[couchand]

Okay, that's a reasonable universal principle, but in this case it's Inapplicable. To quote the OP:

> Everything is a rush and quality is required but never budgeted for.

It doesn't really sound like this is a situation where the principle is wrong, it sounds like this is proving the principle correct: you get what you pay for.

[mjburgess]

I think the "you get what you pay for" is the kind of heuristic reasoning I'm advocating. It's essentially balance/tradeoffs/etc.

That trading off thought process isn't the same as the ACCEPT|REJECT process of the axiomatic mind.

I think a person who says "quit" is really saying that the very question of trading off heuristics of value isn't applicable.

It's a bit like Poisonous|Edible, or Gold|NotGold. There's nothing to be traded. A Copper apple is Poisonous and NotGold. No two ways about it.

That reasoning only works when the concepts (Gold, Edible, etc.) are natural kinds -- or otherwise disjoint and universal classifiers.

In life, situations fall both into the ACCEPT and REJECT categories, into both GOOD and BAD, into both VALUABLE and WORTHLESS. These concepts are heuristic ones, and not disjoint & universal.

The attempt to apply this "disjoint, axiomatic, ..." reasoning to life is a recipe for catastrophe.

EDIT: my point about principles vs. cases, is that i take: def. heuristic "a resemblance amongst cases"; and def.., principle "a universal rule which disjointly classifies cases"

..ie., a slightly more extreme meaning to "principle" than is in general use