If you build a sofa with good craftsmanship and from quality materials it will have a steep price tag that the proles cannot afford. If you build a sofa from sawdust and oil and with a flimsy slightly underdimensioned construction you can sell it for cheap to the masses with the added benefit that it will break in five years' time and you can sell another 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.
If you build a sofa with good craftsmanship and from quality materials it will have a steep price tag that the proles cannot afford. If you build a sofa from sawdust and oil and with a flimsy slightly underdimensioned construction you can sell it for cheap to the masses with the added benefit that it will break in five years' time and you can sell another one.
And if you build a sofa made of sawdust and charge 3,500 dollars for it you'll be the talk of bourgeois avenue.
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.