Sam Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness (2022)
terrypratchett.com
terrypratchett.com
There are cases where spending more gets you a more premium product ... but in so, so many cases it's just like you stated. You spend on luxury, and the "nice" speakers have the same terrible PCB design and fail in 1-2 years, or the "nice" skilsaw ends up failing way too soon, etc. A brand used to be good, but now it's terrible, and you have no way of knowing. It's all a mess.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Boots/comments/1oyxfuo/what_do_you_...
That said, I like watching him for validation that my taste is good, since I bought Lems' shoes before he started plugging them.
What about the "craftsmen" on Etsy? Are they even real? Or, I could pay $5000 for an individual, local, physically extant American with a name and face to make it from scratch, which I would love to be able to afford.
So I pick one at random off Wayfair that claims to be made of solid wood and has a price that is neither suspiciously low nor suspiciously high. Maybe I've just bought cheap boots, but it's insane that I don't even know.
I don't know at all how sure I'd be that what I'd get was good quality if it was turning up from the far side of the country, let alone from China. I know anywhere could make high quality products, but it's much easier to trust it when you can walk there and go see them.
The meta-lesson of the Vimes theory is really more that you need to think about these things, but it's not guaranteed that the expensive thing will be better in the longterm on a bang-for-the-buck basis. For furniture, there is something to be said for the technique beloved by the just-starting-out set of buying "whatever I scrounged together from garage sales", and there's something to be said for "I outfitted my apartment from Ikea". Yeah, it's cheap and one way or another you're going to pay for that cheapness, but it's so much cheaper than the alternative that as long as you aren't practicing your wrestling moves on the Ikea end tables, you can get a long way with them even if you're replacing them every 10 years.
And, per your last point... at least when you buy cheap, you know you bought cheap. I found myself in need of a dining room table light a few years back. We went to a lighting store and I stood there staring at all the bespoke LEDs that I knew would die and couldn't be replaced, and the multi-thousand dollar lamps that looked nice but I simply couldn't know if they were quality... and ended up buying a $15 dollar extension cord with 5 light sockets on it, bought some light bulbs to put in it, and wrapped the cord around the remains of the previous what-turned-out-to-be-proprietary track lighting. We decorate it for the season with various ribbon things to hide the cords. Because damn it, if it's all just going to fail anyhow, at least I knew I could replace the lights with whatever I wanted, and it cost me less than $100 all in. We've had that for, gosh, I think at least 10 years now, and I've probably cycled the lights at least twice now, but that's probably still under $100 total... all because I simply can't trust the expensive stuff.
Not anymore. The real craftspeople were booted from the site, by the cheap knockoff-spewers.
I’m just amazed that they don’t even bother to use alternate product pictures.
Not to mention it also assumes you have the space to store those products.
Quality isn't the only reason something may be expensive, and costly signaling will always dominate, whether or not the products are of high quality.
Silver isn't a better material for making jewelry than stainless steel; if anything, it's worse. Jewelry's purpose is to show that the owner doesn't care about costs, but it's not the only way. Buying needlessly expensive technology works too, like cars and computers and phones, and the more expensive ones are not known for lasting long, and they are used for much shorter period of time than a cheap version of the same, despite the cheap one being hardier and longer lasting.
In reality I think there are more forces extracting money from the wealthy and their effete needs. My example is an airplane. The first class passengers are effectively paying 3x as much for the same outcome. The same is true for ovens and shoes and phones and cars.
To address the second airplane example, we really have to go through all that you're buying. Namely: more leg space, faster airport queue processing, more luggage, better in-flight service. Do I value these at 3x the cost? Maybe yes.
Not saying it's a bad to spend money on temporary comfort, but it's the opposite of the Vimes boot problem.
How much money would you pay for two extra days of life? In the end, time itself is also “fleeting”, if you want to put it that way. But I sure as heck would fork over the money if I had it.
It's true that comfort isn't a permanent good you own a la Vimes. But better comfort is a decidedly different outcome and you argued that it wasn't.
A hand-stitched leather suitcase is expensive. It will also last until your grandchildren are dead.
The grandkids not wanting it may still apply if they are still minors, there would be plenty of time for tastes to shift again.
Not the same outcome. They show up at their destinations fresh from a good night's sleep, having showered at the lounge. Their back doesn't hurt from trying to sleep upright in a tiny seat or schlepping a heavy rucksack.
If you have enough money you are ok with paying to get those outcomes.
Also, checking a bag is not expensive.
It was weird, I would arrive in Oak / SF rested, grounded, not nearly as stressed... and without a flying horror story to share (although the "alien abduction" made a good story). [0]
At the end of the journey Amtrak sucked, but flying sucks more; so much of the suck is fixable in both cases but it never seems to happen.
[0] I'd rate your chances as about 1:3 something unexpected will occur. An 11PM electrical fire / "alien abduction". They put the train together wrong / in a hurry and first class was right behind the engines (they sealed the door with duct tape to keep the rain / snow / wind out), and at night going through the Cascades in OR there were a half dozen of us crowding around with our wine bottles looking out over the engines; very cool. A freight broke apart in the Cascades stretch and we sat in the bar car (drinking wine) and watched the maintenance crews humping connector knuckles from behind us up to the freight in front of us (some of those freights are over a mile long; did I mention we were basically on the side of a cliff?).
3x? If only! If we're talking international first class (not US domestic "first"), it's typically 10-12x the price of economy.
If you're chasing after the ones that are most well known on Instagram, then you're paying for the logo and getting quality that is not that much better than much cheaper stuff.
If you look for lesser known brands that are more expensive but that expense is because of the materials and craftmanship, then it's often worth the money.
Consider school backpacks. If you can, you should probably buy a Tom Bihn backpack. It's $400 and will last for decades. Spending more money will buy something fancier, but it won't be better at being a backpack. If you don't have that much cash to drop? Jansport, Eastpak, North Face? They're all the same mediocre product made by the same PE group. And they're still not cheap.
And you're overestimating the cost of first class, at least in my experience, and that's kind of a lot of experience. I work in pre-sales engineering and travel a ton. My company won't pay for first class, but I'm 6'2" with ten screws in my spine and always pay for the upgrade, and it's usually between $200-$500, which has never tripled the price and almost never even so much as doubles it. You can sneer that I'm overpaying for nothing, but you try getting into a situation where sitting in a sardine can for four hours leaves you unable to stand up straight for 40 hours when you land. To me, it's worth it. The other option is I die with more zeros in my bank account, which is even more pointless. It's not like I'm failing to hit savings goals because of this.
Same thing applies with cars, by the way. I work from home when not traveling and don't drive very much, but I do own a luxury vehicle, and the difference between that any nearly any rental is pretty stark. It doesn't win on any reliability rating I'm aware of, but I've put less than 20,000 miles on it in 6 years of ownership and don't particularly care about the durability. I care about comfort and my own car is way the fuck more comfortable than the Nissans and Toyotas the rental agencies give me.
"Effete needs" is awfully sneering. I've lived on the back of an Abrams tank for weeks at a time in the past. I lived in the backseat of a 1994 Honda Civic and worked an overnight shift detailing theme park restrooms while putting myself through community college 25 years ago. I can live with little to no comfort if I actually need to, but given the choice and sufficient disposable income that it makes no difference, why the hell would I choose to be less comfortable just so I can brag to all the Bogleheads that my savings account has an extra hundred grand in it when I need five mil to retire anyway? Frugality doesn't push the needle much in the realm of travel and consumer goods. Cheap housing and a well-paying job is what pushes the needle.
I have nothing to back that up, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a feature. If these luxury items are being used by the society (or at least in some circles) as a proxy for 'success'(ie having enough disposable money) it probably would be better if they we also quite fragile. This way you could distinguish between someone who received a expense gift vs someone that has money to always keep buying new items.
I'm not sure how real it this, but I've read somewhere that part of the appeal of expensive glassware was the fact that it was pretty fragile. Serving someone at your house with expensive glassware was a way to tell 'look how much money I've got'.
Just to be clear, I don't think we should get impressed/try to impress people by how much money someone has. But that is a practice as old as time, and it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.
Bought an expensive jacket. It's indestructible and cool and has good pockets. It's a motorcycle jacket. I didn't know I was buying an indestructible normal jacket.
I do think it is still very true for tools though. It's nearly always worth getting decent ones, they nearly give better results or are easier to use and last so much longer.
If you're a hobbyist or doing something at home, a lot of the times you're gonna buy some random tool and only use it a few times. 80% of the time, the Harbor Freight knockoff is going to be good enough. If you use a tool so much that it breaks, then it's time to spring for the expensive and high quality version.
However you may want to go straight to the nice version for things that have safety implications (skip the infamous Harbor Freight jack stands)
The "boots" item feels less true, because expensive doesn't seem to be as correlated with "good quality" as it used to. But the general statement still very much stands.
Things like financial products that charge higher interest rates to poorer people, or services that offer discounts for paying annually rather than monthly are great examples of this. And less direct things, like being able to drive to cheaper shops and buy in bulk, or being able to do preventative maintenance to avoid a cheap fix turning into an expensive one.
It can still apply to individual items, as long as you're careful about what you buy and do your research to make sure you're actually buying high quality boots, and not just cheap ones with an expensive logo on the side.
Exchange of future cash flows are not comparable to a one time exchange of goods or services due to the risk of default.
> And less direct things, like being able to drive to cheaper shops and buy in bulk, or being able to do preventative maintenance to avoid a cheap fix turning into an expensive one.
This is a good example, but the best example I can think of is having sufficient cash flow to be able to purchase a home in a higher socioeconomic neighborhood, because if you have kids, you are effectively paying almost nothing for a higher quality education since a lot of comes back to you in the form of equity and your child’s increased chances of financial stability.
Utilities, in my country people who aren't trusted to pay for electricity, gas, even water (which you need to live!) in arrears have to pay up front for it, so maybe I use 500 kWh of electricity, and I've agreed to pay 20p per kWh = £100, at the end of the month I get a bill for £100 and I settle that a few days later, if I don't eventually I get angry letters and eventually a court summons. That's electricity I used two weeks ago and I won't even pay for it until May. But if I was poor, I might find my best option is I pre-pay £10 to get 40 kWh of electricity. So that 500kWh would cost £120 and I have to buy it first before I use it and if at any time I forget or can't pay the lights go off immediately that my credit runs out.
Also Sir Terry Pratchett is a gem of an author and you should read all of his books. I have read through maybe 25% of Discworld and it's the funniest fantasy series ever.
If you start reading at the very beginning of the Discworld, you're slogging through the weaker stuff, and it's easy to get discouraged. A smoother path is to pick one of the defined sub-series (the guards are very popular, but my vote goes to the witches) and start along just that track; you'll get to the strong stuff much faster.
“Yes, yes,” said Bethan, sitting down glumly. “I know you don’t. Rincewind, all the shops have been smashed open, there was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?”
“Yeah,” said Rincewind, picking up a knife and testing its blade thoughtfully. “Luters, I expect.”
Excerpt From The Light Fantastic
Great author.
Another way to consider it is through the lens of meritocracy. Consider two poker players of equal skill. Have them play each other until one has lost everything. Run this competition over and over, starting each player with a random stack. Over many trials, the player starting with the bigger stack will win in proportion to the ratio of their stack to their opponent's. Given a large enough ratio, this wealth advantage can begin to overcome greater and greater advantages in skill on the part of their opponent.
In the US, the ratio of the wealth of the top 10% to the wealth of the median has risen from 5.8x in 1963 to nearly 10x in 2022. In the same period, the ratio of the top 1% to the median has risen from 35x to 70x. And the effective advantage is probably much higher, as this calculation does not take into account liquidity: most of a median family's wealth is in their family home.
The premise is just false. The parable might be true when comparing, say, lower class vs lower-middle-class, or lower-middle-class to middle class. But the difference between upper class and middle class is not "spending less money." It's a vastly different net worth that comes from inheritance, building / running businesses, investments, etc.
The boots theory focuses on the costs, but the real difference comes from the income & net worth
Some things are so cheap you can't mess it up. Some things are well-made because the manufacturer made a series of quality-conscious decisions that really added up.
The trouble is the middle, where consumers pay the most attention to branding to make decisions. At the extremes, though, brands matter less.
The poor man wants boots. The rich man wants boots. The man in the middle wants Timberlands or Harley-Davidsons or Doc Martins or whatever.
A good example would be modern safety razors. I was looking at alternatives to the King C Gillette and most of the generic branded ones performed similarly to the big three German brands.
The books also get better as I get older - I read them first as a teenager and many of the deeper ideas about the human condition went straight over my head.
The way the cult leader in Guards! Guards! manipulates his followers, to give just one example.
It is not in any way addressing costly signalling, a completely unrelated behavior where purposefully wasteful and highly visible spending on lower-utility products elevates social status, making low-utility products more expensive and more common than equivalent high-quality products.
Consumer goods have dropped in price, which is good for offsetting inequality. I think the allegory still holds in some other areas (off the top of my head: healthcare spending and renting versus owning your primary residence).
That said, income inequality is probably the much bigger source of unfairness these days.