6 ms·

The author of this linked article has made an error: he assumes dcurtis' flatware is inordinately expensive. It is not; traditional flatware really is absurdly

by cjensen 14y ago

The author of this linked article has made an error: he assumes dcurtis' flatware is inordinately expensive. It is not; traditional flatware really is absurdly expensive. Much of the author's article is based on this assumption. I'd suggest he familiarize himself with "wedding gift"-style flatware. Then do a rewrite because I think there is a good argument still to be had.

Breefield 14y ago
I thought the author was suggesting that maybe flatware isn't worth that much. There being a bunch of expensive flatware in existence is just a straw man's rebuttal to the point that affordable flatware works just fine.
- njr123 14y ago
  I think cutlery is probably the worst possible example to illustrate the argument. The cheapest cutlery you can buy is still works 90% as well as the best, and they last approximately forever. I've never in my life been eating something and noticed the quality of the cutlery. I think a better example would be dress shoes. The cheap versions are uncomfortable and wear out all the time, where as a good pair of leather shoes should last so much longer they probably end up being cheaper in the long run.
  - npsimons 14y ago
    Precisely. I know it's fiction, but Terry Pratchett sums it up nicely in "Men at Arms": 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.
    - jonnycoder 14y ago
      That might not be too far off. I actually already posted a comment regarding boots, but I know people with $400 boots that last 6+ years under hardcore/milaage whereas the $100 cheap boots give out once a year...and I'm not talking about worn out soles.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Do you not eat a lot of soup, or have you just never used a truly excellent soup spoon? Has it not occurred to you to replace your butter knives with something that has an actual blade on it, or do you just take for granted that we set places with pointless little paddle tools next to the forks? I own $10 dinnerware (and very cheap shoes) but the notion that fine dinnerware is the reductio ad absurdum of materialism gets to me. But we cook a lot, and nerds tend to eat out, so maybe that's what's going on. To illustrate: I wore nothing but cheap combat boots from 10th grade until last year (now I wear cheap slip-on dress-like shoes) and never once noticed any downside to it. I'm at the same time well aware of people who spend many hundreds of dollars on a pair of shoes. This observation never really drove me crazy.
  - stickfigure 14y ago
    I've never in my life been eating something and noticed the quality of the cutlery. I frequently notice the disappointing cutlery in restaurants and the apartments of friends-who-don't-cook. A bendy fork or spoon with sharp edges is a genuine annoyance - definitely a first world problem, but one that's absurdly easy to solve at home by spending $20 for a set rather than $10. I think flatware is a great example of something which makes sense to economize in the middle - "the best" is silly expensive, but since you eat every day and a set lasts decades, so you might as well avoid the low end of the quality curve. $20-$30 at Target will get you heavy, stiff, polished stainless steel. A good chef's knife, however, should be treated like a family heirloom.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Different people have different tastes. Disbelief that others are willing to spend a bit more money on stuff (seriously, $50 for that set isn’t very expensive in the grand scheme of things) is kind of stupid. Who cares, really? You shouldn’t be so judgmental, especially about things like that. (And this also goes in the opposite direction: If you are happy with cheap flatware, nobody should berate you for it.)
  - lilsunnybee 14y ago
    What set? It was 50 dollars for 2 forks, 2 spoons, and 1 knife. To get an actual flatware set would cost something like 500 dollars at those rates, which is really an absurd amount to spend on such trivial bullshit.
    - arrrg 14y ago
      Around $500 is what you pay for some pretty normal 50 piece sets. That $50 set is by no means especially high priced. Why is it trivial bullshit to pay $500 on a set that might last a family decades? That’s $2.80 per month (assuming it lasts for fifteen years, which would be my ballpark estimate for a high-quality set that is nearly indestructible and will mainly need replacement because pieces are lost). Others buy a $800 TV every five years. That’s $13.33 per month. I buy a $1,200 TV every twelve years (and might soon give up on TVs altogether). That’s $8.33 per month. Can’t you see that both are valid approaches? I can totally understand why someone would pick the cheapest flatware he or she can get. There is less cognitive load. If you buy it and it turns out to be not so great it’s not a big deal. Why can’t you see my perspective?
csmeder 14y ago
for example: Wallace Silversmiths Five-Piece "Grande Baroque" Flatware Place Setting Original:$1,240.00 NOW:$992.00 - http://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/Wallace-Silversmiths-Grande-Baroque-Flatware/prod34800118/ http://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/Wallace-Silversmiths-Grande-Ba... I agree, if the best Jacket, piece of flatware, flash light, etc is more expensive, that doesn't correlate: the overly expensive products are the "best". Which I think the writer is suggesting. Sometimes the cheaper product is the "best". If Dustin wants to buy reliable and highly usable stuff, I don't see what the problem is. That said if it leads him to become attached to his items in an unhealthy way, that could be a problem.
- Breefield 14y ago
  Did you even read this article?
  - csmeder 14y ago
    Sorry, just putting the word 'Best' in double quotes wasn't clear. I am using the word "Best" to be Dustin's definition. Where the author is arguing the [best] is the "worst".
- ssharp 14y ago
  What you linked to would be referred to as "formal flatware". It's a totally different market than regular flatware. You're buying it because it has some intricate design or is made from some sort of expensive material. The pricing of it is not based on functionality. This happens in the lower end, too, but there are lots of reasonable options that are cheaper than the stuff from "The Best" article, probably hold up the same, and the marginal loss in functionality is less than the marginal change in price.
  - csmeder 14y ago
    I agree, in particular "and the marginal loss in functionality is less than the marginal change in price." However, the thesis of Dustin's essay is that there are products which are worth the additional cost due to an increased (and worth while) functionality, utility and experience. The way I see it is this: Dustin: "I have decided to only go to the best amusment parks. For me this is Disneyland. I can afford to go once every 4 years." The average person: "I go to about 2 amusement parks a year. Some times I have a horrible time." But replace amusement parks with house hold goods. Dustin would rather have a few great things rather than a bunch of mediocre things. That said, I would agree with his essay more if he didn't use the word "Best", and replaced it with "Great". Trying to find the "Best" product could quickly lead to obsessiveness and wasted time, I figure settling at "Great" would bring more happiness in the long run and be less evil.[1] "...premature optimization is the root of all evil" - Donald Knuth
kryptiskt 14y ago
If you include the time he spent researching flatware in the bill it would be probably hard to find anything more expensive south of diamond-encrusted things for oligarchs without taste.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  And he spends an hour or so every day eating stuff with those. Every single day (presumably). If you divide the $500 those flatwares have cost him over that time period (a few thousand days, an hour each day), it turns out it's cost him about 10 cents per hour. And yet, he (again, presumably) has been enjoying it immensely. If you can be happier by spending 10 cents (per hour), why not? I'm not a fan of expensive clothes, but buying an expensive utility that you use everyday (chair, mouse, keyboard, shoe, fork) makes a lot of sense to me.
  - debacle 14y ago
    It costs me less than ten cents per hour to power my entire house. You can do anything with simple math and look like an economist, but the reality is that the guy bought a $10 fork.
    - geekstrada 14y ago
      That literally made me chuckle out loud. Thank you.
  - lilsunnybee 14y ago
    Because you can be a lot happier spending a lot less than 10 cents an hour, and not worrying about trivial bullshit like flatware.
- drivingmenuts 14y ago
  Where in the heck do you research flatware in a reliable manner? Cost is easy, but finding out that $75 fork gets scratches like a carpet in a cat factory? Who publishes that? I'm pretty sure I bought my cutlery at Target in one of those handy service-for-4 bachelor packs and maybe my plates at Ikea because I happened to remember I needed plates and I don't hate trees enough to buy paper all the time. But damned if I did any research on it. Is this some niche of blogging as yet undiscovered?
1337p337 14y ago
I don't know where you shop, but the "traditional flatware" of my people is whatever was cheap enough at the department store. Our rich native customs dictate that we spend $15 on a set, and then use it until there are not enough non-bent spoons, and then to spend another $15.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Thus resulting in an endless stream of quick-decaying stuff from china to your home. And a hundred round-trips to the department store, if you apply that to everything in your life.
  - jaggederest 14y ago
    I hate to tell you this, but expensive spoons bend just as easily as inexpensive ones, and cost more to replace. Some things really are consumable items. There's no t-shirt on earth that is going to last beyond about 200 wash cycles.
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      1. Best doesn't always mean more expensive 2. That's not entirely true. Depending on the material and design some are very, very hard to bend 3. I have a t-shirt I bought in 2006 that is still going strong :)
    - geekstrada 14y ago
      You obviously haven't bought many different spoons, and price is irrelevant. I can buy a well-made spoon from the Salvation Army store for less than a spoon made from pressed sheet metal available at a retail store.
schraeds 14y ago
Remove the reference to a $50 set of flatware and the article loses no substance. You picked a rather arbitrary example the author used to illustrate the point of being a slave to materialism. About the danger of caring more about objects than memories or experiences.
lilsunnybee 14y ago
schraeds you are linkdead, for no good reason as far as i can tell from your history.

by cjensen 14y ago

Breefield 14y ago

I thought the author was suggesting that maybe flatware isn't worth that much. There being a bunch of expensive flatware in existence is just a straw man's rebuttal to the point that affordable flatware works just fine.

njr123 14y ago
I think cutlery is probably the worst possible example to illustrate the argument. The cheapest cutlery you can buy is still works 90% as well as the best, and they last approximately forever. I've never in my life been eating something and noticed the quality of the cutlery. I think a better example would be dress shoes. The cheap versions are uncomfortable and wear out all the time, where as a good pair of leather shoes should last so much longer they probably end up being cheaper in the long run.
- npsimons 14y ago
  Precisely. I know it's fiction, but Terry Pratchett sums it up nicely in "Men at Arms": 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.
  - jonnycoder 14y ago
    That might not be too far off. I actually already posted a comment regarding boots, but I know people with $400 boots that last 6+ years under hardcore/milaage whereas the $100 cheap boots give out once a year...and I'm not talking about worn out soles.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Do you not eat a lot of soup, or have you just never used a truly excellent soup spoon? Has it not occurred to you to replace your butter knives with something that has an actual blade on it, or do you just take for granted that we set places with pointless little paddle tools next to the forks? I own $10 dinnerware (and very cheap shoes) but the notion that fine dinnerware is the reductio ad absurdum of materialism gets to me. But we cook a lot, and nerds tend to eat out, so maybe that's what's going on. To illustrate: I wore nothing but cheap combat boots from 10th grade until last year (now I wear cheap slip-on dress-like shoes) and never once noticed any downside to it. I'm at the same time well aware of people who spend many hundreds of dollars on a pair of shoes. This observation never really drove me crazy.
- stickfigure 14y ago
  I've never in my life been eating something and noticed the quality of the cutlery. I frequently notice the disappointing cutlery in restaurants and the apartments of friends-who-don't-cook. A bendy fork or spoon with sharp edges is a genuine annoyance - definitely a first world problem, but one that's absurdly easy to solve at home by spending $20 for a set rather than $10. I think flatware is a great example of something which makes sense to economize in the middle - "the best" is silly expensive, but since you eat every day and a set lasts decades, so you might as well avoid the low end of the quality curve. $20-$30 at Target will get you heavy, stiff, polished stainless steel. A good chef's knife, however, should be treated like a family heirloom.
arrrg 14y ago
Different people have different tastes. Disbelief that others are willing to spend a bit more money on stuff (seriously, $50 for that set isn’t very expensive in the grand scheme of things) is kind of stupid. Who cares, really? You shouldn’t be so judgmental, especially about things like that. (And this also goes in the opposite direction: If you are happy with cheap flatware, nobody should berate you for it.)
- lilsunnybee 14y ago
  What set? It was 50 dollars for 2 forks, 2 spoons, and 1 knife. To get an actual flatware set would cost something like 500 dollars at those rates, which is really an absurd amount to spend on such trivial bullshit.
  - arrrg 14y ago
    Around $500 is what you pay for some pretty normal 50 piece sets. That $50 set is by no means especially high priced. Why is it trivial bullshit to pay $500 on a set that might last a family decades? That’s $2.80 per month (assuming it lasts for fifteen years, which would be my ballpark estimate for a high-quality set that is nearly indestructible and will mainly need replacement because pieces are lost). Others buy a $800 TV every five years. That’s $13.33 per month. I buy a $1,200 TV every twelve years (and might soon give up on TVs altogether). That’s $8.33 per month. Can’t you see that both are valid approaches? I can totally understand why someone would pick the cheapest flatware he or she can get. There is less cognitive load. If you buy it and it turns out to be not so great it’s not a big deal. Why can’t you see my perspective?

csmeder 14y ago

for example: Wallace Silversmiths Five-Piece "Grande Baroque" Flatware Place Setting Original:$1,240.00 NOW:$992.00 - http://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/Wallace-Silversmiths-Grande-Baroque-Flatware/prod34800118/ http://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/Wallace-Silversmiths-Grande-Ba... I agree, if the best Jacket, piece of flatware, flash light, etc is more expensive, that doesn't correlate: the overly expensive products are the "best". Which I think the writer is suggesting. Sometimes the cheaper product is the "best". If Dustin wants to buy reliable and highly usable stuff, I don't see what the problem is. That said if it leads him to become attached to his items in an unhealthy way, that could be a problem.

Breefield 14y ago
Did you even read this article?
- csmeder 14y ago
  Sorry, just putting the word 'Best' in double quotes wasn't clear. I am using the word "Best" to be Dustin's definition. Where the author is arguing the [best] is the "worst".
ssharp 14y ago
What you linked to would be referred to as "formal flatware". It's a totally different market than regular flatware. You're buying it because it has some intricate design or is made from some sort of expensive material. The pricing of it is not based on functionality. This happens in the lower end, too, but there are lots of reasonable options that are cheaper than the stuff from "The Best" article, probably hold up the same, and the marginal loss in functionality is less than the marginal change in price.
- csmeder 14y ago
  I agree, in particular "and the marginal loss in functionality is less than the marginal change in price." However, the thesis of Dustin's essay is that there are products which are worth the additional cost due to an increased (and worth while) functionality, utility and experience. The way I see it is this: Dustin: "I have decided to only go to the best amusment parks. For me this is Disneyland. I can afford to go once every 4 years." The average person: "I go to about 2 amusement parks a year. Some times I have a horrible time." But replace amusement parks with house hold goods. Dustin would rather have a few great things rather than a bunch of mediocre things. That said, I would agree with his essay more if he didn't use the word "Best", and replaced it with "Great". Trying to find the "Best" product could quickly lead to obsessiveness and wasted time, I figure settling at "Great" would bring more happiness in the long run and be less evil.[1] "...premature optimization is the root of all evil" - Donald Knuth

kryptiskt 14y ago

If you include the time he spent researching flatware in the bill it would be probably hard to find anything more expensive south of diamond-encrusted things for oligarchs without taste.

pooriaazimi 14y ago
And he spends an hour or so every day eating stuff with those. Every single day (presumably). If you divide the $500 those flatwares have cost him over that time period (a few thousand days, an hour each day), it turns out it's cost him about 10 cents per hour. And yet, he (again, presumably) has been enjoying it immensely. If you can be happier by spending 10 cents (per hour), why not? I'm not a fan of expensive clothes, but buying an expensive utility that you use everyday (chair, mouse, keyboard, shoe, fork) makes a lot of sense to me.
- debacle 14y ago
  It costs me less than ten cents per hour to power my entire house. You can do anything with simple math and look like an economist, but the reality is that the guy bought a $10 fork.
  - geekstrada 14y ago
    That literally made me chuckle out loud. Thank you.
- lilsunnybee 14y ago
  Because you can be a lot happier spending a lot less than 10 cents an hour, and not worrying about trivial bullshit like flatware.
drivingmenuts 14y ago
Where in the heck do you research flatware in a reliable manner? Cost is easy, but finding out that $75 fork gets scratches like a carpet in a cat factory? Who publishes that? I'm pretty sure I bought my cutlery at Target in one of those handy service-for-4 bachelor packs and maybe my plates at Ikea because I happened to remember I needed plates and I don't hate trees enough to buy paper all the time. But damned if I did any research on it. Is this some niche of blogging as yet undiscovered?

1337p337 14y ago

I don't know where you shop, but the "traditional flatware" of my people is whatever was cheap enough at the department store. Our rich native customs dictate that we spend $15 on a set, and then use it until there are not enough non-bent spoons, and then to spend another $15.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ricardobeat 14y ago
Thus resulting in an endless stream of quick-decaying stuff from china to your home. And a hundred round-trips to the department store, if you apply that to everything in your life.
- jaggederest 14y ago
  I hate to tell you this, but expensive spoons bend just as easily as inexpensive ones, and cost more to replace. Some things really are consumable items. There's no t-shirt on earth that is going to last beyond about 200 wash cycles.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    1. Best doesn't always mean more expensive 2. That's not entirely true. Depending on the material and design some are very, very hard to bend 3. I have a t-shirt I bought in 2006 that is still going strong :)
  - geekstrada 14y ago
    You obviously haven't bought many different spoons, and price is irrelevant. I can buy a well-made spoon from the Salvation Army store for less than a spoon made from pressed sheet metal available at a retail store.

schraeds 14y ago

Remove the reference to a $50 set of flatware and the article loses no substance. You picked a rather arbitrary example the author used to illustrate the point of being a slave to materialism. About the danger of caring more about objects than memories or experiences.

lilsunnybee 14y ago

schraeds you are linkdead, for no good reason as far as i can tell from your history.