Cheap Convenience

What have we traded for convenience and the price of cheap? Yet how upset do we get when the convenient is inconvenient and the cheap expensive? And I'm not referring to any intrinsic change to the convenience and price but rather that hiccup in the convenient that makes it all of a sudden so much more inconvenient than the intrinsically inconvenient things or that hiccup that makes the cheap more expensive than the intrinsically expensive. Free bank accounts but then prove your soul over three-digit figures. Instant transfers taking days. Cheap not feeling so cheap after all.

Yet we buy cheap things, such as a car, not always because we can't afford better but because we feel accomplished when we buy cheap, get a deal, and then we're ever so angry when the wheels fall off or the engine explodes. Because the expectation is that even cheap should be quality. And while this is nothing but absurd, there is a mass following of this dogma. If cheap coffee doesn't taste good there's an uproar. If cheap sex is short, again, there is an uproar. Somebody didn't get the memo that what's expensive is good.

Yet there is a misunderstanding of the word expensive. If something is overpriced, it's likely not worth it, but just because something is expensive, it doesn't mean it's not worth it. That Ferrari, say what you want, is definitely worth it, and so is a pair of Hunter rubber rain boots. But that expensive fintech that blocks your money when you fart in the wrong direction, even if it costs $10 a month, is very expensive. And what if you pay $50 a month or $100 a month? Then it's extremely expensive. But we don't think in such terms; all we see is $10.

If a coffee costs $10, we will remember the price more than the coffee, but if it costs $1, we will remember the taste more than the price, and likely complain about the taste. When we fly for $20, we cry that there's no legroom, and when we fly for $500, all we focus on is the extraordinary price. So in a way, it's mass insanity or sickness. Once upon a time, it was understood that cheap equaled less and expensive more. When expensive wasn't more, there was an uproar. But now we expect cheap to be good and expensive to have no value.

In fairness, we can argue that young people today struggle to earn money, and this is why so much that is geared to this population needs to be cheap. But this doesn't change the fact that cheap can never be good. Because for something to be cheap, by default, means less quality, fewer people working on making it amazing. And enterprise is still, and will always be, about money. So ironically, they make more money from this reality than companies did ever before. For if a million pay $10, and we give them nothing truly of value, we can make a shitload of money.

But perhaps there are other things at play here. Perhaps money itself has become intangible and irrelevant in the way it was before. Perhaps because of it being digital and just numbers, it doesn't have the emotional hold it once did. A bit like a long-distance relationship over the Internet is not the same as a physical relationship. But I must correct myself, for when the physical is not there, the emotional bond is all there is and may be much stronger. So perhaps the emotional bond to digital money is indeed strong. So why do we not care about it enough to spend much money to keep it safe? Why do we risk it for convenience and cheap?

Or are these just all my assumptions? Perhaps I'm completely off and wrong. Or perhaps I'm looking at the world from the eyes of someone who makes a lot of money and therefore is more at risk from this cheap convenience. For surely, if you make $1,000 a month, what risk do you face? Yet university money mules get blocked for $100 and have a hissy fit about it. So again, I must be wrong. For someone who only makes $1,000, then $1,000 is a lot of money, and so is $100. So why trade pricier security for cheap convenience? What is the logic?

When bad things happen to others, we think they won't happen to us. Is this what we're dealing with? When we know someone who bought a cheap car and the door fell off, we think that person was unlucky. But why would it happen to me? In a world where a big deal is made about $100, how is the expectation that one will reach a place where $1,000, $10,000, or $100,000 is a big deal? If the hold fits one gold coin, how are you expected to have more?

The world itself is not a limited place, but somehow, for cheap and convenient, we have turned it into a tiny little box overflowing with diarrhea. But we think it's chocolate mousse in abundance. We wear second-hand clothes thinking it's stylish because it's all we can afford, not knowing that this limitation of mind has been supported by a limited environment of convenient and cheap. And if you look to blame, you cannot blame a young generation. For the world was given to them a certain way, and usually, the ones who use and abuse them are not of their generation but the one above.

So do we blame the previous generation? Or the generation and a half? Perhaps there is nobody to blame. For if one million want ice cream for $1, then you would be stupid not to offer ice cream for $1, for that is an easy $1 million. And then you would be stupid not to offer chocolate syrup for $0.30, for that would be another $300,000. But you'd still want to make a good profit on that ice cream and chocolate syrup, so the total shit it would be. But what do you care about complaints if you made $1.3 million from ice cream?

And what is it to refund $1 here and there? So easy to look at kids and shout "stupid," but so hard to understand what we did to their world. For if we didn't value cheap and convenient, neither would they. If we valued quality over cheap and secure over convenient, perhaps we would not have left them an overflowing box of diarrhea.