But how many times do you have to replace the Bosch and Siemens appliances? It might be a bigger initial investment, but over a lifetime it will likely work out cheaper.
“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 the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Economics are bs, don't think in terms of money but in terms of resources. A resource based calculation removes the uncertainty of the money based one, longer lasting products are cheaper.
Let's say we have a finite stack of resources and assume that price is representative of the manufacturing costs. This stack of resources allows to build 10 products of the "lasting forever" grade or 20 of the "replace sooner" grade. We decide to build 5 of the first and 10 of the second. The 5 will outlast the 10 and chances are they will last much longer. Making "replace sooner" grade profits the manufacturer and is only valid if we had infinite resources which we don't.
This is a short term vision of maximizing manufacturer profits while artificially increasing the economy in volume. Too bad this is ruining the whole world for living beings in the process.
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 the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
(Terry Pratchett, obviously)