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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I read somewhere that athletic shoes don't last. 20-30 years, and they crumble away, even if left untouched in the box.

I suppose it's like the foam insulation on my '72 Dodge - touch it and it turns to dust. Some of the plastic parts crack and disintegrate. Rubber falls apart. It was never designed to last this long.

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> 20-30 years, and they crumble away, even if left untouched in the box.

Ah, but if they're a store of value that is never removed from the box, does it matter whether they work? Does it matter whether they're in there?

If they've crumbled away, then you can see that just by looking in the box, can't you?

Why would you look in the box?

I don't understand why you're buying shoes never to even look at them?

Resale value? Opening the box ruins that.

I don't think these shoes come in a sealed box though. Nothing stops you looking at them even if you're going to resell them. And if you are going to resell them, you'll need to state the condition, and as the thread says the condition deteriorates.

Condition: never used. Still in box.

I think we're talking about expensive high-end shoes here. That kind of listing may work on Facebook Marketplace, but since everyone knows shoes can deteriorate (the point of the thread) that wouldn't cut it here.

Schrodinger's shoes?

More like Wittgenstein's beetle-in-a-box: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument#The_...

> Wittgenstein invites readers to imagine a community in which the individuals each have a box containing a "beetle". "No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle."

> If the "beetle" had a use in the language of these people, it could not be as the name of something – because it is entirely possible that each person had something completely different in their box, or even that the thing in the box constantly changed, or that each box was in fact empty. The content of the box is irrelevant to whatever language game it is used in.

This doesn't make sense. The hypothesis already states that "beetle" has a use in the language of these people, and that it refers to the contents of each person's box.

That the boxes might have different contents from person to person or from time to time isn't an obstacle to that; most words can freely refer to different things as long as those different things have some similarity (such as being located within a special box). Does "salary" refer to a thing? Does "pet"? Does "sister"? How about "lucky charm"? Are these things the same for everyone, because they are referred to by the same words?

The closest analogy, of course, is "soul", but while souls do not exist, nobody claims that the word doesn't refer to a thing. It refers to a thing that doesn't exist.

> Ah, but if they're a store of value that is never removed from the box, does it matter whether they work? Does it matter whether they're in there?

For some reason, this makes me think of USDT.

Of course, it's the same idea. You should also think of fractional reserve banking, and the popular conspiracy theory that the gold Fort Knox is supposed to hold was removed long ago.

I sold a closet of shoes for my friend and about half fell apart on pulling them out of the boxes to take pictures.

Some I was able to take a picture and then fell apart when I put it back in the box.

And then about 10 fell apart when the person who purchased them, decided to wear them.

Rubber deteriorates over time, leather dries out, synthetic materials delaminate and break down, fabrics go brittle and break easily if handled.

This whole sneakerhead thing is insane. Shoes are meant to be worn, not stored away like some ridiculous baseball card.

It is yet another sign that consumerism and by extension capitalism is a delusion and an unsustainable bubble.

Old rubber midsoles definitely crumble - I personally had some 20-year-old trainers crumble while wearing them.

New plastic foam midsoles don’t crumble, but the glue that attaches them to the other parts of the shoe still does.

I dug out some old ones of mine from the back of the closet. They definitely got brittle, and you can hear them crack and split when flexing it.

Into the garbage :-)

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