Because you'd buy a lot less things. There are 2 reasons to that : - they are more costly, so you can't afford as many - their quality means they last anywhere

Because you'd buy a lot less things. There are 2 reasons to that : - they are more costly, so you can't afford as many - their quality means they last anywhere from 2 to 50 times as long as their crappy equivalents ; so again you have to buy them less often. Take shoes : a man could buy only 8-10 pairs of really good shoes throughout his entire adult life and be set. Of course, those would be $500 high-quality shoes (not random 'designer' shoes). Or he could buy 60-80 pairs of cheap crappy shoes that quickly wear out and become painful to wear, and are not worth maintaining since they're so dirt cheap. Then the high quality shoes are probably made by a craftsman in the U.S. instead of an exploited worker in a third world country, so that's a more fulfilling job. And you don't have to transport the shoes across the globe on gigantic boats, so that's another eco-benefit.