An event this evening let me to this idea:
Quality is cheap, while both luxury and stinginess are expensive.
Demonstration:
- Quality is cheap – in my opinion, you can get quality products for a good price; quality is the model to pick when deciding between “cheap” / “luxury” / “quality”; quality, in the long run, is, actually, the best solution; examples – it’s not very expensive to get some of the best performers in a company; it’s not the salary; it’s also not very expensive to live healthy; it’s not very expensive to get a lot of benefits / value from a good; question to put – has quality ever let you disappointed, do you regret having chosen quality?
- Luxury is expensive – luxury puts a lot of emphasis on scarcity – “I have this, no one else has it / few others have it”; while it may feel psychologically good to own something only few (if any) others own, it comes at a price; literally; you also get to pay for something you could get, for a (relatively) similar quality, at a much lower price; luxury is, in my own definition, quality you don’t actually need; example – lots of luxury brands don’t look all that valuable when their brand name is not shown; you wouldn’t usually pay a lot for a bag which doesn’t have Louis VUITTON on it; thus, perhaps that’s not the real practical value of it; question to put – what makes Chinese copies so unworthy of value?
- Stinginess is expensive – quality is good for some point, and if you don’t know how to pick, you may actually pay more for something which apparently costs less; so, a good which lasts less, does a poor job, requires lots of maintenance may prove actually more expensive; examples – printers which are cheap to buy, but costly to maintain, due to high consumable prices; or ecology – you can do cheap activities today, which may cost you a lot in the future; or the basic idea of vices – you do something bad & cheap today, which costs you a lot in the future; question to put – does it feel good to have more money but much less pleasure?