Comment by losvedir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by losvedir | Hacker News Reader

Heh, last year I bought expensive boots explicitly because of the Vimes' theory, but I have to say in my case it didn't work out.

Maybe this comes from what the post says about "knowing what to buy", but I bought boots made by a 2nd generation shoemaker constructed out of leather carefully prepared here in Chicago. They're recraftable so I figured after the bottoms wore out I could fix them. But here I am a year later and the inside sole is coming up and squeaks with every step. I'm going to have to take it in to get it repaired, for probably $15-$20. From a consumer waste and natural resources perspective, I'm still happy with my purchase, but I'm pretty convinced that shopping every year or two at Walmart would leave the average person ahead, cost-wise.

More generally, I wonder to what extent the Vimes theory is true. Richer people buy higher quality items and generally have a more luxurious life, but I'm not sure that it's cheaper overall. Or at least, there's a point where it's obviously the case (c.f. the T ticket vs Charlie card point in the post), but I think it happens pretty early on in wealth.

Case in point, I bought a nice 2 year old Chevy from a dealer with low miles for $12,000 a few years ago and haven't had a problem with it. I can imagine that paying itself off quite easily vs. making do with a $3,000 beater that keeps falling apart and needing service. But from a purely cost perspective (not luxury), I don't think beyond maybe $15k or so, more money in a car will save you in the long run.

So, I still kind of get Vimes' theory, but I only think it applies from, say, poverty to lower middle class level. Beyond that, I think upper class people spend more money on stuff, and get a sweet life because of it, but not as a cost saving measure.

I think mass production really screws with it. Vimes was writing from the perspective of a pre-industrial society. Everything is handmade, and something cheap has to have less effort put into it.

With mass production in factories, so much of the effort is front-loaded in R&D and production equipment which gets shared among all the output. Those cheap Walmart boots have far more effort put into them than your custom ones. The only reason they’re worse is because a lot of that effort was put into making them cheap rather than making them good. But it’s a conscious tradeoff and nothing forces it to be anything like proportional. Quality largely depends on those front-loaded costs which require a lot of customers to justify. The best products will necessarily be ones that are fairly popular, although not necessarily the most populr.

This is most visible in electronics. You can pay for quality up to a point, but there’s a low ceiling. Pick the best cell phone you can buy for under, say, $2,000. How much would it cost to buy something even better? You might be able to do it for less than a billion dollars, but I kind of doubt it.

The idea still applies, but a lot of it comes down to buying in bulk. A person who can afford to buy a year’s supply of toilet paper will save money. And yes, the ceiling on that is still not particularly high.

Insole can probably be glued back easily enough.

With things like these though, it's important to know if you are paying for quality, luxury/prestige, or some combination thereof, as these are different things that may be considered worthy of paying extra for. With things that are not (strictly) utilitarian, it could be far more of the latter than former. Shoes made of leather from the butt of a baby purple dragon would be quite expensive, but that leather isn't necessarily as strong as your run of the mill cowhide.

Gets even worse/more complicated if the maker used to be known for quality but starts taking shortcuts and quality goes down, but price doesn't.

As some anecdata, I have a couple of leather belts that are if not older than I am but certainly pushing 40, worn very often. Still look as good as new, but I am sure they were very expensive when originally purchased. Another belt is a few years old, from a brand that's known for making quality luggage (or used to be), not worn too often, and wasn't cheap. Leather's already cracking. On the other hand, really cheap ones look terrible even sooner, so the law still holds as a general rule.

The indicators used to appraise the quality of something have a big part to do with the overall successful application of Vimes theory.

Consider a merchant has 2 classes of boots: TypeA that cost $100 and last 5 years, and TypeB that costs $60 and lasts 2 years. Both boots are made by the same merchant, and TypeA has better materials than TypeB, which is primarily why it lasts longer, not necessarily due to the merchant’s craftsmanship ability. In such case, if someone could afford the TypeA boots, we can make sense of Vimes theory because it comes out to be cheaper over the life of the item due to better quality of materials, since quality of craftsmanship is basically the same.

Of course, this is pretty idealized. There’s many other factors that influence quality and how it’s perceived.

OP could have paid a premium to a longstanding brand traditionally known for quality that has cut corners over time and now uses cheaper practices.

I think there’s a lot of cases similar to OP now, where people pay a premium for a TypeA item expecting better quality construction and durability for the price, yet end up getting something not that different than a TypeB item.

Marketing also has a lot to do with this. It’s particularly frustrating when buying from a brand that used to make good stuff, and now sells stuff way worse under the same name (I’m looking at you Pyrex). I also hear a bunch of watch fans calling out the formerly high-end watch brands for cheapening their construction quality while still keeping the price high because buyers pay for the label not the actual quantitatively measured useful quality of the item. Once brands get to that level, they know they can basically put out mass manufactured expensive garbage and people will still buy it because they associate the brand with former traditional quality construction (much like many fashion brands of today that are made in similar overseas factories with similar textile suppliers).

Exactly. I remember when HP printers were built like tanks, too.

The problem, too, is that apart from goods that are tested for durability, there aren't many signals a layperson can use to judge if say boots are well-built and made of quality materials.

Then, of course, "quality" is multi-faceted, too. Type A boot could cost more because it is better-looking, light, flexible, comfortable, and made of thin, soft, supple leather as smooth as baby's bottom. But because of that, it will fall apart as quiclly as WalMart boot for $20; you'd just enjoy wearing it more.

I think you got some bad boots. To your example of cars, you've proved the theory; you bought a car at four times the price of the beater and it will last far longer than 4X and will do so more cheaply and reliably.

The general rule of cars is buy used, buy cheap and buy Japanese. A 6000 used Honda Fit will run forever with cheap maintenance. Spending more than 10000 really is not needed if you don’t care about impressing people. Though impressing people is often important and not necessarily a vice.

Once Honda and Toyota go electric, those things will last a century.

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