Price is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for quality, but that's no reason to throw out the idea. Harbor Freight is also not a bottom-barrel brand these days.
Cars are actually a great example. $30k will set you up with a Camry hybrid for >20 years. If you can only afford to finance a $15k econobox, you'll end up paying extra on interest, maintenance, and fuel while your car spends more time in the shop.
IMO this theory gets unfairly maligned by a strawman of "price == quality".
I think they make a lot of good points, and the post doesn't sound too emotionally charged to me.
Frankly, the left should start to go lower, and speak more emotionally. It turns out that clinical, sterile statements are not a good way to sway a majority, and they don't make good sound-bites.
At some point, you have to fight fire with fire to avoid becoming yet another victim of the paradox of tolerance.
Quantity is usually more expensive than quality in the long run, though. This idea has been succinctly popularized by the "boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness":
>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.
How has Carvana been doing over the past year? They focused on reducing the friction in buying/selling used cars, right?
I wonder if they could have suffered from the supply crunch. Last I checked, 5-year-old Corollas were pushing $20k, and a new base model is about the same price.
Anecdotally, I checked Carvana and local dealers when I was looking for a car recently, because I usually buy $5k beaters and drive them into the ground. This time, it didn't make sense to risk a lemon when I could get a bumper-to-bumper warranty for the same price. So I waited until I could find something new at MSRP, and that was that.
Cars are actually a great example. $30k will set you up with a Camry hybrid for >20 years. If you can only afford to finance a $15k econobox, you'll end up paying extra on interest, maintenance, and fuel while your car spends more time in the shop.
IMO this theory gets unfairly maligned by a strawman of "price == quality".