What's It Worth to Ya?
Happy midterm day, everybody! Hope you all had a great weekend. Today I want to discuss value, and share a short video that really must be seen to be believed:
I’ll be honest, I’m a LITTLE upset these people got their money back. If they were perfectly happy with the purchase before being told the truth, (those faces, though!) they should stick to their guns and actually pay the agreed-upon price for the shoes.
But the main thing this video shows (and what I want to highlight) is what a subjective thing ‘value’ is. The ‘stars’ in the video above clearly value this extra attention, the ‘exclusivity’ of an invite to a limited-time store, and the high-end atmosphere. This caused them to ‘overvalue’ shoes from a budget-first shoe store — but just because we think (and now they do, too!) that they overvalued the shoes initially doesn’t make them WRONG with those initial evaluations of value.
One of my favorite ‘dumb’ possessions is an autographed Buck Williams card. To most people, this has no value at all. In the secondary collectors’ market, such a card runs about $10-20. I would not sell mine for less than $100. Who is right about the value of the card? Everybody, because we’re all applying different aspects to get our determination of the card’s value.
Objectively, being a paid subscriber to this ‘Stack has no monetary value. There’s no extra posts or fun secret booze cruises or anything. ☹️ Yet some people pay for a subscription anyway, because they see value (for some reason) beyond extra goodies. They’re not wrong to do so just because the value they get isn’t tangible to others.
Just about every decision that we make involves a value judgement. Do I trade my time for a paycheck? Do I trade my money for a new car? Do I support this business despite their underhanded business tactics? The list goes on and on. And we have different circumstances and experiences that cause us to value specific things more highly than others. We have different hobbies that cause us to value specific things more highly than others, and further, we have different general preferences that cause us to value things differently than others. This makes value subjective, meaning that we all have different answers to the same questions about value.
This is a super long-winded way to state that there are near countless factors that go into determining how valuable something is to you — and the only person who has the knowledge necessary to make those valuations is you. You are the only one who knows your circumstances and tastes and has lived your experiences and believes what you do.
As sure as central planning throws a terrible birthday party, it’s impossible for politicians to actually know what you, as an individual, actually value — no matter how many high-priced consultants get paid lucrative salaries to say otherwise.
When it comes to elections, making a valuation is especially difficult. Government has gotten so huge that every candidate represents this huge amalgam of every current issue. Is a good stance on issue A enough to counteract a terrible stance on issue B, also given C, D, E, F, etc.? All this is further compounded by the fact that politicians are lying scumbags who can’t be trusted to actually do what they tell you they’re going to do.
For this reason, it’s possible for well-meaning people all over the country to come to different conclusions when it comes to voting for candidate A over candidate B.
This is why I find Biden’s statement that ‘democracy is on the ballot’ so repugnant. If we are to have a functioning republic, voters must be able to express their values via the ballot box. People cannot be free if they are unable to fire those who make the laws. If ‘democracy’ is the most important thing in America (because we get to express our individual values), but only one party is ‘for democracy’……then we don’t really have a choice, do we? And therefore we don’t even have a ‘democracy’, do we?
Kind of sounds like “We had to kill democracy in order to save it.”
I certainly don’t have the knowledge to tell you how you should vote, or even if you should vote at all. I just hope that if you DO value your vote, you make it an informed one. That’s really what patriotism is all about, not blindly voting for who the ‘guy in charge’ tells you to vote for. And if there’s one thing I know:
It also highlights the importance of information/knowledge assymetry, something which no seller in any market be it shoes or politics wants to see become a level playing field.
Limited knowledge for customers is as important as is limiting options after all.
If any of the vapid schmucks attending the grand opening actually knew anything about materials, shoes, and so on - real knowledge - they would possibly have been able to spot inconsistencies.
Or which is also possible, the quality difference between chinese made luxury brand items and budget brand items is 49% label, 49% price tag and 1% actual difference. This is certainly the case with tools and machinery - many brands are able to pass themselves off as "Made in Western Country" due to final assembly or repackaging taking place there (will vary with local law) despite all of the actual parts being Made in PRC - a bit how Tesla cars consists of a lot of Ford parts, yet are still called Tesla.
To me the prank brings to mind an old TV-show from the early 1990s where three Experts in winetasting were offered four identical bottles to sample. They were informed one held a well-reknowned alky brand of cheap-ass wine, two held mid-price range wines, and one was a superior brand.
Naturally, all bottles contained the same wine which led to a lot of "sour grapes"-excuses being made after the Experts had ranked the bottles.
But the real hilarity ensued when it was revealed that the casserole they had been served (which the studio crew and host also ate) was made from rat meat.
Edit: the missing 1% above? Chalk it up to marketing.
I could have a conversation about the concept of relative value all fucking day, and if there was beer and coffee, probably for two days straight. That's how fascinating I find it.
One of the most important things I leaned working in marketing was actually what I observed about the way our clients- typically personal brands of high-profile people or prestige services- did business with us and their own clients. At moderate to high levels of value (the shoe video would be an example of probably the lowest tier of value high enough to be relevant here), information symmetry or asymmetry drives a HUGE amount of the delta of relative value between individuals. Having access to points of comparison or competitive offers makes a massive impact on assigned value, and above a certain price point, virtually all the marketing and sales effort lies in obscuring or distorting (or straight-up misrepresenting) this information- moreso than the objective quality of the product itself.