Stupid Sayings: “For that much money, I could buy…”

This is something that has roots in logical thought, but has been dragged into the realm of… well you’ll see.

The concept of “why pay more for the same thing?” isn’t wrong. The problem is when a person loses the “…for the same thing” bit. Okay, let’s get some backstory.

Backstory

The Firearm Blog posted a product announcement from Noveske about they’re Diplomat line of SBRs & pistols, available in both 5.56 and .300BLK. MSRP is $2,725. Noveske is a boutique brand that caters to a certain clientele who can afford their prices. The guns are good, some say the best in the industry, though that claim is not widely accepted. I can’t afford that kind of money for a gun, so I have no personal experience with it. I do imagine that they are nice and well built, though. People don’t pay that kind of money on stuff they have to fix, which leads me to my point.

Example

Look at this beautiful, naive, completely ignorant lack of self-awareness. Let’s just stop and have ourselves a think. Go ahead, pour yourself a glass of whiskey. I’ll wait. Back? Good, let’s get on with it.

Mr. Red complains about how much the Diplomat costs, and compares it to an admittedly worse performer he himself called “basic”. He defends his complaint based on how much value there is in the inferior option being only 20% the cost.

Mr. Red’s counter-rebuttal is where it all falls apart: he claim to have built five basic 7.5″ ARs.

Let that sink in: He’s built five, FIVE(!) budget guns! What’s Mr. Red done? Spent the same amount of money on inferior guns. He claims that $2800 is too much to spend on a 7.5″ gun, but he admits to having done just that!
The whole point of a value option is to get more performance per dollar, at the expense of total performance. Mr. Red has spent the entire amount he’s raging against while sacrificing performance the entire time! And what does he have to show for it? It’s not like he can shoot more than one of them at a time!

Considering that a ‘basic’ 7.5″ AR can do more than 20% of what the Diplomat can do, Mr. Red didn’t start off wrong. There is value in having a cheaper alternative as long as the loss of performance isn’t so great that it cannot perform to an acceptable level. If a gun can do 90% of the job that a more expensive gun can do but at half the price, that’s a bargain!

As long as you don’t require the budget gun to do stuff that lands in that top 10% of the expensive gun’s performance envelope, you’ll be well served to go for the cheaper option. As soon as you buy a second gun because “it’s such a good deal!“, you’re wrong.

Remaining Open-Minded

The problem is that people don’t understand the motives of others. Some people actually need or at least can appreciate that top level of performance that only comes from very expensive options. If you compete in PRS or NRL at a high level, you can’t just go down to the local gun shop and grab a Mossberg MVP that comes packaged with a scope. If you’re on a SWAT team or somewhere else where you carry a gun for a living, you really need to buy something that you can trust with absolute certainty, no matter the cost. It’s not unusual to see something expensive and see the word “overpriced” come up again and again, and by people who just simply don’t understand what they’re looking at.

I’m not much better. I see people spend money on stuff that I don’t get the advantage of owning. I try to remain open-minded when it comes to performance equipment like guns or cars or whatever, but when I see someone paying $300 for basketball shoes I’m out. Hey, if you got to have your Yeezy’s go for it. Just know that I’m judging you.

Conclusion

Just remain open-minded. If you see something that you can’t afford, don’t hate on people who can afford it. If you don’t get why someone would spend that much! on something, just assume that they have an appreciation for it that you don’t. They aren’t dumb, their likes and preferences are just different than yours. Don’t make it into something it’s not. See you next Friday.

Yeezy’s are stupid, though. -S_S