13 Comments

I would recommend Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller to get an answer to the question. You are signaling your potential mates with what you are buying.

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I will never understand how people are still confused about stuff like this. Yeah, there's a bunch of markup on these products and a large chunk goes to marketing, but people pay more for things that a) look better, and b) last longer.

Your $3 pair of dad socks and underwear will have a hole in them in a year or will be too stretched to wear. Sure, you'll save a few hundred on a mattress from Walmart, but maybe that'll lead to back problems that cost you way more down the line.

And you're confused why Hershey - who has existed making chocolate since the 1800s and makes over a billion pounds of chocolate per year - can sell it cheaper than a small business making speciality chocolate?

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Trudat brother! Some people like to buy expensive new shit, others prefer buying stocks and ETFs

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broad brush painting here and I think you're aware of it. overall point is well-taken, and I came to parallel conclusions: a lot of these new products I see are little more than repackaged old products with marketing. one of the most egregious ones I've seen was literally a safety razor but 'made for african hair and skin'

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Simply put, you don't understand it because you're not the target market. To elaborate further, it's clear you immediately look at these products from a cost/benefit which is a typically male approach. The demographic they cater towards are women who want the brand factor and younger males who also virtue signal with their purchases.

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It's this logic that drives the fast-fashion industry. You and everyone else in society ends up absorbing the cost of cheaper goods and ultimately it ends up being more costly for both consumers and producers to try to maintain markets for, "lesser goods" despite labor costs for producers and costs for consumers being lowered. You've got to understand that your ability to buy something for an artificially low price is caused by globalization. Those low prices roundabout into lowers wages for workers domestically by horizontally stratifying international labor markets. That means less disposable income for you and all your friends which means your socks are now, "more expensive" (cost a greater % of your actual income) due to your decision(s) over time to buy cheaper socks. Consider the alternative where there is an domestic economy for consumer goods (socks) where-in you would pay more for goods (socks) overall but because the domestic consumer economy is circular (you buy socks from your friends/their friends) the net effect is that despite goods, "costing more" that overall the entire consumer economy is benefitted by constant income growth for both consumers and producers. This leads to growth in the economy which facilitates progressive re-investment of profits into the infrastructure which can lead to innovations that lead to increases in the production quality and efficiency which can further income increases cyclically so long as the domestic consumer economy isn't disrupted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift

You're not saving money by wearing cheap socks and underwear, eating bad food, or sleeping on an uncomfortable bed.

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Why shouldn't we expect some businesses to try to cater to the wealthy-but-retarded consumer segment's desire to massively overspend on goods that have far cheaper comparables?

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