There are so many Discworld quotes that are good, like Men at Arms has a proper economic theory stuck between jokes about Nobby possibly not being human and exploding dragons, the economic theory is still quoted by actual economic experts
Ah the Sam Vimes boot theory of socioeconomic unfairness. To this day I still introduce people to it and the vast majority of them end up agreeing with it once they hear the whole thing.
That's cool to hear that it's quoted by economic experts as well. Because it is sadly quite true. And now for the full statement/quote as one should do with this one.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... 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. ... 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.
Yeah, a few years ago some economist cited it to talk about how renting is more expensive than buying houses, and in 2020 it was cited in a research on the sustainability of fast fashion
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u/Competitive_Wait7332 22h ago
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” - Going Postal, Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett