfortable, but after something like 18 months of wearing them non-stop (almost every day), they have completely worn through and are not usable. After that I had a pair of Walmart flip-flops that lasted only half the time under similar use but they were 1/10th the price. Before that I had a pair of no-name not flip-flop (i.e., velcro strap) sandals that lasted nearly 6 years of fairly continual use. There is no particular moral or conclusion here, they are just anecdotes. I just think you can't make any general rule about "it's better to buy quality than cheap" or vice-versa: it's all situation specific and depends on the quantitative costs and lifetimes. There are many examples of "it's expensive to be poor". There also many examples of where it's not, and how people have what would have been considered a very high standard of living in the past on minimal output. Many not poor people are also definitely not doing the boot anecdote thing posits: they aren't buying one set of boots and wearing them their entire lifetime. They aren't buying one set of hardwood furniture they use from their 20s until they die and they aren't buying a quality vehicle and running it for 20 years on synthetic oil.
devdas 9y ago
So you wear out four pairs in two years?
- taeric 9y ago
  Easily, for some types of shoes. In dry weather, I don't care. Small holes in the shoes don't really matter much. In wet, though, it is baffling how quickly I can go through shoes. This was back when I walked about two to five miles a day. Just in the office, the same shoes can last much longer. For that matter, most of the change has been in the wet season. I wouldn't be surprised to find the shoes flat out wear faster in that environment.
subway 9y ago
I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and not wearing the same shoes constantly. This, a thousand times over. Shoe trees also do wonders to extend the life of footwear. It's all about letting the shoe completely dry out between wears.

antoinevg 9y ago

echo "Being able to afford good boots" | s/"good boots"/"good decisions"

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

Yes, but that's fiction.

meow1032 9y ago

This quote gets posted over and over ad nauseum on reddit and HackerNews and always seems to just get accepted as truth, but realistically the entire theory depends on the relative numbers between the two things being compared. The theory makes no sense if good boots cost 5x as much as shitty boots but only last 2x as long. If the cost of most things depended only on quality then I'd find it more convincing, but especially when we're talking about consumer electronics, things like brand reputation, novelty, and user perception matter a lot.

shados 9y ago
A rich person can buy the cheap option. A poor person usually cannot buy the expensive option. Of course the rule doesn't apply to everything, but it applies to "enough". Buying a house is often much better financially than renting (in high cost of living areas, usually by a factor) Hardwood furniture can last several generations. Plywood stuff...not so much. Mutual funds have much lower fees if you invest a larger amount of money. Banks and credit unions give you more, cheaper services if you have more money. Borrowing money is cheaper the better off you are. You can get a better job if you can afford to be on the market for longer. And so on, and so forth. There are exceptions (my cheap ikea couch has lasted 10-15 years, while a fancy hardwood table we got started falling apart after just a few years), but you just have more options if you can afford more expensive stuff. Some of those options are vastly more cost-effective. Being poor is very expensive.
- meow1032 9y ago
  If the point of the quote is to say that "sometimes the more expensive option is better value" it's accurate, but also is obvious, and doesn't really mean anything. To be clear, I don't think it's strictly wrong, just that it adds nothing of value to a conversation. It just gives a very specific example of when a rule holds. It's kind of like if the employment statistics come out, and they show improvement, but someone comments that they just got laid off that week. They aren't wrong, but they're also not adding anything to the conversation.
  - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

emodendroket 9y ago

If you don't use something that often then it turns out that buying a fancy one was money wasted. When I buy power tools I usually go for the cheapskate version and figure if it breaks I'll buy a better one next time.