5 ms·

Because most people will buy the $100 thing over the $130 thing even though the $130 thing is better made.

chongli 2y ago
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. — Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  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.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  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.
  - chairmansteve 2y ago
    Usually true, I agree. But there are a few quality brands. Lexus cars, for example, go forever. Struggling to name another quality. Maybe some technical/ outdoor clothing brands. Anybody got any suggestions?
    - rsanek 2y ago
      Toyota and Subaru are just as reliable yet much cheaper https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
        I was going to say, I would really need to see an examination that a Lexus was more cost effective option over a car lifetime vs a Toyota.
    - whartung 2y ago
      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.
- Sesse__ 2y ago
  You may be interested in Dan Luu's own postings on this theory: https://mastodon.social/@danluu/111068309548746696 https://mastodon.social/@danluu/111068309548746696
  - chongli 2y ago
    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.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  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.
trgn 2y ago
but is that true? you're standing in target, looking at air fryers. they're all priced differently. how do you know which is the good one? is it really the more expensive one? highly doubt it. and it's the same almost with everything now. price carries a very low signal.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Honestly, I'd probably look at Wirecutter and Cooks Illustrated, both of which I have subscriptions to. I'm not going to trust them on every product I might buy but for something like air fryers they're probably not going to steer me too far wrong.
  - snozolli 2y ago
    Specifically for kitchen items, America's Test Kitchen is hard to beat.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Agreed. Even if no site is perfect, some of them are a lot better than just picking what's most expensive or gives the best vibe for whatever reason.
  - trgn 2y ago
    thanks for the tip!
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
How do I know the $130 version is any better? Formally good brands have been cost cut to death and can be just as bad or worse as the cheap version. Only difference is the manufacturer collects a higher margin on the perceived product superiority. There was a time where you knew a Craftsman tool was worth a premium price.
- sidibe 2y ago
  This gets so exaggerated online especially if you rely on reddit to figure out what to get they always recommend the one that is 10x as expensive and they insist cheaper things won't last or work but it almost never is my experience with the cheaper ones when I end up getting them. Maybe it starts out true but the cheaper ones eventually get good enough It's the same with cell phones the claim is iPhone/pixel will last way longer than the cheap ones but i feel like this get less and less true, not that the quality is going down on the good ones but I know people who are on their 5th year of a $150 one and no problems
  - ponector 2y ago
    Usually of you sort by the price 10 products it is a safe bet to get third cheapest. Good enough.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
  Resale value is probably a better metric, if it's $130 new and $100 second hand while the other one is $100 new and sub-$50 second hand that'll be a fairly good sign that it at least works. It's still not 100% but it'd at least mean you're going to be out less money in the end if it's a dud for you.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    I don't know why you got downvoted, but this is probably the ONLY one metrics that makes some sense.
    - 2y ago
ponector 2y ago
If only $130 thing is better made, not with better marketing! You never know if more pricey thing is actually better and will last more. It can have a feeling to last more, but not the actual quality. Nowadays almost everything is a crap with fake positive reviews.
JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
Expands beyond that really, people assume they need more than they do. A TV stuffed with features sounds great even if they'd prefer a TV that does the bare minimum but takes less than a minute to start up An SUV because of the one time every year or two where they may need a bigger vehicle (and would be better off renting a van) A smartphone they can't use with one hand that doesn't fit in their pocket
thrance 2y ago
Then explain luxury goods?
MisterBastahrd 2y ago
Sometimes the $130 thing is not better. Take barbecue gloves. Yes, you can buy all sorts of varieties. Pitt Boss, Crate and Barrel, and others sell gloves in the $30 range. These gloves have enough heat resistance that you can pull a steel handled pan right out of the oven. Know what works even better and is more durable for half the cost? Welding gloves. You can buy gloves rated to over 1K Fahrenheit for less than $20. Now you've cut your cost but also have the added ability if you wish to rearrange burning coals BY HAND. I think that one of the things we do in this consumerist society is to buy things that look good instead of things that are functional. You aren't going to find much tupperware in a professional kitchen. What you WILL find are Cambro containers, heating dishes, and a variety of generic food storage containers. They are cooking their food in heavy walled pots and stainless steel pans with metal implements. Most people could throw out about 80% of their cooking pots and pans and never miss any of them. At least baking vessels are far more task-dependent. Is a Le Creuset dutch oven pretty? Sure. Is it functionally better than a generic cast iron dutch oven? No. And of the two, the cast iron dutch oven is the one where you can buy once and have your great-great grandkids fight about who gets to keep it, because the Le Creuset will almost certainly have developed defects in the ceramic by then. On the flip side, a $300 refurbished Vitamix will beat the pants off of any off-the-shelf blender and last longer, too. But then, that's a professional product.
dale_glass 2y ago
The problem is that evaluating quality is nigh impossible these days. So right over me right now I have this big LED light/ceiling fan combination. I've owned I think 4 of them so far, in 3 different kinds. All 3 kinds look somewhat different yet are built obviously from the same base for the electronics, though those vary somewhat. One model didn't reverse, one does. One model has RGB lighting. Some go by RF and some go by IR. But overall the electronics seem to come from the same place in slightly different flavors. They're all random chinese brands, old ones tend to disappear and get replaced with a slightly newer ones. And the problem is that at some point, something in the LED driver of the first 3 died. I tried replacing the chip, but it's some particular weird model that can't be found anywhere online. At this point I'm half-seriously considering doing my own LED/fan driver board, because it's getting ridiculous. The 4th one is holding up so far though.

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. — Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
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.
potato3732842 2y ago
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.
- chairmansteve 2y ago
  Usually true, I agree. But there are a few quality brands. Lexus cars, for example, go forever. Struggling to name another quality. Maybe some technical/ outdoor clothing brands. Anybody got any suggestions?
  - rsanek 2y ago
    Toyota and Subaru are just as reliable yet much cheaper https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      I was going to say, I would really need to see an examination that a Lexus was more cost effective option over a car lifetime vs a Toyota.
  - whartung 2y ago
    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.
Sesse__ 2y ago
You may be interested in Dan Luu's own postings on this theory: https://mastodon.social/@danluu/111068309548746696 https://mastodon.social/@danluu/111068309548746696
- chongli 2y ago
  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.
Suppafly 2y ago
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.

trgn 2y ago

but is that true? you're standing in target, looking at air fryers. they're all priced differently. how do you know which is the good one? is it really the more expensive one? highly doubt it. and it's the same almost with everything now. price carries a very low signal.

ghaff 2y ago
Honestly, I'd probably look at Wirecutter and Cooks Illustrated, both of which I have subscriptions to. I'm not going to trust them on every product I might buy but for something like air fryers they're probably not going to steer me too far wrong.
- snozolli 2y ago
  Specifically for kitchen items, America's Test Kitchen is hard to beat.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Agreed. Even if no site is perfect, some of them are a lot better than just picking what's most expensive or gives the best vibe for whatever reason.
- trgn 2y ago
  thanks for the tip!

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

How do I know the $130 version is any better? Formally good brands have been cost cut to death and can be just as bad or worse as the cheap version. Only difference is the manufacturer collects a higher margin on the perceived product superiority. There was a time where you knew a Craftsman tool was worth a premium price.

sidibe 2y ago
This gets so exaggerated online especially if you rely on reddit to figure out what to get they always recommend the one that is 10x as expensive and they insist cheaper things won't last or work but it almost never is my experience with the cheaper ones when I end up getting them. Maybe it starts out true but the cheaper ones eventually get good enough It's the same with cell phones the claim is iPhone/pixel will last way longer than the cheap ones but i feel like this get less and less true, not that the quality is going down on the good ones but I know people who are on their 5th year of a $150 one and no problems
- ponector 2y ago
  Usually of you sort by the price 10 products it is a safe bet to get third cheapest. Good enough.
JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
Resale value is probably a better metric, if it's $130 new and $100 second hand while the other one is $100 new and sub-$50 second hand that'll be a fairly good sign that it at least works. It's still not 100% but it'd at least mean you're going to be out less money in the end if it's a dud for you.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  I don't know why you got downvoted, but this is probably the ONLY one metrics that makes some sense.
  - 2y ago

ponector 2y ago

If only $130 thing is better made, not with better marketing! You never know if more pricey thing is actually better and will last more. It can have a feeling to last more, but not the actual quality. Nowadays almost everything is a crap with fake positive reviews.

JansjoFromIkea 2y ago

Expands beyond that really, people assume they need more than they do. A TV stuffed with features sounds great even if they'd prefer a TV that does the bare minimum but takes less than a minute to start up An SUV because of the one time every year or two where they may need a bigger vehicle (and would be better off renting a van) A smartphone they can't use with one hand that doesn't fit in their pocket

thrance 2y ago

Then explain luxury goods?

MisterBastahrd 2y ago

Sometimes the $130 thing is not better. Take barbecue gloves. Yes, you can buy all sorts of varieties. Pitt Boss, Crate and Barrel, and others sell gloves in the $30 range. These gloves have enough heat resistance that you can pull a steel handled pan right out of the oven. Know what works even better and is more durable for half the cost? Welding gloves. You can buy gloves rated to over 1K Fahrenheit for less than $20. Now you've cut your cost but also have the added ability if you wish to rearrange burning coals BY HAND. I think that one of the things we do in this consumerist society is to buy things that look good instead of things that are functional. You aren't going to find much tupperware in a professional kitchen. What you WILL find are Cambro containers, heating dishes, and a variety of generic food storage containers. They are cooking their food in heavy walled pots and stainless steel pans with metal implements. Most people could throw out about 80% of their cooking pots and pans and never miss any of them. At least baking vessels are far more task-dependent. Is a Le Creuset dutch oven pretty? Sure. Is it functionally better than a generic cast iron dutch oven? No. And of the two, the cast iron dutch oven is the one where you can buy once and have your great-great grandkids fight about who gets to keep it, because the Le Creuset will almost certainly have developed defects in the ceramic by then. On the flip side, a $300 refurbished Vitamix will beat the pants off of any off-the-shelf blender and last longer, too. But then, that's a professional product.

dale_glass 2y ago

The problem is that evaluating quality is nigh impossible these days. So right over me right now I have this big LED light/ceiling fan combination. I've owned I think 4 of them so far, in 3 different kinds. All 3 kinds look somewhat different yet are built obviously from the same base for the electronics, though those vary somewhat. One model didn't reverse, one does. One model has RGB lighting. Some go by RF and some go by IR. But overall the electronics seem to come from the same place in slightly different flavors. They're all random chinese brands, old ones tend to disappear and get replaced with a slightly newer ones. And the problem is that at some point, something in the LED driver of the first 3 died. I tried replacing the chip, but it's some particular weird model that can't be found anywhere online. At this point I'm half-seriously considering doing my own LED/fan driver board, because it's getting ridiculous. The 4th one is holding up so far though.