Sunday, April 29, 2012

Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Men at Arms

4 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

In my opinion, the person who lives paycheck to paycheck tends to buy aluminum foil 25 square feet at a time.

Costco sells a 2-pack of 250 square feet rolls.

It does not cost 20x more.

It takes money to save money.

CP said...

Hey bud, go nuts tonight! Use two squares of paper towel!

Stagflationary Mark said...

One person's paper towels is just another person's diamonds and natural gas. ;)

I'm bearish on commodities because, in general, if there's a commodity slow down, most commodities will slow down. Just like, if there's a stock market slowdown, most stocks will fall. I'm bearish on gold although, to hedge it, I've discussed hedging it with diamonds. That way you can short gold and go long diamonds. On the other hand, I recently became bullish on natural gas even though that's a contrarian play.

CP said...

Man, could've retired off the 100x long NG/short AAPL fund today!!