Qulaity Quantity and Luxury

[GodOfOrder]

When shopping, many people buy things in bulk. When buying little luxuries, they often opt for lesser quality, for the sake of convenience. Consequently, these people do have a luxury of sorts, they have mass availability of a variable amount of products at a relatively cheap price. Often, due to the affordability of their products, they have a large amount of possessions, many of which they consider disposable. Quantity is a quality of its own.

There are also those who purchase only the best. These products are far more expensive, but of superior quality, and typically have much more longevity than the cheaper products. They are also somewhat rarer, or more scarce, then the mass produced cheaper products. As a result of the rarity the products are often far more unique. These more discerning buyers typically would have less possessions, and sacrifice the luxury of availability, but they gain the luxury of quality. None of their possessions are disposable, and all have value. They take part in the "finer things" and develop a sense of taste in a way that the mass buyer does not.

For my thought experiment, imagine we take two people of equivalent income, and have one buy in quantity, the other in quality.

Who chose the better path?
Is mass convenience a luxury?
Is superior quality a luxury?
Which luxury is superior, and which is more seductive?

 

[Chad]

This is interesting I am not sure which way I lean in this debate. However, I would like to add that people who opt for the more permanent quality/luxury option will like have more in the end do to the fact that disposable products are meant to be used up and disposed of.

I like renting a home or buying one. In one you pay and pay and in the end you still have nothing to gain form it. While buying a home one day you will be done paying and in the end you have a home to show for it.

This is not to say which is better. Disposable options being cheaper are generally is generally worth while for those of low income like myself. Yes, in the end I have nothing to show for it but I did actually have something when I wanted or needed it.

However, as I begin to move away for poverty I general prefer the luxury of quality and semi-permanence. Because in ten years or so I will not have to go and buy it again.

Honestly, disposable products tend to me more costly in the long run. Where as quality seem to be more costly in the here and now.

The difference is how much disposable income I have access too. With only a little income I will have to stretch it farther. With more income its no longer an issue of how far I need to stretch my income but buying now to save latter.

Quality is often a delayed gratification.

Where Quantity is intimidate and it fills a want or need I have right now.

I hope that was an acquitted assessment.

 

[GodOfOrder]

This is interesting I am not sure which way I lean in this debate. However, I would like to add that people who opt for the more permanent quality/luxury option will like have more in the end do to the fact that disposable products are meant to be used up and disposed of.


I hope that was an acquitted assessment.

I think i disagree with this point only. People who by more will accrue more. Whether they use the things they buy is another story. So the people who opt for convenience will pile up more shit, not necessarily disposing if the old things, even if in reality they only use a few things at once.

Also keep in mind that in this experiment, both the luxury buyer and the convenience buyer have the exact same amount of income, whatever that may be. Meaning, assuming a middle income, the higher expense of the quality items will mean that the quality buyer has used more of his income on a smaller amount of product. He thus limits himself to only a small amount of stuff, whereas the convenience buyer does not.

I quite enjoyed your input, good insight into the tradeoffs.

 

[Meer]

Buying cheap stuff just to have lots of stuff is stupid. It's much better to have few possessions that are each useful and valuable to you. You spend less time maintaining your crap, less time trying to decide which crap to throw away so you can buy more crap, and less space storing your crap. You are also forcing yourself to focus on what is important.

I don't care about luxury, but simplicity and efficiency.

 

[Chad]

I think i disagree with this point only. People who by more will accrue more. Whether they use the things they buy is another story. So the people who opt for convenience will pile up more shit, not necessarily disposing if the old things, even if in reality they only use a few things at once.

Also keep in mind that in this experiment, both the luxury buyer and the convenience buyer have the exact same amount of income, whatever that may be. Meaning, assuming a middle income, the higher expense of the quality items will mean that the quality buyer has used more of his income on a smaller amount of product. He thus limits himself to only a small amount of stuff, whereas the convenience buyer does not.

I quite enjoyed your input, good insight into the tradeoffs.

Assuming poverty: I would say that quantity wins out hands down. Its become a necessity to get the most you can for the least amount.

Assuming Middle income: You have a trade off and you will see some of both. Personally I would chose Quality over Quanity if the option was affordable to myself.

Assuming Wealthy: You, will have almost exclusively the Highest Quality and most outrageous cost that person can afford. This is because part of being wealthy in society is a status situation were you need to have the best at all cost.

Mind you there is a different between having a high amount of disposable income and being wealthy. I would say that being wealth/influentially is a life style. A life stye of high class. Where some people how have wealth choose not to live the style. I would still assume that they would chose quality over quantity however there however they may not have to go all the way to the top in value.

 

[Chad]

Buying cheap stuff just to have lots of stuff is stupid. It's much better to have few possessions that are each useful and valuable to you. You spend less time maintaining your crap, less time trying to decide which crap to throw away so you can buy more crap, and less space storing your crap. You are also forcing yourself to focus on what is important.

I don't care about luxury, but simplicity and efficiency.

I am a collector so I do like some stuff. However, I don't see the point of buying cheap disposable good to gains quantity of stuff. This Idea is foreign to my understand of why you would by cheap disposable stuff in the first place.

I buy disposable products because I need or want something right now. After using what ever product i dispose of it. There really isn't any accumulation of stuff. I buy what I attend to use. If it is cheap and disposable I use it and then dispose of it. If it something of quality that I can use again then I save it for future use.

This is why I would assume that the quality person would have more stuff in the end because there stuff is stored for future use unlike a person that is only buying disposable stuff that they are using right now and getting ride of.

There are hordes but I would assume that they don't make up the majority of the people that buy disposable goods.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Just because disposable things are cheap (why would you pay as much as one that you got to keep after it was used?), it doesn't mean the less expensive option is always disposable. Just consider cars. No matter how much you pay for your car, you're keeping it until it's either in disrepair or you trade it for a new one. No matter how cheap your car is, it's never disposable. I suppose you could say rental cars and leased cars are pretty close, but that's certainly stretching the definition. Rental cars would end up costing more to use constantly than leasing or buying. And which costs more between leasing and buying? When you buy, you own it at the ends of paying, but you've also spent more. Unless you collect cars, you're just going to sell or trade in your old car anyway. In this particular case, I'd say the cheap spender wins, because they spent less on something that's going to basically last the same amount of time and do the same job (unless we're throwing in racers or show-casers, but that wasn't in the original hypothetical.

Now let's consider food. Food is the opposite extreme. It's disposable no matter how much you spend on it. You eat food once, and it's done. In this case, the luxurious spender gains no more or less than the cheap spender, except they can expect their food to be either tastier or healthier, where our thrifty guy is eating things like ramen noodles, spam, and frozen veggies all the time. I would say good health, though, i ultimately worth more than money, so the high roller wins this one.

When it comes to a place to live, cheap doesn't necessarily mean disposable here, either. Someone spending their money to save could buy a cheap house and pay it off in 20-30 years, then spend no money on rental or anything. This house, of course, is bound to be in a bad neighborhood or be a supreme fixer-upper, though. There's not really a good equivalent of buying quantity of homes. You could rent multiple places or buy multiple houses, but things like that tend not to happen unless you're planning your retirement and are getting a summer home, or something. People don't usually buy quantity of homes then, either, because people who can afford summer homes tend to get fairly high priced ones. They can afford it, after all! In real life, it's the quality seekers who tend to have multiple homes, not the quantity seekers.

How about entertainment? Does the guy who buys a lot of DVDs, video games, etc have the better time with having a bunch of movies that are cheap because nobody else wanted to pay for them, or does the guy who buys the movies and DVDs that people actually like have a better time? I would side with the latter, because low quality entertainment is not as entertaining.The guy with the nice speaker system, big TV, fast computer, and broadband likely has less problems playing them, too.

In the end, I would say quality wins, because... well, it's quality. It's pretty much in the definition that it's better. Having a lot of stuff that's unhealthy, not as fun, not as fast or pretty or comfortable or which you hardly ever actually use, etc, is not superior to having a smaller selection of quality things.