Unfettered capitalism is, to put it simply, bad. Many of us can probably agree with that to some degree. Whether you think its benefits outweigh its shortcomings or whether you feel like we need to start moving toward fully-automated luxury gay space communism, I think that most of us can see that modern capitalism has some major flaws that need addressing.

And, as with many social issues, Terry Pratchett was on the bleeding edge of identifying many of the social issues that are coming to a head today. In his 1989 book Guards! Guards!, a character named Sam Vimes lays out what has become known as "Boots Theory." It goes as follows:

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 a 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. — Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

Boots Theory is a fairly on-the-nose approach to how America's special brand of unfettered crony capitalism negatively affects people in lower economic brackets while benefiting those at the top. Those of us with less have to buy lower-quality things that wear out quickly and will subsequently pay twice as much over time as someone who can afford to buy something of better quality.

Well, it used to be that way, anyway. Make no mistake, things have only gotten worse.

I don't know if you've noticed, but we live in a disposable society. Companies like Shein manufacture super-low-quality clothes, sell them for bottom-of-the-barrel prices, and push the notion of micro-trends that last a few weeks at most before you need to buy a whole new wardrobe. Of course, it's not a big deal since your clothes have worn out by then anyway.

The quality of low-end things is simply not as good as it used to be. I still have shirts from when I was in high school and college, and they just feel like they're made of better material despite me having bought them from the same places that I still buy things. Modern shirts feel thinner and flimsier than my college shirts, and it's frustrating.

Think about that. These 20-ish-year-old shirts are still hanging on and doing their jobs despite my having bought them for a few bucks in the early aughts, while modern shirts are not as good and will likely wear out before the older shirts.

There are numerous reasons for this disparity. First off, in order for Walmart to sell a t-shirt for $5 or $6 year after year, they have to reduce quality with time. Inflation hits us all, and to keep selling such a basic thing for such a low price, they have to sacrifice somewhere, and it hits the quality of the manufacture at some point.

From Walmart's perspective, though, that isn't a bad thing. For one, t-shirts can act as loss leaders for the more profitable wardrobe pieces, making them more money in the long run. Second, when you have to buy new t-shirts every year or two, that's more money in Walmart's pockets every year or two when you stroll into their store looking to buy clothes.

Clothes are just one of the many things that just don't stand up to time as well anymore. Technology definitely doesn't hold up very well, although it's easy to wonder if it ever did. That is due in part to planned obsolescence and in part to Moore's Law.

(Quick aside: Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years or so. This trend has held true for decades, and it is uncertain when it will cease to follow. What it means is that the computing power of a microchip doubles every two years or so, with technology improving at a similar clip. This leads us from a place where we used 128MB flash drives that cost $40 when I was in college to the point where you can get ten 16GB flash drives for $25 on Amazon, not that it matters much because everything is done on the cloud. Anyway, go read up on Moore's Law, it's neat.)

Technology tends to move quickly, as we all know, and there are new generations of our favorite cell phones out every year, if not more often. The tech companies know that we crave the newest tech toy, so they crank out new models year after year, even if they only have marginal improvements over last year's model.

That's what planned obsolescence is these days — why have an iPhone 14 when you can have the latest iPhone 15! Get the iPhone 15 Pro Max version while you're at it!

There are other bits to it, of course. The build quality often isn't as good as previous years' models, and even premium phones wear out in a few years or so and you have to get a new one. Same goes for computers — every four or five years, your computer needs to be either upgraded or replaced.

Most technology is like that these days, and whether you credit Moore's Law, planned obsolescence, or both, it's still a rough place to be in when you need to drop a thousand dollars every few years to buy new tech. There is also the whole notion that "buying isn't owning," which is about as dumb as it sounds.

And, of course, there are more aspects to the disposability of modern things. The notion of digital products, things that we pay to download and own (think music, movies, games, the like), is being challenged by greedy corporate bosses. Take Ubisoft's director of subscriptions, Philippe Tremblay, who thinks gamers need to get comfortable not actually owning their games:

"One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game." — Philippe Tremblay

This is a trend that is becoming common with digital versions of media. Funimation, an anime streaming service, merged with Crunchyroll recently, and when Funimation shut down, all of the digital content that its users bought — movies, shows, and the like — disappeared. They'd paid money to own digital copies of these things, ostensibly forever, and that turned out to not be the case.

In a nutshell, the physical things that we own are lower quality than they were twenty years ago, and when we buy a digital version of something, it turns out that we don't actually own that thing. Cue everyone constantly having to buy new things year after year after god-forsaken year.

So what does any of this have to do with Boots Theory?

Look, I don't like the idea of having to buy a new phone year after year to keep up with trends, so I make my phones last as long as possible. I buy last year's model when I can and I buy them on sale. My wife knows a bunch of tricks to make our clothes last a long time, and we are as gentle as possible on the things we own to make them withstand the cruel passage of time.

However, what about the rich folks? Those with more money than sense who can afford to buy the nicest versions of things that will last much longer than anything available to me or you?

Well, they're buying all the same shitty, disposable stuff that we are.

The best-made phones on the market will still become obsolete quickly, and even if they didn't, a wealthy person can afford to replace their phone two or three times a year if they want to. Nice, designer clothes are great, but the fashion trends don't stop changing, so they're often buying a lot of the same fast-fashion stuff that we are and throwing it away just as fast, if not faster.

Some modern products retain their quality over time, but so many things that we buy, beyond just clothes and tech, are simply not as good as the versions that were manufactured twenty, thirty, forty years ago. The only difference between me and a wealthy person is that a wealthy person can afford to replace things constantly. They may even make it a feature of their lifestyle — always having the newest and most on-trend stuff, no matter how much they have to throw away in the process.

It used to be that I could only afford a crummy pair of boots every few years that wore out while a wealthy person could buy a nice pair of boots and spend less over ten years than I did. Now, wealthy people are buying crummy boots every year and pitching them once they stop being nice, while we're still buying those same crummy boots we always have and trying to make them last as long as possible.

The result is the same: my feet are wet while my wealthy counterpart's feet are dry. It's just that he can afford to replace his boots well before they start leaking.

The companies who manufacture the stuff that we buy are more than happy to cater to this, of course. In modern capitalism, lower quality is a feature, not a bug. Disposability is the name of the game, now more than ever, and if you can't afford to toss last season's stuff, what are you even doing here?

(You can try thrifting if you want, but it's no longer a "poor person thing." Thrifting is trendy now and prices at thrift stores have gone up to accommodate the upper-middle class thrifters looking for a steal. Good luck finding stuff at a decent price!)

At this point, the question has become whether the system is broken and in need of repair or whether it's working as intended for those in power and needs to be replaced with something that benefits the majority. Either way it goes, the top 1% (especially the top 0.1%) are getting more than they deserve and those of us below the top 80% in terms of wealth aren't getting what we need, so something needs to change.

We have reached a point where there is literally no way to make an ethical choice in the products we buy and use every day. The boots we buy that wear out after a season or two? That's just how things are now, and the companies that manufacture those boots don't show any sign of changing their practices anytime soon.

At this point, if the question is whether to fix or dismantle the system where companies who are actively destroying the planet are blaming consumers for the situation they've put us in, I know where I fall.

Be well out there.

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