"The steep price of discount goods"

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/07/30/f-cheap-ruppel-shell.html#socialcomments

I feel almost guilty thinking about all my Ikea "furniture", mainly bookshelves and dressers (but with kids you gotta save $ where you can!) ... but the one comment that said "spend all your money on DOING stuff that you'll remember for a lifetime, rather than BUYING[accumulating] stuff" to me hit the nail on the head

[Mr. Analog]

This is a tough issue really, people want reasonable stuff and sometimes stuff isn't always priced "right".

Sure you could buy a Rolls Royce but maybe a bus pass will do just as well, you gotta weigh things based on your needs.

Other times crap like "Monster Cable" comes out and if you have two brain cells to rub together you know that you're getting @%&#ed over.

The part that scares me though are consumers who buy new stuff for no good reason. Case in point; my mom just tossed out a Texas Instruments solar powered calculator that we've had since the late 80s for a new POS from Wal-Mart. The old calculator was still in working order so I don't know why she got a new one (she says the buttons were "sticky", that's easy enough to fix). She just did the same thing with universal remotes for the TV... personally I think she just likes going out and being busy for a few hours a week but that's just my take on it.

Err, anyway, my point is that the average Joe will pick up what works and what seems like a reasonable price and not really give a @%&# about construction or business practises until it affects them directly.

:-/

[Darren Dirt]

my point is that the average Joe will pick up what works and what seems like a reasonable price and not really give a @%&# about construction or business practises until it affects them directly.

:-/

Pretty much agree... Sorry David Suzuki and Adbusters, many consumers have kids and love visiting Dollar Stores and Walmart since the number of "stuff" multiplies as the family size grows, thus reduced cost is the highest priority i.e. short term benefits > long term "global" benefits. Although I personally do try to just buy what I need when I need it, rather than replacing things just cuz they're "old"... Although I'm not formally accepting of any initiatives out there, I still recognize this planet is gonna be inherited by my grandkids, don't wanna make more of a mess of it than I "have to"

[Lazybones]

- we hardly purchase any new big ticket children's items, instead we get then second hand since kids out grow them so fast.
- Small children's toys are often very cheap second hand and to you kid they will be something new (until they get old enough to catch on)

Other than that I tend not to replace thing till they break, however newer cheaper stuff seems to break often so were does that leave us?

[Thorin]

Have you ever heard someone who just bought a car say, "I'll drive it until it dies"?

Cars are a good example of goods that are cheaper to keep fixing than to replace.  It is always cheaper to buy the broken part and install it / get it installed, than it is to take on payments for a new car.

Okay, maybe I'm being too black-and-white there - if you have a 25 year old car and you're planning on replacing it with a 20 year old car, the parts might cost more than the new(er) car.  But then, the new(er) car will break down soon, as people usually sell cars that old when there's something wrong with them.

Anyway, back to my point - people claim that they will drive it "until it dies", but they never specify what that means.  What they really mean is that they'll probably drive it for eight to ten years, until they realize they've got disposable income with which to buy another car.  And what precipitates that realization?  Usually there's something moderately expensive to fix on their car - for instance, they need a new engine.  But a new engine is $3,000 to $4,000, much cheaper than a new $25,000 car!

So why do we equate eight to ten years with "until it dies"?  Well, that's an interesting question.  It essentially comes down to our psychology - on the one hand we want to be seen as smart with our money, but on the other hand we don't want to be seen as cheapskates.  It so happens that in Canada, driving a car eight to ten years is usually associated with a "smart consumer".  In other countries (especially Western Europe and Japan), cars are driven three to five years, and people who drive a car older than five years are considered poor or cheapskates.

Anyway, using our automobile purchase trends as a base, I'm suggesting that people will replace old goods at certain intervals to appear socially acceptable.  Given the current push by environmentalists and financial "experts" to buy "smarter", we're all working hard trying to maintain our image by buying the goods they tell us to buy.  An excellent example of this is the push to replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones.

The environmentalists tell us that they're better for the Earth, while the financial advisors tell us we'll save money using the compact fluorescents.  But are they sure these things are better for the Earth / cheaper to buy?
- Where are they produced?  How much C02 is emitted shipping them to the store I buy them at?  How does that compare to the incandescents?
- What materials are in them?  How well do they degrade in the landfill (or are they even allowed in the landfill - fluorescent tubes used to contain mercury)?
- How much do they cost compared to savings from the current electric rate (which is lower now than it was a year and a half ago)?  And how big of a bulb am I going to buy to get the same amount of brightness and light in my house?

People will claim to have considered these questions, but in reality they will simply be replacing all their working(!) incandescents with new compact fluorescents to appear socially acceptable.

So how does that tie in with discount goods?  Well, discount goods enable more of us to keep up to the societal standards.  So we all want discount goods to stick around, because it'll make the group of homogeneous purchasers bigger, which in turn will make us feel better about our decision to buy these same goods that everyone else is buying.  And that feeds nicely into our desire to fit in to a group, preferably a large one.

Will the deeply-discounted goods continue?  In another ten years there'll probably be a large enough group of people who have been convinced that it is more socially-acceptable to buy mid-grade products instead of deep-discount products to make mid-grade products the new deep-discount group.  There will still be extremely cheap and expensive products as there is now, but there will be a resurgence of the mid-grade products as people try to fit in with the new social order.  And then there'll be some new "social movement" that'll take twenty years to take hold and then suddenly everyone's doing it.

I'm not saying I'm immune from this gotta-buy-it-to-fit-in mentality, but realizing it's there certainly helps stop the worst purchases-that-could-have-been.

p.s. in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, cigarettes were the thing to buy to fit in - everyone had cigarettes!

[Darren Dirt]

Anyway, using our automobile purchase trends as a base, I'm suggesting that people will replace old goods at certain intervals to appear socially acceptable.  Given the current push by environmentalists and financial "experts" to buy "smarter", we're all working hard trying to maintain our image by buying the goods they tell us to buy.  An excellent example of this is the push to replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones.

lol -- no wonder I am perfectly OK with driving my 1998 *4* cylinder Protege for the next indefinite # of years (or until it dies ) ... I don't give a ratsass what "society" thinks of me. Heck, I make a conscious choice to enter a public place and sit next to 9 strangers, many of which are drinking and/or swearing all night, for which "society" labels me as a "degenerate", or worse -- like I care.

And I hate the idea of CFBs... the fear of breakage is very real with young kids, and those new efficient bulbs are full of powder mercury, mmmm, tasty!


Or maybe I'm just a cranky old fart... yeah that's probably it. I prefer to buy DVDs and the occasional "greatest hits" CD of a classic rock or late-80s metal band, instead of paying money for digital downloads, and never got into having an RSS reader let alone all them newfangled "social network" sites... Further evidence: I actually enjoyed watching "VH1's The Top 100 One Hit Wonders From The 80s" on the weekend, and I got further enjoyment knowing it drove my son crazy that I was laughing out loud at the cheesiness of probably one-third of those videos yet chose to still watch most of it...

"Progress"? Meh.

[Tom]

My house came with CFLs. I haven't had to replace a single light bulb since I've been here. They do have their down sides though.