
The Vimes Boots Theory: Further Reflections - panic
https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1477942.html
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Androider
Louis CK has a fantastic bit about this:

"When you're broke, the bank starts charging you money... for not having
enough money. If you have a lot of money, they give you money. Because you
have a lot of money! You have so much money that we should give you some!
Because you have a lot, you should have more! Here, take more money! Take this
guy’s $15, fuck him, you should have it!"

Like the article says, class boundaries are also knowledge boundaries. Because
you don't know of any alternatives, you bank at the local BoA and get taken
advantage of to the tune of $15/month in perpetuity with a low balance, or
even pay a percentage at the corner check cashing place. Or you can get free
banking and around 3% APY today if you have savings, know how and where to
bank and how to structure a 12-month CD ladder. It's expensive to be poor!

~~~
kwhitefoot
I have never paid for banking in my life. I lived for thirty years in England
and then moved to Norway where I have been for 32 years and have had accounts
with several different banks. The only charges I have ever had to pay are in
Norway where I have to pay an annual fee for a credit card from my bank (I
have several other credit cards that cost me nothing).

As far as I know this is normal in the UK and Scandinavia, not sure about the
rest of Europe though.

So how do US banks justify USD 15 a month?

~~~
l0b0
As a Norwegian with no affiliation, a huge shout-out to Sbanken (earlier
Skandiabanken) for providing _anyone_ with no setup fee (at least when I got
mine almost 20 years ago), free unlimited accounts, no credit or debit card
fees (even abroad!) other than a standard yearly renewal fee, and all-round
fantastic service. Their "secret" is so simple it's ridiculous: they are
online only - all services are through their web site. They also enforce
multi-factor authentication using any one of several services, most of which
can also be used with other banks and government websites. I've many a time
longed for something like it while living in various other Western countries,
but for some reason (regulation, inertia?) there seems to be nothing like it
elsewhere.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Yes, that's my bank, they're brilliant. So much better than the account I have
with Santander in the UK. But even DNB (former Postbanken) is better than
banks in other countries and has been for a very long time. I had online
banking with the Postbank even before I had Internet.

------
losvedir
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.

~~~
Fins
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.

~~~
siruncledrew
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).

~~~
Fins
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.

------
mrdoops
Taken further we find the problem of bottlenecked economic throughput or
market participation due to the poor's access to capital. Markets thrive on
distributed inputs to arrive at a consensus on value - the more participants
participating, the more throughput of information being supplied to our
markets. More participants is more information which allows healthier markets
which provides more opportunities for growth.

So what's the cost of a loan or other financial products? Of course there's
utility in providing upfront capital in exchange for time-spread payments and
interest (buy the $200 boots today), but what of the macro-cost of decreased
market participation for the duration of the payments? The loan payments with
interest is money that could've been used by an individual participating in
the market that is instead piped to the financing provider who, by definition,
is already richer.

Given the rich, or a rich organization, has different buying habits and
participation in the markets (different perspective = different information),
how much economic flow, throughput, and growth are we losing from financial
mechanisms which go from poor -> rich? In this sense wealth concentration is a
problem of bottle-necking economic potential by depriving our markets of
participants and diverse perspectives.

------
l0b0
Related is something which bug me about online ratings: there is just no way
to know which of the people who voted on a category of products have anything
like the same idea of "quality" as you do. I've certainly bought absolutely
awful stuff online which had a 90%+ positive or better than 4/5 star rating.
What ends up happening is that analysing the ratings of hundreds of thousands
of customers is very often _less valuable_ than chatting to a single person
who has had a good experience with a single product. This is how flawed online
ratings are.

~~~
Fins
There's also the selection bias -- people who think the product is OK, but
nothing special probably will not spend too much effort posting a review. But
of course even if they do bother posting a review, ratings often do not have
anything to do with the quality of the product.

------
hyperman1
My personal shoes where €40 models that would last a few months at most. I
bought more expensive ones, and they would also last a few months at most.
Both me and my mom are known in the family for being total shoe disaster
zones. So I'd given up that particular fight.

Then one day my wife and me ended up in a small, local shoe shop. No customers
there, just the owner. We weren't even looking for shoes. The owner was
getting pension-aged and would close his shop in a few months.

He told about how some company would make great but expensive shoes, and build
a name for quality. After a few years, a big company would buy the brand,
raise the price, lower the quality, and coast on the perception for a few
years. He told this cycle goes on and on. He stopped selling the shoes as soon
as he know the quality went down. Shoe salesman kept trying talking him into
selling these shoes as it was easy money, and he kept throwing them out of the
shop. He was getting very pissed off at this point.

He talked me into buying a pair for about €160, which isn't the most I've paid
for shoes, but more than I would give for that specific pair - they looked
like my normal €40 models. Now these shoes lasted for about 7 years, which
basically obliterated any personal record.

Unfortunately, the shop is gone now, and the only shoe shops left are the big
chains. I am still willing to spend the money, but I have no idea what I
should buy.

------
CM30
I suspect the accuracy of this theory is very, very market/area dependent.
Sometimes paying more will get you a better product sure, but sometimes you'll
have markets where the free/cheap solutions are better or where prices are
mostly the same for the same quality products across audiences.

Software is the obvious example of the former (with open source software often
being as good or better than paid alternatives), but
information/journalism/research/whatever could count to some degree too. If
you know where to look, there's free content on par with some of the best
newspapers and journals, especially now with the internet and passion
projects/people using Patreon or donations to fund their work. They're the
channels I feature in some of my underrated channels lists.

For fields where you can't really pay more for a better service, well
entertainment usually comes under that. That CD or DVD or video game or book
will cost roughly the same regardless of who buys it and what shop they get it
from.

The idea works pretty well for clothing and appliances, struggles when it
comes to software and is virtually irrelevant for movies or games. Then again,
I guess you could say software is a field where at a certain level, the only
thing that even remain are opportunity costs. Get skilled enough, and every
buying decision becomes a question of whether you want to buy/download to save
time or rebuild it yourself over the next few weekends or so.

------
darawk
This is a pretty incomplete metaphor. If the rich person bought the cheap
boots, they could invest the remainder of their capital in the market at say,
a 7% annual return, over the long period they're not actually saving money by
buying the more expensive stuff, most of the time.

------
golem14
Since neither the OP, nor the comments give them, I'd like to have a few
examples of high quality expensive shoes ... If anyone has suggestions, please
enlighten us.

~~~
veddox
I bought a set of Lowa Renegade boots 1.5y ago:
[https://www.lowaboots.com/mens/hiking/renegade-gtx-mid-
sepia...](https://www.lowaboots.com/mens/hiking/renegade-gtx-mid-sepia-sepia)

Originally for hiking, but they have also seen daily service as winter boots.
Been very pleased with them for both purposes, and they're still as good as
new. (As a student, this was a pretty big investment for me, but I'd
definitely do it again!)

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Jaruzel
Off topic, but is dreamwidth.org a Livejournal clone?

~~~
Avshalom
Sort of, it's started from a fork of LJ code and has been developed since. I
can't remember why exactly the fork was made though because LJ has shot itself
in the foot basically every two years since it started.

~~~
cowpewter
IIRC, Dreamwidth was forked off LJ after one of LJ's great fandom purges
(probably either Strikethrough or Boldthrough). Basically, they cracked down
on ton of fandom communities for adult content, and the fandom communities
said, fine, we'll just make our own then, and did.

------
Alan_Dillman
The thing I don't like about Vime's theory is that it postulates only two
price points.

That being said, I buy 200 dollar boots.

~~~
n4r9
I don't think it _postulates_ two price points, it just uses two for the sake
of argumentation.

~~~
Alan_Dillman
The essayist doesn't but Vimes world character arc requires that he see the
issue in black and white, top and bottom.

I'm sure that was an allusion by Prachett: you're not supposed to think like
Vimes. His books always have layers of meaning.

~~~
hyperman1
Leave of the white. I'd say he sees issues in black. He's a stark cynical
copper who has seen anything. A lot of his internal monologue talks about how
he wants to unleash 'the beast' but can't because his inner watchmen won't let
him.

