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.

  • xantoxis@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Car repair. Towing and fixing a car with a ruined engine is ten times as much as doing regular maintenance. And it’s not just the dollar cost of oil changes and belts: When you are better off, you have the free time to run that errand to do those things.

    Dental care, for almost the exact same reasons.

    General healthcare has all of those factors PLUS if your general health goes bad you may not be able to work so now fixing it is expensive and you have no income.

    • Jummit@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Car repair.

      Sorry, I usually don’t make these shallow comments. But cars are just another way to accumulate money for the rich few. Transportation is the boot, and we can’t afford good public transit and international railways.

      • SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Sorry, I don’t think I fully follow. Would you care to explain how cars are a way to accumulate money for the rich?