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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

Man, part of me wishes the theory were still true. So many products you spent good coin on and then later find out are in fact no better than the cheap stuff (or worse, literally just rebadged Alibaba products!).

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Yeah, I think about this a lot. I currently need a vanity base. There are no businesses doing this within 100 miles of me, as far as I can tell using the information avenues available to me. So I'm shopping semi-identical jpgs with some filters on untrustworthy metadata from Wayfair, Home Depot, Lowes... They're all selling the exact same things. Does it even matter if I pay $200 vs $2000 on these sites? I can't even see what the difference is between those two options.

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.

It is nice to be able to buy things from actual people who make them. Coincidentally the biggest outfit who make reproduction desks in this country (ie think what an English desk looks like 200 years ago, basically that, except made last month by experts and also the real ones didn't have a place to run cables tidily out of sight) is in my city, so I paid them to make my desk (well, not this desk, the one in my office when I'm doing actual work). Expensive but definitely worth it.

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.

One thing that may help resolve your issue is that while I do agree with the Sam Vimes theory, it is also not guaranteed. There are also scenarios where the $50 boots will last forever, or you can buy $2 boots that will only last five years... but across your entire lifetime will still be cheaper. Or you can account for the fact that you take better care of your stuff than most people and the cheap thing may in fact be fine for a long time. Or you buy the cheap thing twice and maybe in 15 years when you have more disposable income buy the thing that lasts. Or buy the cheap thing and hit the occasional estate sale and eventually find a thing that lasts, but for dirt cheap prices, because you weren't in a hurry because your immediate needs were met and you had the time to wait for a deal.

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.

> What about the "craftsmen" on Etsy? Are they even real?

Not anymore. The real craftspeople were booted from the site, by the cheap knockoff-spewers.

This is still true in the margin, but it requires a shocking amount of research to suss it out. You might enjoy the Rose Anvil channel, as it dissects boots (literally) and discusses their quality in depth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vHTlrwHttc

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.

Rose Anvil has (like many other internet celebrities) had some controversies:

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.

I think that's fair. I didn't know anything about boots before watching him, so I wasn't aware that boot construction could even vary so much. I had no sense that a pair of $80 boots were effectively glorified tennis shoes, whereas nearly any $200 boot would be much more durable and constructed fundamentally differently. (even if all $200 boots are not equivalent with each other) So, even if he's doing a little access journalism and has some bias, I still think there is some value in just understanding the construction of different boots.

This is what happens when vendors recognize the boots theory and build it in to their approach. If “more expensive is better,” just price the same item into a higher price bracket and pocket the difference. If you want to be fancy, rebadge it a bit.

I’m just amazed that they don’t even bother to use alternate product pictures.

The other year I bought some Bose exercise earbuds because the cheap ones weren't staying in my ears. They died, warranty replaced them, they died again, I opened them up and the circuit board wasn't coated or potted or anything! The cheap ones were! The premium brand was penny-pinching harder than the no-name brand!

Expensive doesn't guarantee high quality, but very cheap almost always means low quality. A £200 pair of boots might be great and last for a decade, or might be overpriced and fall apart after six months. But a £5 pair are definitely going to be crap.

Which is why it makes sense to buy the 5 pound shoes 40 times if they last at least 3 months. Except for running shoes, I just get the Costco ones for $20 to $30 and toss them in 6 to 12 months.

But then you're constantly either breaking in a new pair, or dealing with a pair that's falling apart, and you're lucky to get 1 month of good comfortable wear out of those cheap shoes. And you have to go buy them every three months, and shoe models change constantly so you have to find the current cheap pair that actually fits you.

I am lucky I have a wide range that I find comfortable, because the $30 Costco shoes and the $180 On Clouds are all the same to me. I also don't buy them every 3 months, maybe 6 months at most frequent. Last time was probably almost a year ago, and I got 2 pairs, one to keep nice so they're presentable, and the other for literally anything else, and they look terrible, but still aren't coming apart.

It's never been the case that more expensive products are better, despite better products being more expensive.

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.

Given its lower melt point and ductility, silver is actually much much better to make jewelry with than stainless steel. Especially if you are also trying to include gold in your piece!

I would say this still holds true but not for singular products. Take Costco for example, long term you save money and you get high quality products. But that comes at the cost of having to spend quite a bit up front to buy in bulk.

Not to mention it also assumes you have the space to store those products.

Funds to buy, space to store and also the means to transport the bulk goods. We do most of our grocery shopping on foot or by bicycle which rules out Costco for us.

Costco has a double threat going on... bulk discounts plus a great warranty. because they have so few skus, they can afford to give each product more attention than any other Brick & Mortar store, to say nothing about Amazon and Etsy

That is the main reason I buy from Costco without hesitation. I know that if I got ripped off by a subpar good, I can get my money back. But that rarely happens.

This is part of why I now tend to go for the cheapest. I do a bit of research of course, but most goods have been commodified (and corners cut). Nowadays the only guarantee you have when paying more is that you have less money in your wallet.

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