this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
372 points (99.2% liked)

Asklemmy

43746 readers
1565 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I saw this post and wanted to ask the opposite. What are some items that really aren't worth paying the expensive version for? Preferably more extreme or unexpected examples.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (4 children)

There's a famous example of the poverty trap that uses boots that fall apart every season vs quality boots that last, and I think there is a quality level that is so bad it's more expensive in the long run. So I do buy shoes that cost money. But I'm not buying fashion shoes or luxury brand shoes which I think is what you're saying too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

"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."

  • Men at Arms by Terry Prachett
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Yeah, you don't want top of the line, but you don't want bottom of the barrel, either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That's exactly my point as well. I've got a pair of shoes that I got for $40 around 5 years ago and I still wear them everywhere.