The Real Cost of Cheap Shit.
I’ve got a leather messenger bag that I’ve had for over ten years. It originally cost me £100 ($150), and I felt that was expensive at the time, but ten years later, it’s the cheapest bag I have ever bought.
This bag has been all over Europe, around Asia, in San Francisco, and South Africa, and I used to take it every day to school, and now I still use it on a daily basis. I touched upon the relative cost of things in my essay about my short visit to Rome, and it is true.
The problem with cheap stuff is that it breaks, and then needs to be replaced, so it ends up being more expensive, and also more time-consuming.
We also need to wonder about the moral question of buying the same shit goods over and over again, creating an endless cycle of cheap labour, environmental issues, and a race to the bottom for price, quality, and care.
