Against Vimes Boots

In the Terry Pratchett novel Men at Arms, the character Sam Vimes proposes the ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-economic Unfairness, which goes as follows: a bad pair of boots costs ten dollars, and only lasts a year or two, while a good pair of boots costs fifty dollars but lasts forever. Poor people can't afford the expensive boots, only the cheap ones, but over time they end up spending more than the rich, and they get soggy feet to boot.

I find this theory plausible about positive/negative spirals in general: one of the most radicalizing moments of my adult life was finding out the special mortgage rate my wealthy friend was paying, seemingly because the bank wanted to make sure he gave them all his money later in life when he went from wealthy to ultra-wealthy. There are definitely domains where rich people can afford to take a large one-time cost that saves them money in the long run.

But I don't actually think Vimes Boots theory is true about boots, at least not at any level of spending that I have yet been able to access. As best I can tell, 80% of manufactured clothes at this point in history are trash, and maybe 20% are actually good, and that this is weirdly true across many different price levels. As I get richer I have nicer stuff on average, which I appreciate, but it's still luck-of-the-draw whether a given pair of shoes will last 6 months or 6 years, and going from $15 to $150 for a pair of shoes doesn't seem to affect the odds much.

Maybe if you can spend $1500 on boots you do get a guarantee of quality – readers in the know please shout in the comments.