71–80 of 94 posts
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And do they actually get job done... Hammer drills compared to impact drills...
Apples and oranges. I need to sink into masonry approximately never, but demand tight bolt-ups on the weekly. I own several impact drivers, and no hammer drills. Give me torque or give me death!
There is also the phenomenon of Quality Fade where a hedge fund buys a storied brand, cuts corners but keeps prices high and extracts money from the company as it is running it into the ground.
This makes it very hard to assess which products are truly durable, and Quality Fade means even the Lindy Effect is not a reliable heuristic.
A fine heuristic if you have enough money to make the choice in the first place. [1]Sam Vimes’s ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-economic Unfairness, propounded in Men at Arms: "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 hun…
That might have been relevant 50 years ago, but even good boots are not that expensive. And if you save that much, put the boots on a credit card, the cost of that is less than what you save on the better boots.
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It's expensive to be poor.
Money follows money, that's how it works. If someone invests 100€ and makes 1% of profit, they got an extra 1€. You can maybe buy a cup of coffee with it. But if a someone invests a million euros and gets 1% of profit, they get 1000€. That's a cup of coffee every day for almost 3 years. Exact same investment, very different outcomes.
not exactly the same. The quantity is itself a difference.
All investments would have a risk. The $1million investment has 1000x the risk, and thus, they obtain 1000x the reward. So, the weighted reward for both situations are the same per dollar.
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All items are cheaper in bulk, so the class of items that are more expensive for poor people is actually pretty much everything. Being poor means your friends and family and roommates and neighbors are also broke, so you can't buy in bulk because they gonna steal yo shit. So you're forced to buy singles, which are more expensive. Being able to store the bulk goods from a CostCo run without them walking off is a privi…
I see somethign similar to this in poor countries I've visited. people who are very poor don't have enough money to maintain a bank account so they just store cash. they have a mindset of spending what they have and never saving. I thought it was stupid till I realized that having a bunch of cash at home just makes you a target for getting robbed. SO you end up with people who spend as soon as they have over a certai…
And as a consequence, anyone who can improve this banking infrastructure can reap the rewards from this infrastructure.
IMO if you primarily think in terms of cost per use, you're missing a big step in "financial maturity", because for expenses that are in the reasonable range, I think switching to evaluating based on their value to you is much more effective. Is the $8 Starbucks Frap worth the cost per use compared to a $2 drip coffee? Probably not, but it makes me happy, and the value on that is VERY high, and that value additionall…
You can also turn this around by stating that you have fallen for the marketing ploys which attempt to connect subjective emotions - happiness, fulfilment, accomplishment - to consumption in general and the consumption of 'premium' products in particular whereas others look past such attempts at emotional bribery. Is that $8 Starbucks Frap worth the cost per use compared to four $2 drip coffees? Not if you've seen the Fnords [1].
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Money follows money, that's how it works. If someone invests 100€ and makes 1% of profit, they got an extra 1€. You can maybe buy a cup of coffee with it. But if a someone invests a million euros and gets 1% of profit, they get 1000€. That's a cup of coffee every day for almost 3 years. Exact same investment, very different outcomes.
> Exact same investment, very different outcomes. not exactly the same. The quantity is itself a difference. All investments would have a risk. The $1million investment has 1000x the risk, and thus, they obtain 1000x the reward. So, the weighted reward for both situations are the same per dollar.
The one with 100€ won't have access to investment consultants or private banking. Maybe a few youtube videos.
The one with 1M€ will have an accountant, private banking access and unless they found the 1M€ off the street they'll have contacts for investment tips the other person will never have.
I'm not a millionaire, but I do kinda know a few who could be measured as such. I've made good money following investment tips from them. Not life-changing, but fancy vacation amounts.
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I spent $5000 on the fastest consumer computer available in 2011. It had a 6-core CPU which was pretty amazing at the time. I still use that same computer today as my main workstation. I've put a little bit of money into it over the years, expanding it. Most recently I bought the fastest CPU that would work in that motherboard, a 12-core/24-thread Xeon for $30 on ebay. So even with adding RAM, Hard drives, new video…
Thank you for sharing that. I think this is a particularly good callout: "which has been absolutely worth it considering I've made 250x that per day when I use it for work." I think that's called "investment" :) If "loving" your computer makes you even 1% more productive and raises your income 1% that's amazing. Similarly, I've come around on my previously penny-pinching ways around things that matter. Eg I pay for P…
Cost/use really only works well for things where the results of use are broadly equivalent across price tiers. In the example given, expensive socks and cheap socks are basically the same when new (they'll keep your feet warm, padded, and wick away moisture), the only difference is how long that lasts. For things like tools its often a bad metric unless you truly only need it once. In addition to durability; the ergo…
But that's basically the real problem. I want to believe decades ago there was more of a relation between higher cost (but not outright a luxury brand) and quality. Now that is completely random and even if you look for reviews hardly anyone does any "5 years later" tests (except for some maybe paid amazon reviews...)
IMO if you primarily think in terms of cost per use, you're missing a big step in "financial maturity", because for expenses that are in the reasonable range, I think switching to evaluating based on their value to you is much more effective. Is the $8 Starbucks Frap worth the cost per use compared to a $2 drip coffee? Probably not, but it makes me happy, and the value on that is VERY high, and that value additionall…
This fits into the "cost per smile" heuristic lower down in the essay: > How much joy can you get out of each dollar? Some things bring lots of joy for a small amount of money: ice cream, sunsets, nature walks. A cheap date can bring many smiles per dollar.