4 ms·

Brings to mind Vimes' "'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness", from Terry Pratchett's Discworld: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, w

by mithr 5y ago

Brings to mind Vimes' "'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness", from Terry Pratchett's Discworld: "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."

travisgriggs 5y ago
I would give 50 upvotes if I could for the Pratchett reference. And a good explanation to boot.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  And I would give 50 downvotes if I could. The only thing that quote is good for this century is letting upscale consumers pat themselves on the back. Goods are so much cheaper than when that quote was written that using cheaper alternatives and treating them as disposable is often times cheaper in the long run for many classes of goods and usage patterns. These sorts of tropes and rules of thumb that have been stripped of all nuance and packaged up nice and neatly so that the lowest common denominator consumer on the internet can read, understand and press the up-vote button are good for little more than achieving said upvotes. When subject to the complexities of real life they are wrong as often as they are right. You may as well toss a coin. There are unfortunately no rules of thumb you can follow that will outperform even a minimal application of critical thought.
  - Jiro 5y ago
    I also read a partial rebuttal which amounted to "Rich people pay less because they can buy more durable boots, but they also pay more because they buy fancier boots, and the increased expense from buying fancier boots is more than the savings from the boots lasting longer." There's also the question of why the poor person doesn't take out a loan to buy the more expensive boots, and pay off the loan with the money that he saves from not having to continually buy pairs of cheaper boots. Many poor people still have credit cards, and even the ones who don't can often trade favors or get loans from relatives. And even the response "they should save up for the boots" isn't obviously wrong. For obvious reasons it's hard for poor people to save, but how often is it so hard that something like this isn't possible?
  - ketzo 5y ago
    Okay, the quote might not be literally true for boots (or many consumer goods) in 2021, but it's a good intuitive explanation of why it's quote-unquote "expensive to be poor," which is absolutely a meaningful and important idea to understand.
    - CincinnatiMan 5y ago
      The person you're replying to though is saying the quote isn't worthwhile because the idea doesn't pan out. Is it actually expensive to be poor?
      - ketzo 5y ago
        Extraordinarily so. A lot of it comes down to leverage: if you're poor, you have very, very bad options when it comes to borrowing money. Say you're already living paycheck-to-paycheck, and then you fall and break your wrist. You don't have health insurance, so you go to an urgent care clinic, and have to pay $200 out of pocket (a very optimistic number!) You were already gonna finish this week with less than $30 in the bank. Now you literally can't buy yourself groceries until Friday. What do you do? For a lot of people, the answer is credit card debt (18-26% or more APR) or, worse, payday loans (20-40% PER MONTH if it's a legal place, worse if it's not). Say you take out a payday loan at 20% to borrow back just that $200. Now you're gonna owe the place $40 at the end of the month. Congrats -- your bank account is now gonna be overdrawn. Hope you don't try and use your debit card, because now you owe $35 in overdraft fees, too. If you can't borrow money cheaply, the very first time that you're forced to borrow, you are fucked if you can't get back out very quickly. And if you're in a place where you were going to a payday loan, there's very little reason to think you're gonna be able to get back out. There's a lot of other shit. If you're poor you have a worse car that needs more maintenance/uses more gas/gets more traffic tickets. You get shittier sleep because your mattress is 12 years old and you're stressed all the time, so it's harder to even bring yourself to work. You can't afford a daycare, so you have to stay home with your kid an extra day every week, so you work fewer hours and make even less. And that's not even scratching the surface of what it's like to live amongst poverty. Everything I've said can happen to someone who's trying their absolute hardest every single day, and doing it all "right"; and people aren't perfect. An unexpected kid, a drug addiction, getting involved with gangs; these things happen to well-meaning, good people, and trap them in a life of poverty in a way that's incredibly difficult to escape even if you do everything right afterwards. It's a vicious spiral when you don't have a safety net.
thehappypm 5y ago
I know this is fiction, but is it really possible to have boots that last 10 years?
- clifdweller 5y ago
  a decent pair of redwing boots will run $200-300 and last 18-24 months in a job walking daily before needing a resole ~150 that can be done 2-3 times. mine that I wear a couple times a week I got 18 years ago and have had to do a $50 re-heel of them is it. giving them 48 hrs to dry after wearing really extends the life of the leather
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing! If you just bought cheap Walmart boots, you'd probably be spending $50 per pair, but need 2 pairs a year (maybe even more, but you're not putting a huge amount of wear and tear), call it $100/year. Over 18 years that's $1800!
  - handrous 5y ago
    Also have some a few pair of Redwings Heritage boots. First real-leather shoes I bought were some Iron Rangers. I wore them as my main shoes for the first year I had them, nearly every day. Wore the absolute hell out of them. They still come out many times a year, and I treat them as work boots, so they get things dropped on them, I sit on the floor and crush them side-down for long stretches, et c. I also wore them up a couple mountain trails in the Appalachians maybe three years back, one a pretty damn long and high-elevation-change trail (do not do this, they are heavy as fuck compared to any modern hiking boot or, especially, shoe, it was a very bad idea) which beat them up plenty. "Camp mocs", chukkas, and loafers have replaced them for everyday wear, for me, but that first pair of IRs still see some of my hardest-wearing days, probably 20-30 days a year. Given the rate of wear for the ~2 years when I wore them very heavily, I'd say I could have gotten 5-8 years without babying them a bit (with a re-soling around year 4, probably). With my current usage pattern I expect they'll last about 20, with a re-soling at some point. If a person used shitty work boots for the really rough days to avoid abusing the expensive boots, and maybe kept some purpose-specific shoes for things like snow, heavy rainy weather (duck boots in both cases, perhaps), or hiking (god, just get a modern hiking shoe or boot, leather shoes are so heavy), 10 years of ~50%-of-days wear is very possible out of that boot style, I'd say. That may even be on the low side.
lossolo 5y ago
There is a saying that only rich can afford to save on things

by mithr 5y ago

travisgriggs 5y ago

I would give 50 upvotes if I could for the Pratchett reference. And a good explanation to boot.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
And I would give 50 downvotes if I could. The only thing that quote is good for this century is letting upscale consumers pat themselves on the back. Goods are so much cheaper than when that quote was written that using cheaper alternatives and treating them as disposable is often times cheaper in the long run for many classes of goods and usage patterns. These sorts of tropes and rules of thumb that have been stripped of all nuance and packaged up nice and neatly so that the lowest common denominator consumer on the internet can read, understand and press the up-vote button are good for little more than achieving said upvotes. When subject to the complexities of real life they are wrong as often as they are right. You may as well toss a coin. There are unfortunately no rules of thumb you can follow that will outperform even a minimal application of critical thought.
- Jiro 5y ago
  I also read a partial rebuttal which amounted to "Rich people pay less because they can buy more durable boots, but they also pay more because they buy fancier boots, and the increased expense from buying fancier boots is more than the savings from the boots lasting longer." There's also the question of why the poor person doesn't take out a loan to buy the more expensive boots, and pay off the loan with the money that he saves from not having to continually buy pairs of cheaper boots. Many poor people still have credit cards, and even the ones who don't can often trade favors or get loans from relatives. And even the response "they should save up for the boots" isn't obviously wrong. For obvious reasons it's hard for poor people to save, but how often is it so hard that something like this isn't possible?
- ketzo 5y ago
  Okay, the quote might not be literally true for boots (or many consumer goods) in 2021, but it's a good intuitive explanation of why it's quote-unquote "expensive to be poor," which is absolutely a meaningful and important idea to understand.
  - CincinnatiMan 5y ago
    The person you're replying to though is saying the quote isn't worthwhile because the idea doesn't pan out. Is it actually expensive to be poor?
    - ketzo 5y ago
      Extraordinarily so. A lot of it comes down to leverage: if you're poor, you have very, very bad options when it comes to borrowing money. Say you're already living paycheck-to-paycheck, and then you fall and break your wrist. You don't have health insurance, so you go to an urgent care clinic, and have to pay $200 out of pocket (a very optimistic number!) You were already gonna finish this week with less than $30 in the bank. Now you literally can't buy yourself groceries until Friday. What do you do? For a lot of people, the answer is credit card debt (18-26% or more APR) or, worse, payday loans (20-40% PER MONTH if it's a legal place, worse if it's not). Say you take out a payday loan at 20% to borrow back just that $200. Now you're gonna owe the place $40 at the end of the month. Congrats -- your bank account is now gonna be overdrawn. Hope you don't try and use your debit card, because now you owe $35 in overdraft fees, too. If you can't borrow money cheaply, the very first time that you're forced to borrow, you are fucked if you can't get back out very quickly. And if you're in a place where you were going to a payday loan, there's very little reason to think you're gonna be able to get back out. There's a lot of other shit. If you're poor you have a worse car that needs more maintenance/uses more gas/gets more traffic tickets. You get shittier sleep because your mattress is 12 years old and you're stressed all the time, so it's harder to even bring yourself to work. You can't afford a daycare, so you have to stay home with your kid an extra day every week, so you work fewer hours and make even less. And that's not even scratching the surface of what it's like to live amongst poverty. Everything I've said can happen to someone who's trying their absolute hardest every single day, and doing it all "right"; and people aren't perfect. An unexpected kid, a drug addiction, getting involved with gangs; these things happen to well-meaning, good people, and trap them in a life of poverty in a way that's incredibly difficult to escape even if you do everything right afterwards. It's a vicious spiral when you don't have a safety net.

thehappypm 5y ago

I know this is fiction, but is it really possible to have boots that last 10 years?

clifdweller 5y ago
a decent pair of redwing boots will run $200-300 and last 18-24 months in a job walking daily before needing a resole ~150 that can be done 2-3 times. mine that I wear a couple times a week I got 18 years ago and have had to do a $50 re-heel of them is it. giving them 48 hrs to dry after wearing really extends the life of the leather
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing! If you just bought cheap Walmart boots, you'd probably be spending $50 per pair, but need 2 pairs a year (maybe even more, but you're not putting a huge amount of wear and tear), call it $100/year. Over 18 years that's $1800!
- handrous 5y ago
  Also have some a few pair of Redwings Heritage boots. First real-leather shoes I bought were some Iron Rangers. I wore them as my main shoes for the first year I had them, nearly every day. Wore the absolute hell out of them. They still come out many times a year, and I treat them as work boots, so they get things dropped on them, I sit on the floor and crush them side-down for long stretches, et c. I also wore them up a couple mountain trails in the Appalachians maybe three years back, one a pretty damn long and high-elevation-change trail (do not do this, they are heavy as fuck compared to any modern hiking boot or, especially, shoe, it was a very bad idea) which beat them up plenty. "Camp mocs", chukkas, and loafers have replaced them for everyday wear, for me, but that first pair of IRs still see some of my hardest-wearing days, probably 20-30 days a year. Given the rate of wear for the ~2 years when I wore them very heavily, I'd say I could have gotten 5-8 years without babying them a bit (with a re-soling around year 4, probably). With my current usage pattern I expect they'll last about 20, with a re-soling at some point. If a person used shitty work boots for the really rough days to avoid abusing the expensive boots, and maybe kept some purpose-specific shoes for things like snow, heavy rainy weather (duck boots in both cases, perhaps), or hiking (god, just get a modern hiking shoe or boot, leather shoes are so heavy), 10 years of ~50%-of-days wear is very possible out of that boot style, I'd say. That may even be on the low side.

lossolo 5y ago

There is a saying that only rich can afford to save on things