Granted: Except the wealthy people none of us has money to squander. While with varying income and varying costs of living the amount of money available to us vary as well, we all have to make ends meet with the money we’ve got.
Consequently we all love a bargain, we will try to get a product for a low price, we try to make the most of the money we have to spare. Nothing wrong with that.
And while that has probably been the same since the dawn of time I think this approach (or even necessity) has increasingly turned into an attitude. People will look for the lowest price for a product. Not simply a low price, but the lowest. Accepting a price slightly higher than the lowest means suffering a compromise acceptable only as trade-off for another advantage (like buying a game in a store for a higher price than via online order in favour of the immediate use). Anything else is no longer acceptable. A price higher than the lowest more and more becomes the (unconscious) assessment of usury and overreaching.
People stop considering secondary factors beyond the price. An online store simply has a different cost structure than a local store, a large chain a different cost structure than a small local retailer. Other factors like service and consultation are no longer acknowledged, but taken as a given (certainly a topic for discussion in itself).
Only cheap is good! Of course bundled with highest quality and service.
Many people are living this attitude by now. They will spend three hours surfing the internet for the lowest price of a product to save € 2,-. (Then probably wasting more money on the slot machine in the local pub afterward; while self-congratulating how cunning they are).
And people not following that route increasingly are looked down at. ’What, you paid 30,- for that game on xyz.com when you could have bought it for 28,- on zyx.com? You’re stupid.’
Well, perhaps. Perhaps not. Does it really make me stupid if I buy a game in one store because I know it’s reliable than buying somewhere I might have trouble with? Or that I buy a game at release instead of waiting another three weeks for the super-duper sale? Or that I refuse to spend my precious time browsing price search engines instead of actually making good use of the stuff I’m buying?
(Personally I’d say this is just me setting my priorities ...)
But also consider the flip side:
“Only cheap is good! Of course bundled with highest quality and service.”
This does not exclusively count for goods. Our workmanship is increasingly treated the same way. Just as the customer wants to pay as little money as possible for a product employers want to pay as little salary as possible. And still expect highest quality and dedication. I assert every employee will applaud an employer who is willing to pay a little more for good workmanship or craftsmanship, for more loyalty or dedication. Yet many people do not apply the same thinking to the other side of the equation.
This can easily be turned into a chicken-and-egg discussion, but in the meantime we move along a downward spiral of cheapness.
A game mustn’t cost € 50,-. Let’s not even look how long it took to make it, how many people were involved, how good the end product. ’50,-? Too expensive!’. One day you might find yourself on the other side of that claim. Perhaps even already have. Liked it?
(And yes, I acknowledge that enough companies and producers still make good money, even increase their winnings by reducing cost factors – not rarely personnel cost - in various, sometimes ugly ways; so buying for the lowest price might look like a kind of revenge, but of course at the same time it kind of backfires on us. Basically you say if you don’t have enough money for a good life nobody should have. Not the most impressive kind of logic.)
I don’t intend to get all sociopolitical on you, but the continuing devaluation of things is not something which is imposed on us by some evil groups, but something carried and lived by far too many people in society. And I’m under the impression it gets worse every day. It makes me uncomfortable how everything has less and less value attributed to it, regardless if it’s a product, craftsmanship, service, etc. Not attributed by specific social or political factions, but by the general public.
So maybe perhaps we should rethink declaring avarice and the urge towards ’cheapness’ as a holy grail. It might be a necessity for many people but in itself it does not represent a good character trait.
Also granted: By no means a well-constructed article. But I admit I can’t be arsed to reconstruct and refine it for three weeks before it’s finally in a enough decent shape since I know most readers won’t give a rat’s ass about this anyway. This one was simply one of those To-get-it-out-of-my-system kinda thing.
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