Comment by wrycoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrycoder | Hacker News Reader

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I have a pair of custom hiking boots, hand made in the US to fit my feet, that I bought 45 years ago for $300. Last time I checked, the price was $700. They are still in great condition. (I know how to care for them.)

I fully expect they will last me the rest of my life. That’s very expensive, you may say - but consider how many pairs of $150 boots I would have gone through in that time.

I also have several pairs of high quality English dress shoes that are decades old. They look better than ever. They don’t crack and the stitching doesn’t fall apart. The biggest problem is finding a cobbler who can do a full high quality resole without damaging the uppers. They are all rapidly dying off.

Modern cloth and rubber shoes don’t last. The rubber deteriorates, the stitching and glues fail, and the cloth frays. They can’t be repaired. It’s not worth trying to make long-lasting, custom shoes from materials like that. Thus, the throwaway culture.

“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.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

~ Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

"Sunt prea sărac să îmi permit lucruri ieftine". "I'm too poor to afford cheap things".

Romanian proverb, probably predating Pratchett :-p

And in Finnish, "Köyhällä ei ole varaa ostaa halpaa", "A poor person can't afford to buy cheap things"

If you adjust for inflation, 300 1976 dollars correspond to 1442 current dollars. I'm not saying they're not worth it but it's something that people always forget it.

Yes, but this ends up being misleading because it fails to account for advances in manufacturing technology. It's far cheaper to make shoes today than it was in 1976 because manufacturing is far more automated and vastly more outsourced. You should see a price well below the inflation rate because the costs of manufacturing are decreasing over time.

I think the argument was that the old boots are better because of the manufacturing methods and materials used back in the day. Yes, stuff is cheaper today but especially for clothes quality has dropped too. As a second anecdote in the same direction, I have a winter coat my father bought in the 70s and a couple of shirts made in 80s. They are much thicker and stronger material than the same brands use today.

That's survivorship bias. There was lots of junk made in the 70s-80s, it's just not around any longer because it wore out and was discarded. Average quality isn't any worse than it was 40 years ago; most mass manufactured goods are better made today than before.

You can still buy clothes that will last decades, they're just more expensive than the average person is willing to pay. Especially considering the length of time that something stays fashionable.

ETA: I just looked in my closet because I have a Sears dress shirt from the 70s. It is thin enough I can easily see my hand through it.

I still have some Brooks Brothers oxford shirts from the 60s. The fabric is very thick. And no pocket!

When the collars wore out, I'd remove them and sew them in upside down. You just can't kill BB shirts made up to around 1980.

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