I bought a $40 crystal to go on my $30 Timex Indiglo -I shattered the crystal 3 weeks after purchase whilst de-watching at a security check in a Chinese airport (what, marble floors?) I love the watch-big plain face, easy to read and big blue Indiglo- but the crystal scratches when the cat rums up against it. Now with a proper crystal it’s the perfect watch.
I want to see a picture of Annies cat drinking rum!
Stereo equipment is a classic example of the law of diminishing returns. There’s a huge difference between cheap-ass entry level stuff, and the stuff that’s one or two notches above that. But the difference between a $500 speaker and a $1000 speaker really isn’t all that much. I can hear the difference, but it’s not nearly enough to justify plunking down an extra thousand bucks for a pair of those speakers.
Last year a new fruit juice company started in Australia. They made their bottles smaller and the unit price higher. Kiss of death? No, huge success - pay more for less, makes sense to me.
Back to the watch issue…
As I said before, I have an Omega that retails for $1,400. (I won it in a contest when I worked in a jewelry store - I could never have afforded it on my salary). First off, I would never walk around showing it off and mentioning the price as you say Mr. Big Shot does. Yeah, I know some people do that, and yes, I did just mention the price of mine, but that’s for the sake of argument here. I would never, ever do that IRL.
As others have mentioned, it’s all about aesthetics. Mine is more a piece of jewelry. The case and band are 18 karat gold and stainless steel. It has a sapphire crystal that isn’t scratched at all in 13 years. I’ve only changed the battery twice. I’ve dropped it and gotten it wet, and it’s just fine. I wear it all the time.
Again, the price issue - what’s the point of spending $20 on a cheap watch at Wal-Mart, over and over again (because when it breaks, that’s it, you have to throw it away and get a new one), rather than spending a couple of hundred on a decent watch in the first place, one that can be repaired and will last a lifetime. How much have you spent on cheap watches, in the long run?
I could apply the same analogy to cookware. I have Circulon cookware. Good quality, and fairly expensive. It’s not the most expensive stuff out there, but it’s not cheap.
I have a neighbor who thinks I’m nuts for buying it. She buys cheap inexpensive pots and pans from Wal-Mart. The way she looks at it is that they get dented and scratched and burnt up anyway, and what’s the point of buying expensive pots and pans when you can get them for a couple of bucks at Wal-Mart or even at the grocery store? In the long run, I’ve spent less overall, since she buys new pots and pans every year or every couple of months.
I’d like to change the direction of this topic and point it towards mobile homes.
Forget the stereotype of trailer trash/white trash and all that conjures up.
For the retired in a good community, they are a great idea. But, the more I’ve looked into them ( out of curiosity) I’ve realized they (well the parks they are in) are financial rape.
A well educated lady I know and her husband bought one as a intermediate house between a job transfer. They planned on only staying a year in it before building their own house. They were in a tight spot with a transfer, kids school about to start and a very ill relative and had a two week window to find a place. It’s been over two years and they are financially over a barrel and screwed.
Between the mortgage on the trailer ( brand new) and the lot rental at the park, they are paying $1200 a month for something that depreciates like a car and is very hard to sell when it comes time. ( I know, my brother had one and we eventually had to pay to have it taken away because it was impossible to off-load.)
Everyone I know that has lived at one time or another in a mobile home has regretted it because of the cost and getting rid of problem.
I see no point in distinguishing between people who fall prey to makers of ridiculously overpriced watches and then try to justify it by a lot of hand-waving from people who do them same over psychic readers, copper bracelets, etc. So, are the watchmakers frauds, too?
Diamonds: Synthetics may be just as nice, but try getting engaged with one. Your choices are to hand your girlfriend the ring with “and I got a deal on it because its synthetic” (to which she hears “I don’t love you enough to buy you a real diamond.”) Or you can hope she never finds out, because when she does she will think you lied to her and bought her a fake diamond and passed it off as real. Real diamonds will always be real diamonds. Synthetics will always be “fake.” Although I like a bargain, I really hope these diamonds I’m wearing in my ears are “real” or Brainiac4 will be in deep doo doo if I ever find out otherwise. Fake diamonds are too much like infidelity, in some strange way.
Bottled water: For us, if there is bottled water in the fridge, it gets drunk. If we have to put ice in a glass and fill it from the tap, it doesn’t. If we have a pitcher of water in the fridge that we have to pour into a glass, it doesn’t. Since intellectually I’d rather drink water than pop or juice, making it easy for me to do so, and difficult to give into my inheriently lazy and unhealthy nature is worth buying bottled water. I keep my horrid diet soda in the basement or garage - so when I make the decision to drink that crap, I’m making a decision. Bottled water is no more expensive than cans of pop.
Lawn care: We were never good at it ourselves. Our lawn looks a lot better now that someone is paid to come spray it. While the kids were still small, I didn’t do it - they aren’t the age where I’m worried about them eating the grass. You may like dandilions - we don’t. Besides, I’ve sold a house with a yard in poor shape - it doesn’t do a lot to your homes value not to keep up the yard. It would be cheaper to do it ourselves - but I have a couple bags of fertilizer/weed killer in the garage that I’ve bought so we could do it - and it never gets done. Now that’s wasting money.
I don’t care about stereos. I don’t care about sunglasses. Designer clothes - no - unless I’m dressing to impress someone who does care about these things (which is necessary sometimes). Brainiac4 cares more about these things than I do. We brew our coffee at home - sometimes I’ll treat myself to a latte, but that isn’t a cup of coffee.
Value is in the eye of the beholder. What is wasting money to me may hold value for you and vice versa.
Its kind of like beer.
To me, all beer is swill. I can’t see why you’d spend more on an expensive microbeer than buy a case of Leine’s. Its all bad.
But rather than assume that people buying expensive beer are stupid, I’ll assume they get some enjoyment from it that I can’t understand.
I can’t tell the difference between good sunglasses and bad, but Brainiac4 can. So he gets expensive sunglasses, and I buy mine for $6, seldom wear them and lose them all the time.
I’ll go along with this.
Bottled water: I occasionally buy a bottle of water more or less like I would a buy bottle of Coke, because that was what my taste buds wanted at the time. The water costs about the same as the bottle of Coke, because the expense is mostly in the bottle, the action of filling the bottle, and transportation, not the ingrediments.
So true. Yet these threads never fail to bring out the “value is objective” crowd. And, of course, the value they put on something is the objectively correct one.
Oh good god, give me a freakin’ break!! :rolleyes: It’s women like you that give women a bad name.
First of all, not all women WANT or NEED a diamond when they get engaged. Something other than a diamond DOES NOT mean “I don’t love you enough,” that is just plain stupid. Thinking that way says to me that you are very materialistic.
I was just thinking about this diamond issue the other day at the mall as I was looking at sterling silver rings with cubic zirconias in them. They were BEAUTIFUL, much more beautiful than real diamonds. They sparkle more, they have more prismatic colors in them, they are brighter, have more depth to them, etc. I would much rather have this stone than a real diamond. AND these rings were only $20, and sterling silver lasts forever, and I much prefer it to gold.
So, to my future husband: to show you how much you really love me, buy me a $20 cubic zirconia and save your money for our wedding, honeymoon or new house. (If I ever got a real diamond, I would make him take it back.)
Diamonds are the biggest freakin’ rip-offs EVER. And the women who are foolishy brainwashed by the diamond industry marketing campaigns are SHEEP!
I don’t even have an engagement ring. But when I asked for diamonds, I wanted diamonds. And they were bought well after we could afford them.
My first engagment ring to my first husband was a pearl. We had better things to do with our money. My permanent marriage we just got wedding bands. They have little tiny diamonds in them. I’m not materialistic in that fashion either.
The issue is not “every woman needs a big rock.” The issue is “if you give her a diamond that is not a diamond, its a form of lying.” Even if it is prettier and sparkly-er. If you and fiancee are fine with a cubic zirconium, good for you. That money is better spent on a ton of things. If finance gives you a cubic zirconium and tries to pass it off as a diamond, that’s a problem.
Unfortuately, or fortunately if you are in the diamond business, there are still plenty of women who want big rocks - and are going to be about as happy with a synthetic as their fiancee will be when he discovers all that enthusasium in bed was also faked.
This is the crux of the matter. The reason there is still a demand for these useless things is:
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Because of the huge marketing campaigns which are marketed at both men and women. They say, in essence, “You don’t love your woman enough unless you get her a diamond,” or “Your man doesn’t love you enough unless he gets you a diamond.” Those advertisements are sickening. BUT people hear this enough over the course of a lifetime and become brainwashed, then when they are old enough to get married, they act like robots or sheep and head straight to their nearest diamond store. (“Must. Buy. Diamond.” followed by beep boop beep beep or baaaaahhh.)
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Because of societal pressure. I am so sick of newly engaged women or newlyweds showing off their diamonds, as if to say, “oooh look at me! Look at how much he loves me!” or “oooh look how rich my fiance/husband is!” Or when engaged women have an unspoken contest between their engagement rings, which says a lot about who loves who more or who is richer, etc. Or when one announces they are engaged, the first question their girlfriends have is “oooh let’s see the ring!” Could you imagine the looks on their materialistic faces if there was no ring or if it were turquoise or peridot or something? :eek:
Same goes for men. It’s like, “oooh look at the big rock I bought. I Am Man. Hear Me Roar and Beat My Chest.” (Then takes bride and pulls her into cave by her hair.)
COME ON people!!! I would that that of all places, people here on the Dope would understand these point.
Not to mention that all these stupid diamond engagement rings all look alike, so how special is that? geeeezzz. :rolleyes:
Sure…but once again, value is in the eye of the beholder.
Why would anyone have a dog? They are really expensive and a lot of work. Or a cat? A stuff animal is just as cuddly, much cheaper, won’t shed on your couch or poop in your grass. But it isn’t a dog.
Why drink fresh squeezed juice? Concentrate is cheaper and much easier to deal with. It tastes nearly as good.
The reason that diamonds are valuable is because they are diamonds. de Beers has done a great job of marketing them, but they were valuable before the de Beers marketing machine took over, and they will be valuable afterwards. Gemstones are valuable because they are. They are relatively rare. They take work to get to. They are a controlled market. And they are in demand. And that they are in demand means that people want them. Human nature. Even when synthetics are better - we still like the real thing - look at silk - there are plenty of synthetics cheaper and nicer than silk, but there is still nothing like a silk dress. Or angora wool. Real wood furniture. Down comforters. Leather.
Go ahead a break the de Beers monopoly yourself. I’ll buy diamonds when I want diamonds. From now on, I’ll buy Canadian ones.
No, diamonds are valuable because DeBeers is a coercive monopoly that controls the diamond trade, limits the number of diamonds introduced to the market, etc. They created artificial scarcity, then used that scarcity to jack up prices, then used their marketing money to convince people that giving something beautiful and scarce was a sign of love.
As for diamonds being valuable afterwards… Not unless governments continue to maintain the DeBeers monopoly by force. Because there are now new, manufactured diamonds on the market. These are not ‘synthetic’, or ‘fake’. They are DIAMONDS. They are carbon formed into diamond by heat and pressure, just like real diamonds. They are chemically and structurally identical. There is NO DIFFERENCE, other than that manufactured diamonds are not controlled by the Debeers cartel. So of course DeBeers is trying to use the muscle of government to force an artificial distinction between identical products.
If DeBeers fails at this (and they should), diamonds are going to crash in price. I wouldn’t invest in diamonds right now, and if I had some expensive rocks, I’d be thinking about selling them.
ftg:
Don’t conflate the two. Fancy speaker cables are a blatant ripoff, because they do NOTHING. But $2000 doesn’t even get you a decent stereo system. To say that there is “no point” in buying a $2000 stereo is pure ignorance, and you shouldn’t make statements like that about things you don’t understand.
Let me give you an example of my stereo system. First, I have a video projector, which takes an HDTV signal. That means my receiver has to be able to switch HDTV. And, on a cheap receiver if you want to switch your TV between HDTV and regular cable (and your VCR), you need to run three separate cables to the TV, and then every time you switch you have to switch the receiver AND the TV. It’s expensive to buy three long video cables, and its a pain in the butt to have to match inputs on the TV to output. So I wanted a receiver with ‘video up-conversion’, which converts all digital signals to component so I can turn on the display device, which is hooked up with only one cable, and forever more ignore it. The cheapest receiver you can get with video up-conversion is the Yamaha RX-V1400, which is $1000. It’s also what I have. This is very much a mid-level receiver, and lacks a number of features I’d like to have. But I didn’t want to spend $2000 on a receiver.
Then you need the DVD player. Progressive scan only. And, SACD and DVD-Audio are much better than regular CD, so I wanted a machine that can play them all. $400.
Now we get to speakers. At a minimum, for movie watching you want 5.1 - a subwoofer, center channel, front left and right, and surrounds. Even if you buy relatively cheap speakers, the price goes up because you need a lot of them. I am buying Paradigm Studio 60’s, and matching surrounds and center channel. I already have a good sub, so the other five speakers are just over $3000.
So now we’re at $4900. Add in a couple of hundred bucks for cables, $200 for a set of good headphones, and $500 for materials for acoustic treatments for the room, and we’re in at just under $6000. If I want to upgrade to 7.1 surround (THX), I’ll need to spend another $600 for two rear surrounds. If I didn’t have a subwoofer, I’d have to spend at least another $500 for a decent one. So it would be easy to go over $7,000.
This is still a high-value system. There is nothing extreme about it. All of these components were spec’d out for solid improvements in features, quality, or acoustics, with an eye towards finding the point of maximum value for what I needed.
$2,000 for a home theater system gets you bottom-end equipment. The receiver won’t have the bandwidth to switch HDTV well, giving you fuzzy images. It’ll have low power, and the speakers will be cheap. If I had a small apartment, I’d probably put together a system like that. But my stereo is going into a 250 square foot dedicated theater room, and a small-speaker, low powered system would simply sound lousy in there.
Look, we agree on the basic premise, which is that at some point on the price-performance curve extra money spent gets you very little to no improvement in quality. My problem with your statements is that A) you are taking them to ridiculous extremes, and B) you are denigrating people who don’t share your extreme view of ‘value’. If instead of comparing $12 watches to $40 watches you had compared $500 watches to $1000 watches, you would have had a better case. If you had compared $5,000 stereos to $50,000 stereos, I’d be closer to agreeing with you. But your notions of quality are absurd. A $500 stereo is simply not in the same league as a $5000 stereo, and a $12 watch is demonstrably inferior to a $50 Timex.
Sam is dead on about DeBeers. That is one big group of fuckers.
I wonder if the OP is ever going to return and explain his hypocrisy regarding fashion clothing?
Maybe this is just a poor example, but I doubt I could learn anything or meet anyone by purchasing a watch.
My Vuarnet’s cost 80 bucks… SEVEN years ago! Averages out to around 10 bucks a year. Most of that cost was the prescription lens, one dollar sunglasses wouldn’t have done anything for me. 
This just means you value learning about different cultures and meeting people more than you value fine engineering and aesthetics. That’s great for you. As a generalization, however, your argument doesn’t make any sense. After all, I can say the same about anything else. You also can’t learn anything or meet anyone by buying a piece of fine artwork, or having your floors refinished, or buying pretty much anything.
And of course, the person who bought the watch could say to you, “You got ripped off. Sure you had fun for a couple of weeks, but now you have nothing and I still have the watch.” And he’d be right, since he values owning a watch more than having such experiences.
Not only is value relative, it also changes for the individual based on how much money they have at any time. When I was a broke student, meat was a luxury when I could feel just a full after eating a 39 cent box of Kraft Dinner. Today, the difference to my personal finances between eating Kraft Dinner and having the occasional steak is so trivial that I now eat more steak. Back when I bought my first car, all that really mattered was reliability, because I had a very limited amount of money and couldn’t afford repairs. Things like air conditioning and a good stereo were totally irrelevant to my purchase decision. Today, I wouldn’t buy a car without either of those things. My perception of value has not changed, but only when measured against utility and not absolute dollars. Everyone has a ‘utility function’ which changes with your financial and personal situation. So what makes ‘sense’ to buy changes not just with individuals, but changes for a specific individual over time.
That doesn’t mean all choices are equally valid. People can and do step out of their optimum value range for irrational reasons, and it gets them in financial trouble. People can also be manipulated by peer pressure or advertising into perceiving value where none exists. Those are the things we should work to improve. But there’s nothing wrong per se with $10,000 watches and $200,000 cars. It all depends on what you can afford and how you define value.