The Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness, often called simply the boots theory, is an economic theory that people in poverty have to buy cheap and subpar products that need to be replaced repeatedly, proving more expensive in the long run than more expensive items.
At this point, for most of us, the answer is “every time we buy anything”. Thanks, enshittification capitalism!
I need a treadmill under my desk as I can’t sit for more than a few minutes at a time but I have to work at least 8 hours a day.
Treadmills are very expensive, but I’ve so far spent the same amount on cheap Chinese garbage that breaks down on average after 1 year even with proper maintenance. Had I bought a proper one from the start, I would have had access to parts for self repair. The Chinese ones weld shit together making it impossible to change the front roller and motor belt.
Is it literally about sitting or more that you can’t be still? My dad has tried a bunch of walking treadmills etc while coding and nothing really worked well (hard to walk while you code, messed with his wrists) until he got this chair that basically just had pedals on it. Easier to cycle than to walk and his issues went away.
Also they’re very small!
In most cases, and what drove the trend, is that sitting 8 hours a day is terrible for you. The human body isn’t built for that and it has strong impacts, long term, on metabolism, heart health, and many things that follow on from that.
It’s both, unfortunately. I have to keep switching it up, but also not apply too much pressure on my spine for too long. Walking feels the best, but I can’t do that for too long either.
But I managed to make the walking work. I just had to set a timer to get up and walk after 6 minutes of sitting, walk slowly for 10, and finish with a 3 minute walk at my natural walking pace, then back to sitting.
To be able to quickly switch, I got a wide desk so I can place a chair next to my treadmill, I use 1 screen at each location and mirror the displays. At the treadmill I placed a smaller desk on top of my desk, so that I get a proper 90 degree angle on my elbows, and use a trackball mouse since it is more stable.
I quickly got used to it, and especially programming worked well for me. Drawing and gaming is more difficult, though.
Because I switch so often, whenever I do sit, it is painless. If I ignore the timer, however, my feet go numb, and my back starts to hurt, followed by sciatica the next day.
… … The capitalization of ‘Boots’ in the title made me think this was some variation based on the UK health stores.
I dunno. I feel like expensive boots have turned to crap over the last few years.
I’ve got a pair of Keen hiking boots I inherited from my late uncle. They were very well-worn when I got them, and I’ve continued using them for a decade since and they’re just now starting to wear out.
This is called, “it costs more to be poor than to be rich.”
No name computer parts, esp. RAM
Absolutely willing to get cheapo stuff like monitors and screens, mice, keyboards, etc that are no name – but invest in good guts, cuz otherwise you get weird segfaults and shit
Used cars, esp. Dodge models, was also a bad call. Got a Tacoma and never looked back
Never cheap out on digital storage. There’s so much crappy storage media out there, but it will randomly stop storing your data and then you’re screwed.
Not if you use ZFS. But then you’ll need an extra drive for parity data
ZFS won’t save you the expense of having to replace crappy storage.
Without ZFS, when a drive starts making mistakes, it starts to corrupt some of your data, so it has to be replaced ASAP.
With ZFS RAIDz1, each transaction is double-checked and errors are corrected, so you don’t need to replace any drives until one of your drives is almost completely unusable.
I was ridiculed for wearing a cheap shirt to my dissertation defense in college by somebody wearing a Hugo boss shirt.
I figured I could buy 10 shirts for the duration of his one shirt. He bent over to tie his shoe and the shirt ripped.
All was well that day.
From someone who makes clothes: a cheap, but tailored shirt (or anything, really) will always look better than an expensive off-the-rack piece.
Until you get into stuff like high end suits, but if you’re spending 2000 bucks on a suit, you’re an idiot for not getting it tailored.
So much money wasted on cheap used cars that I had to keep running… Buying a new car with a loan ended up costing me less than continuing that trend…
This is what my parents did.
I’ve owned two cars in 25 years of adulthood. As a teen my parents went through six.
11 cars in 11 years before I bought a new one that I drove for 8 years trouble free.
This is usually not true. Consumer reports came to the conclusion that on average, older cars are cheaper than new ones to drive.
I have no clue where he’s buying his cars, or what shysters are conning him into buying junk without due diligence (get a third-party pre-purchase inspection done, folks!), but my experience matches your assertion.
I have a 2002 Mazda 626 and a 2003 F-150 7700, and together they’ve costed me less than $3k in repair and maintenance costs in the last half a decade.
Now granted, the F-150 needs AC work (a complete replacement… I live in a desert region with ridiculous summer temps) and the 626 could really use a complete engine rebuild (leaking oil like a sieve, compression no longer optimal, etc.), but even with both of those included I’m still well ahead of what even a single new vehicle would have cost me.
Anything less than a decade old just doesn’t make any financial sense unless you’re relying on it as a fundamental cog of a business and you can amortize it against taxes payable.
Work minimum wage as a student and only be able to afford cars close to 1k$, drive about 30k miles a year and tell me how that goes as far as maintenance is concerned 🤷
Buy used car for 1500$, spend 4000$ to keep it running, broken beyond repair stuff the end of the year, rinse and repeat.
Get new car, 3k/year in payments, 600$/year for insurance, always works when you get in.
Buy one slightly used with a good interest rate and it’s even more true (in general, the market’s been fucked up since COVID)
Buy used car for 1500$, spend 4000$ to keep it running, broken beyond repair stuff the end of the year,
BRUH… how about a third-party pre-purchase inspection? You really need to do this thing called “due diligence” before dropping money on such a big-ticket item, and that involves having an expert eye that is not in cahoots with the seller look it over for red flags.
The only time I ever got dinged like you have, is when I was poor and needed a vehicle two weeks previously, and couldn’t wait for or even afford the cost of said inspection. Sucker fell apart within two years. But that was all on my own head, for failing to do my due diligence.
Every other time I’ve gotten an inspection done, they’ve found issues that warned me away from lemons. Those that passed decently well have gone on to be rather reliable vehicles that cost me much less than anything less than a decade old.
Older vehicles may not be sexy, and unless it’s a restored classic it’s unlikely to get the girl. But so long as you have a good mechanic that can warn you away from lemons, you aren’t (statistically speaking) going to get hit like you have.
When you pay 1500$ for a car you don’t have the money for a pre-purchase inspection BRUH.
I also never said it applies to everyone, I said that was my experience as that’s what OP asked.
The worst used car i bought cost 2k to fix and 2k to buy. It lasted 5 years. I can do anecdotes too. I trust consumer reports actual data over my own experience and yours.
As for insurance, older cars are going to be cheaper because you should be liability only. Which you CANNOT do with a new car loan.
OP asked “When have your done this to yourself”, I gave my example and explained how that happened. Never did I say it applies in all cases, don’t put words in my mouth.
I already included insurance in my calculation by the way.
This was my family growing up. I was ten years old and went through six used cars. I remember how embarrassing it was to sit in a dead car on the highway or street.
I mean maybe I’m just lucky, but this hasn’t at all been true for me. 17 years and I just got my third used car last March. All three together cost $8k (probably 12k with prices today).
For sure I’ve had to do a bunch of repairs but even with 2 transmissions, a head, a few clutches/TC, and 3 sets of transaxeles. That’s like 30k so maybe break even if you buy one car and drive it for that long and don’t have any major repairs along the way. In my experience, friends will lease a car and pay that in a few years, or buy a new car and have maybe five years trouble free, then have to do a major repair and/or sell and pay another 20k in debt.
The extra stress and maintenance isn’t free by any means, but is it worth and extra 5k per year? Not for me, and I think that’s best case. Dealerships are really good at draining money from most people.
This depends on your idea of “used”," new", and your means when it comes to car repair.
A used car with 5k miles is a fundamentally different buying equation from one with 150k miles.
A 5k mile car makes sense if you’re getting far enough below sticker to cover the higher interest rate and lack of warranty, because you still have 145k miles before things start going wrong.
A 150k mile car makes sense if you’re saving enough to cover the higher interest and the fact that you’re probably going to have to budget a couple hundred a month for maintenance, because things will go wrong pretty immediately. Unless it’s a Toyota, in which case who the fuck even knows?
I mean, everyday? With most purchases? Can’t afford quality most of the time.
The idea isn’t that it’s something you choose to do “to yourself”, it’s that income inequality makes it the reality of being poor.
Frying pans. They don’t even have to be cheap, but nonstick pans will wear out, it’s just a matter of when. Got tired of buying a new frying pan every few years and now I have cast iron and stainless steel which will probably last for the rest of my life. I am quite frugal and it took me years to justify the initial cost of a good stainless steel pan. Luckily cast iron is cheap.
I love stainless steel cookware. Get stainless steel scrubbing pads, they don’t rust like steel wool and make cleaning stainless steel pans easy.
I tried stainless steel and everything sticks to it. It took me a dozen tries to get a perfect egg and I’ve not been able to replicate it.
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!!!
We got stainless last year and learned that you need to preheat the pan! Put it on the burner, fire it up and wait a few minutes. Get your hands wet and flick some water on the pan, if your pan is ready, those water drops will dance all over the surface of the pan. (I mean literally dance. If it’s not fun to watch, it’s not ready.)
Your sticking problems are OVER!
Ceramic is the way to go. Greenpan make great nonstick eco pans
I’ll check it out, thanks. I also recently upgraded to induction, so I gotta be careful with what I buy. Half my pans didn’t work.
Greenpan are induction. Only problem I’ve found is don’t bang a metal spatula on the edge!! They’re quite brittle
Use more butter/oil than you normally would. Let the pan heat up properly before adding your egg. Don’t try to flip it until after it’s had a chance to cook a bit first. (just like you don’t try to flip a pancake too quickly)
Do those three things, no more eggs falling apart.
This is great stuff but I want to warn folks about expensive luxury goods vs expensive durable goods.
Some things are expensive because they are luxurious or have lots of features but they still wear out fast. These days fewer and fewer things are expensive because they endure lots of use.
I learned the hard way with boxer shorts. I found the perfect boxer shorts after years of searching. Silky and light but warm in winter yet somehow no swamp ass in summer. Amazing combo of merino wool & some synthetic fabric.
The problem was they were $35 a pair on clearance… $75 regular. But I bought 10 pairs anyway. Well, the thing is, I didn’t realize they were no more durable than a typical pair of cotton boxers. Maybe less so. A year later, I had to replace them all.
That’s when I realized that it was a rich person’s only product. To them, a $1000 annual boxer short expense is nothing. But I can’t live that way. It hurt to give up wearing them.
You went through 10 brand new pairs of underwear in a year? And spent 350$ on underwear at one time?
I may have dragged it out to 2 years, but yes.
As for $400 in one go, yes. It was new underwear time. The expense was bigger than normal so I didn’t spend money in other areas to make up for it.
You and I are living very different lives.
Headphones for work. I bought far too many bottom of the barrel and clearance item headphones that all inevitably broke in an outdoor working environment. Finally bought earmuffs that had Bluetooth built in, designed to withstand more use.
The 3M hearing protection that also acts as a full headset is pretty nice. Don’t have it myself as I currently do office work and can’t justify it for home use, but if I ever had to do long hours in a noisy environment again, I would certainly reach for it.
The irony of it being called boot theory and using footwear as an example when just yesterday I was expressing how much I would like some footwear that was Buy It For Life material but can’t, even when I save up to spend a lot of money on a pair because even the most expensive shoes are made from the same materials and at about the same quality and will get the same punishment from literally being stepped on all day everyday.
The idea is sound; just not with everything in our current world.
High quality shoes are made with construction methods that allow them to be resoled. With proper maintenance they absolutely can be BIFL. But not all expensive footwear is high quality.
Also resoling a pair of shoes will probably run you about a hundred bucks and a lot of people probably pay less than that for a new pair of shoes.
The name is because of its origin, which is from the Terry Pratchett book Men at Arms in the following passage:
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.
even the most expensive shoes are made from the same materials and at about the same quality
Sorry, but no. The materials may look the same, but (for example) a good pair of Wolverine boots - 1,000 mile or 1883 - are made with much higher-quality parts and manufacturing methods than your average pair of shoes. From the stitching (Goodyear Welt, FTW) to the sole material to the grade of leather used in the uppers, it’s all chosen for superior durability.
I have even seen this within a single (previously favourite) brand that changed their sole supplier, and a pair went from 16-24 months before the soles wore out to 6-12 months before I couldn’t wear them anymore. The uppers remained perfectly fine, and I could have had the shoes re-soled, but due to the rarity of local cobblers that alone would have cost more than a brand-new shoe. So I just switched to something of commensurately higher quality that could reach the two-year usage point again.
I have also had $100 work boots that broke down within a single season, and a single pair of $500 work boots that are still going strong a decade later.
Quality exists. And quality costs. But you cannot identify quality on cost alone, because a lot of shit is expensive due to branding and hype, making it a Veblen good that isn’t worth what you pay for it.
It’s very hard to judge expensive-for-the-quality from expensive-for-the-brand without wearing them out first.
Not really. If you never heard the name on TV or advertising of any kind, they don’t need to advertise
See - Mephisto shoes
Dollar store headphones. I’ve had some last a few weeks to a month, but for around $10 I could just go to Walmart and get some wired Sony headphones that’ll last for months.
Its a weird day when walmart trash is the higher quality version.
Months? A good pair of headphones should last a decade or more if you take care of them. Get a pair with detachable/replaceable cables, the wire they use in those is super thin and pretty much always the first thing to fail.
I’ve definitely thought about it before and a pair of headphones with detachable cable is something that I’ve seen thinking of getting some day.
The only reason the Sony headphones I like to buy last months is because of things like them getting caught and ripped from my phone, near constant use (I’ve gotten a lot better but am still using them a lot), and me being a little rough with my headphones.
Consider wireless!
I guess the battery dieing in a few years is better than snagging a built-in cord on a door handle but I still see it as another point of failure.
A good pair of headphones should last a decade or more
Sony MDR-XD400. Lasted ≈18 years before the cord gave out near the plug and started shorting out. Replaced the ear pads twice during that time but OEM availability is shrinking to only shitty third-party reproductions, so I moved to a wireless Sony MDR-100ABN. Needed to add a USB Bluetooth adapter to my iron, but so far (about 5 years now) it’s working decently well.
As the WHEN I have cheaped out, it has always been when money is tight.
