<story><title>Repair cafés waging war on throwaway culture</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/15/can-we-fix-it-the-repair-cafes-waging-war-on-throwaway-culture</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wizardforhire</author><text>&amp;gt;Sam Vimes is also renowned for his &amp;quot;Boots Theory of socio-economic unfairness&amp;quot;, as posited in Men at Arms:&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years&amp;#x27; 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.&lt;p&gt;This was the Captain Samuel Vimes &amp;#x27;Boots&amp;#x27; theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_socio-economic_unfairness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>danans</author><text>&amp;gt; A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps, lights, cheap-as-shit appliances like clocks, hoovers&lt;p&gt;This is not so surprising if you consider that both the desire to repair and the tendency to buy less expensive things can be driven by  the overall drive to spend less, perhaps due to personal financial circumstances.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a well understood phenomenon that people bias the financial short term over the long term in quick decisions.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  In addition, many times, the higher quality option for a given type of product is many times more expensive than the &amp;quot;cheap&amp;quot; option, due to things like market segmentation. Given the lack of higher quality middle-priced option, it&amp;#x27;s pretty rational for people to choose the cheaper one.</text></item><item><author>Faaak</author><text>As a repair café volunteer, I&amp;#x27;ve found two drawbacks to being a volunteer&amp;#x2F;having repair cafés:&lt;p&gt;- A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps, lights, cheap-as-shit appliances like clocks, hoovers, …). I have no problem fixing stuff, and showing them how to fix stuff, but I always refuse to try to repair really cheap stuff. It&amp;#x27;s not even repairing at this point, but more sticking it back together.  When this case happens, I explain in good term that they should buy a slightly better quality next time; it&amp;#x27;ll last them longer&lt;p&gt;- these cafés attract in general &amp;quot;alternative&amp;quot; people. I&amp;#x27;ve got no problem with that, but I&amp;#x27;m a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people.&lt;p&gt;But in general, it&amp;#x27;s a really rewarding experience !</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>meow1032</author><text>This quote gets posted over and over ad nauseum on reddit and HackerNews and always seems to just get accepted as truth, but realistically the entire theory depends on the relative numbers between the two things being compared. The theory makes no sense if good boots cost 5x as much as shitty boots but only last 2x as long.&lt;p&gt;If the cost of most things depended only on quality then I&amp;#x27;d find it more convincing, but especially when we&amp;#x27;re talking about consumer electronics, things like brand reputation, novelty, and user perception matter a lot.</text></comment>
<story><title>Repair cafés waging war on throwaway culture</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/15/can-we-fix-it-the-repair-cafes-waging-war-on-throwaway-culture</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wizardforhire</author><text>&amp;gt;Sam Vimes is also renowned for his &amp;quot;Boots Theory of socio-economic unfairness&amp;quot;, as posited in Men at Arms:&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years&amp;#x27; 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.&lt;p&gt;This was the Captain Samuel Vimes &amp;#x27;Boots&amp;#x27; theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_socio-economic_unfairness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>danans</author><text>&amp;gt; A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps, lights, cheap-as-shit appliances like clocks, hoovers&lt;p&gt;This is not so surprising if you consider that both the desire to repair and the tendency to buy less expensive things can be driven by  the overall drive to spend less, perhaps due to personal financial circumstances.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a well understood phenomenon that people bias the financial short term over the long term in quick decisions.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  In addition, many times, the higher quality option for a given type of product is many times more expensive than the &amp;quot;cheap&amp;quot; option, due to things like market segmentation. Given the lack of higher quality middle-priced option, it&amp;#x27;s pretty rational for people to choose the cheaper one.</text></item><item><author>Faaak</author><text>As a repair café volunteer, I&amp;#x27;ve found two drawbacks to being a volunteer&amp;#x2F;having repair cafés:&lt;p&gt;- A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps, lights, cheap-as-shit appliances like clocks, hoovers, …). I have no problem fixing stuff, and showing them how to fix stuff, but I always refuse to try to repair really cheap stuff. It&amp;#x27;s not even repairing at this point, but more sticking it back together.  When this case happens, I explain in good term that they should buy a slightly better quality next time; it&amp;#x27;ll last them longer&lt;p&gt;- these cafés attract in general &amp;quot;alternative&amp;quot; people. I&amp;#x27;ve got no problem with that, but I&amp;#x27;m a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people.&lt;p&gt;But in general, it&amp;#x27;s a really rewarding experience !</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taeric</author><text>I like this suspicion, but I don&amp;#x27;t buy into anymore.  I think there is a floor to quality.  However, even what we call cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period.&lt;p&gt;More, if you want shoes to last a long time, I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; wearing the same shoes constantly.  I have not empirically studies this, though.  So, if anyone has, I&amp;#x27;d be delighted to see the results.  I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them.  I can, of course, resole them.  But they are not magically doing better than the cheaper shoes I can also buy.  Rotating shoes so that I wear a different set day to day makes a huge difference in how long they last.</text></comment>