Terry Pratchett's Boot Theory
Terry Pratchett's Boot Theory
Based on the excerpt from this Discworld book, what other items do you use regularly that would fit in this theory? (Boots and shoes are fair game!)
Text transcript for people who want it:
[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 Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.]
Bonus: suggest ways you can repair/restore your item/other people's items.
You're viewing a single thread.
I always thought that laundry was the best example of this.
Poor people go to the laundrette, which is expensive over time and time-consuming.
Less poor people buy cheap washing machines which are expensive to run and break sooner.
Rich people buy highly efficient washing machines which are cheaper to run and last for years.
And on top of that poor people buy cheaper clothes, which wear out sooner (as with the boots example) and dry their clothes indoors on hangers which, again, takes longer and also creates damp, unpleasant living conditions!
EDIT: Typos.
I agree with your point, but a lot of the more expensive washing machines are not that reliable, and expensive to fix. I had to spend $200 on a refurbished circuit board. They had a whole business dedicated to repairing those boards. Usually cheap ones have simple parts that (used to be) cheap.