Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money

I appreciate the writing style, but this article is shockingly naive to me.<p>Convenient consumer products tend to sell better than less convenient ones, even if the product is worse. That&#x27;s the entire story. People have finite time, so when they receive more income they will tend to spend it to reduce the time they spend doing things that they don&#x27;t care about.<p>I for one hate spending time doing all the things that the products in the article make more convenient, and happily pay more so I can spend my time on other things.<p><pre><code> * I don&#x27;t like shaving, so I optimize for razors that get the job done faster (more blades, easier to swap a new blade) * I don&#x27;t like cleaning pans, so I buy pans I can clean faster and don&#x27;t have to &quot;season&quot; * I don&#x27;t like filling bags with tea, so I buy tea bags that are pre-filled * (nespresso) I actually enjoy the ritual of making espresso, so I use a real espresso machine * I bike every day to and from work, so I take it a step further and buy an E-bike with no shifter * I don&#x27;t want to fiddle with chromecast or fire stick, so I just use my TV&#x27;s built in smart features * (inner city shops don&#x27;t sell individual pieces of fruit) I live in SF, it&#x27;s very easy to find individual fruits here * I don&#x27;t like going to grocery stores, so I pay to have groceries delivered to me </code></pre> My time is precious to me, so instead of spending money on luxury items I spend money to save time. Evidently so do most other people.

While I believe that many things stated in this post are correct, this still has that hard &#x27;old man yelling at the internet&#x27; odor.<p>If you are to compare stuff, stuff like modern razor cartridges and double-edged razors, you ought to mention the convenience side of the things. I hate being the devil&#x27;s advocate, but shaving with 4-blade cartridge designed for easy shaving is still &#x27;miles&#x27; ahead compared to shaving with double-edged razor. Miiiles ahead. And I use a double-edged razor 9 out of 10 times, so I would know a thing or two about it.<p>And that&#x27;s not to say that are overly pricey. They are. Plus, if you account for different prices in different regions, the price difference is even more concerning.<p>The same is also true for some other appliances&#x2F;services mentioned - tea bags and coffee machines are not just &#x27;superficially convenient&#x27; they are wildly more convenient.<p>EDIT: As one person said in the comments down below, &quot;What this article completely misses, is that there are more than two options.&quot;. That was my whole point, and I&#x27;m sorry if it came out the wrong way. Shaving is a personal preference, and you are free to do it however you like; but saying &#x27;Shaving is too expensive and is a demonstrative example of how most consumer products are designed to extract more money from you rather than to improve your life, or the world, or to be in any way remotely good.&#x27; is just incorrect and insane.

&gt;Other examples of products that seem to exhibit a similar trend, where purported convenience leads to higher prices<p>&gt;Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis. They also seem to be poisonous.<p>They have their uses. I wouldn&#x27;t try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil). Also, claiming that they &quot;seem to be poisonous&quot; without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they&#x27;re only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.<p>&gt;Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.<p>Why are they only <i>superficially</i> convenient? They seem pretty convenient to me.<p>&gt;Televisions moving from being screens which accept input, to self contained &#x27;smart&#x27; devices that require software updates and thus have a shortened useful lifespan.<p>I thought it was the other way around? ie. smart TVs are cheaper than dumb TVs because they&#x27;re subsidized by ad revenue. Also, the claim itself doesn&#x27;t really make any sense. Even if you stop getting software updates, that doesn&#x27;t prevent you from using it as a dumb display.

My dad bought me one of these bulky 12 speed razors, 5 years ago. I&#x27;ve used 1 cartridge from it about 6 months ago. I hadn&#x27;t shaved my face since before they came out. I use a clipper to keep it trimmed. Why use any disposable product whatsoever.<p>His point on single use plastics is spot on. I know a lot of people that love to lecture me about my moralistic views, the types of people who believe in overpopulation and are sad about the plastic in the ocean, not a single one of them pays any mind to the packaging of anything they buy. I do, and I&#x27;m not even one of those people. My &quot;footprint&quot; is probably less than 10% of most peoples, and I don&#x27;t even care the way they do.<p>People consume too much disposable crap. People act like they have to buy what&#x27;s on offer. People are convinced they&#x27;re helpless in the face of corporations. Start refusing to buy things and stop making excuses and until then you should feel ashamed to lecture anyone about anything.

I&#x27;ve used a straight razor for almost 20 years. Vindicating to read that the price of a Dovo pays for itself. I think my bar of shaving soap is probably the better part of decade old as well. In the interim, a whole peculiar subculture around shaving has developed, but you don&#x27;t have to be a part of it to just use a razor. Makes you unreachable by corporate marketing as well, which is itself its own reward.

Shaving is like an Inception-level hierarchy of waste and affectation. It&#x27;s easy to feel superior because you ditched the biggest brands, and still be wasting your money on unnecessary and crappy products because you were tricked by marketing. Those hipster shave-by-mail clubs are not really better than Gillette. And the safety razor market-disguised-as-a-community is also full of waste disguised by hipster affectations. Specialty soaps, exotic animal hair brushes, elaborate rituals, etc. Underneath it all is the fact that you CAN buy a cheap, adequate, no-name safety razor somewhere, and you can buy cheap adequate blades in bulk with some trial and error, and you can find some combination of products that will work on your skin without going for specialty and prestige. Don&#x27;t buy these things as tokens of a lifestyle, buy them for utility.

&gt; Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis.<p>I fell for this marketing thinking non-stick was the best out of everything always and kept having to buy new pans and trays when the teflon would eventually flake off thinking it was my fault. Stainless steel is fine: works without a lot of food sticking for most things, comes out clean from the dishwasher, doesn&#x27;t require much care, and there&#x27;s no easily damaged coating so should last decades.<p>Related but more because of recipes writers repeating tips without considering waste, but I find there&#x27;s almost zero need for tinfoil, wax paper or plastic wrap either. A reusable silicone mat works if you need a non-stick surface or to cover a dish or bowl, and you can reuse food plastic containers to store things in the fridge. Most e.g. bread recipes insist on putting plastic wrap over the bowl of dough when proving when you can just use a plate, silicone mat or dish towel.

Not a new phenomenon: Gillette patented the technique that Wilkinson Sword had invented for making stainless steel blades, and suppressed the production of the much longer lasting stainless steel blades for a while because they &quot;knew that any gain for them in market share would be overwhelmed by the dramatic reduction in the size of the market&quot;[0] (side note: when Wilkinson Sword started producing stainless steel blades using the technique they invented they were &quot;forced to pay royalty to Gillette for each blade it sold&quot;[1]).<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wilkinson_Sword#Stainless_steel_razor_blades" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wilkinson_Sword#Stainless_stee...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gillette#Super_Blue_and_the_Wilkinson_shock" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gillette#Super_Blue_and_the_Wi...</a>

Add dishwasher pods to the list. It’s literally just smoke and mirrors for nearly the same formula as powder, only less of it per package. All those fancy colors? It’s die. It’s the same formula across the entire pod. So… Yep: more cost, more waste, and it has some reasonable downsides. For “convenience,” since I guess deciding how much to put into the tray is just too much work.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Ll6-eGDpimU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Ll6-eGDpimU</a>

The key thing to recognize with modern Gillette cartridges is that the blades last a lot longer than the lubricating strips. For me, those lubricating strips last a couple of shaves at most but I get 15-20 shaves out of the blades.<p>When the strip wears off the shaves get a bit uncomfortable while that stuff peels off but then they start to feel better again after that. A friend of mine actually hates the strip so much that she scrapes it off brand new razor cartridges before using them for the first time! I think the discomfort caused by the worn out lubricating strip is a subtle push by Gillette to get people to toss the cartridge and start a new one before the blades have even begun to dull.

Why is a thread on electric razors not the top comment on a post about the expense&#x2F;waste of straight razors?<p>I get that they have some downsides, but if we’re talking about the expense&#x2F;waste of straight razors, then it would make sense to consider electric razors.<p>I’ve seen so many ads about companies trying to “invent” the most effective, lowest cost straight razor and it still confuses me, given we already have electric razors that will last literally years before needing to be replaced.<p>I’ve been using my current electric razor for probably close to 10 years, and while the blades could probably use to be replaced (still on the original), they get the job done about 98%, which is completely fine given the expense, waste, and mess of straight razors.<p>Edit: the article itself doesn’t even mention electric razors (as a solution to the expense&#x2F;waste of straight razors), almost as if they don’t even exist. And before I posted this (after 3 hours of comments), maybe only one or two other buried comments referenced electric razors. So genuinely curious why so many don’t even give them a second thought?

Hair trimmer set to shortest length will make your face like shaven 2 days ago. Costs nothing. Needs no foam, no aftershave gel, creates no irritation or red skin, just splash of water and optional facial creme. My condolences to those who must have a clean shave every day of their life.

There is maybe another reason why cartridge razors are standard now, apart from the lower upfront cost: They are foolproof. It&#x27;s more or less impossible to hurt yourself with it. On the other hand, it&#x27;s absolutly possible to cut yourself with a double edge &#x2F; safety razor, as you have to handle a razor blade and you can scratch yourself quite badly if you don&#x27;t hold it at the right angle.<p>But IMO, as with many of the other things mentioned in the blog post, the &quot;additional hassle&quot; to stay out of such closed ecosystems is often worth it. It&#x27;s a nice experience and I can absolutely recommend the DE &#x2F; safety razor. Also try different blades from different manufacturers, there are real differences between them :D

<i>It is, however, hard to find these sorts of razors. If you go into a shop to buy a razor, you will almost certainly not be able to buy one - but you will be faced with a wide range of very similar cartridge razors. The double edged razor has become a product that you can only buy on the internet, and which you will only buy if you know that it exists.</i><p>This <i>was</i> true -- in about 2010. My local CVS has three or four DE razor models available plus packs of blades, and has for several years now; it&#x27;s been interesting to watch the market switch.<p>I stopped razor-shaving a while ago, and just use a corded trimmer without a guard to set neck and cheeklines when i trim the rest of my beard.<p>edit:<p>In fact, a lot of examples listed in this piece have a similar pushback story. This is encouraging!<p>- cast iron pans are ridiculously available, cheap, and heavily marketed.<p>- shaving soap pucks (and bar shampoo, upscale bar soap, etc.) over body wash are pretty hyped at the moment.<p>- 2.5 kilo bags of loose-leaf brand teas are available widely (taylor&#x27;s of harrowgate, etc) as well as from more specialty shops.<p>- everyone i know shits on pod coffee machines (though they are widely used, alas; some shifts towards compostable pods have been made)<p>- retrogrouch cycling, which never left, has been boosted with &quot;party pace&quot; cycling advocates. eTAP is certainly here to stay, but quality mechanical components are and will remain widely available.<p>smart TVs, food deserts, and bullshit food subscription services are harder to rebut :&#x2F;

The argument seems to be that people pay more money for products they find more convenient. That&#x27;s true, but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a problem by itself: it&#x27;s their choice how to spend their money.<p>The problem would arise if the more convenient choice also externalized in some way: if it hurt other people, or the planet, and so on. There is some vague idea that throwing away a cartridge &quot;produces more waste&quot; than throwing away a razor blade alone, which may be true, but the difference between them seems like a trivial amount, as does for that matter the total share of waste from all shaving cartridges put together.<p>In other words, I don&#x27;t see the harm; shave however you want.

My dad never taught me how to shave, and for the longest time I just used these disposable Gillette style blades, and got terrible results. Missed spots, cuts and skin infections.<p>At some point I decided to do some research and settled on double edge disposable blades.<p>I&#x27;ve never been happier, and feel much better about my skin too. These are the products I use:<p>* A wooden synthetic shaving brush (I felt bad about the beavers)<p>* Taylor of Old Bond St shaving cream. It lasts forever.<p>* A ceramic lathering bowl<p>* Floris after shave. Also lasts forever<p>* Jagen David B40 (make sure to get a butterfly version, they&#x27;re much more convenient)<p>* Derby blades (I bought a bulk of 500 blades for like £30 quid, and I&#x27;m only halfway through using them after many years).<p>Now I probably spend less than £40 per year replacing shaving cream and after shave, having had to spend that amount monthly on disposable blades, and that terrible canned cream, and I hardly ever get any cuts anymore. And my shave is much closer.<p>Besides these products look great in the bathroom.

My facial hair is very thick and realistically I can use any type of blade at most once. I used to use Gillette blades, but at the advice of the Internet I switched to double edge razors.<p>The Internet claims this type of shaving is best, not just in terms of cost and enviromental impact, but that it reduces irritation and produces a closer shave.<p>After using a double edge razor for over five tears now, let me dubunk these claims. They are 100% grade bullshit. They don&#x27;t produce a closer shave, not even close, and they are way, way, harsher on my skin than Gillette disposables. Maybe my skill in using them just sucks, and for other people these claims are true, but here&#x27;s the thing, the Gillette cartridges are foolproof. They are more convenient in every way, you can actually fly with them, and you can use cheap shaving foams instead of hard to get shaving soap. And of course, they are much, much quicker to use. I can shave with disposables in less than five minutes, but using my double edge razor takes me around 20 minutes.<p>I still use my double edge razor because I like the feeling of accomplishement I get after I manage to get a decent shave with such a primitive technology, but anyone who claims double edge razors are &quot;better&quot; is simply insane.

IMO min maxing everything is sometimes not great either. I just don&#x27;t shave every day, maybe every few days but no longer since it gets too long, and it seems like the blades last for a very long time (over a month at least). I can&#x27;t remember when I bought the $30 pack of a bunch of cartriges but its been sitting in my bathroom seemingly forever.<p>Then there is the actual using of the thing. Go ahead and shave with one of those box cutter razors. The first couple of times your sink will look like bloody murder and even after that you need to be careful. I don&#x27;t want to think about technique. I barely heed grain. With a cartrige I can even use just hot water in a pinch and mash the thing against my face and get an OK shave in not very long. I&#x27;m paying extra sure, a dozen dollars a year I guess, but I get the convenience of speed and being able to have the sloppiest shaving technique imaginable and not walk out with a dozen globs of tp fused to my bleeding face.

Norelco (Phillips) electric shaver user here. I&#x27;m in my 70&#x27;s and have used them all my life. Got the habit from my dad, who sold them in his store and used them all his life too. Not as close as a blade, but much more comfortable to use, quicker, and less mess. Don&#x27;t need a sink or a towel, shaving cream, blades. You do have to replace the heads once a year or so, so they&#x27;re not super cheap, but they&#x27;re way, way more convenient.

The Gillette cartrdiges last quite a while and, for me, 15 shaves would be a conservative guess. I don&#x27;t recall ever cutting myself either, unlike with old style razors and cheap disposables where it was pretty much a daily hazard.<p>Nonetheless, I often go a week between shaves nowadays and this seems to be much more socially acceptable than used to be the case.

OP is simply referring to the Gillette Model [1] of business practice. I&#x27;ve been spotting, and avoiding it like the plague, for years.<p>Just wished that more people saw, understood, and voted with their wallets - the world would be a less costly place (both to ourselves, and the planet).<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Razor_and_blades_model" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Razor_and_blades_model</a>

I don&#x27;t understand why people think it is so important a thesis to convince people that a person sells something to get as much profit for his product. Much as it is important to educate people of loss leaders, subscription models, brand marketing, and other newer ways profit maximization happens, they aren&#x27;t really cutting edge concepts either.<p>I make a decent living now, and I use Harry&#x27;s razors. Could I use and change the cheaper disposable ones more often? Sure. Is Harry&#x27;s quality worth paying for so that I nick my face less? Very much so. I don&#x27;t really need to be told they&#x27;re &quot;out to get me&quot;. I&#x27;m a big boy who can do simple price math.

I switched to double-edged wet shaving years ago. Not mentioned is that they also are a better shave, and less prone to causing ingrown hairs &#x2F; bumps. A 100-pack of Astra platinum blades costs me 10 bucks, and lasts 3 years.

I bought a traditional &quot;safety razor&quot; 15 years ago, and haven&#x27;t looked back since. No more razor burn. I shave regularly and got somewhat dense and coarse beard, yet I spend less than $10 a year on blades now, down from about $100 when I used disposable Gillette cartridges.

I totally agree on this and I would like to add an item:<p>- glass smartphones - the iPhone X and Pixel 3 are all in a unibody of glass that is very fragile despite all gorilla glass marketing bullshit. The result is that we have to use plastic bumpers. We could have just stayed with plastic&#x2F;aluminum frames that allowed to open the back and replace the battery. Glass unibody smartphones are made to last less and be less repairable. I&#x27;m sick of this and next phone I&#x27;ll get a Fairphone <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fairphone.com&#x2F;</a> and I purchased a Nokia 105 for 25$ whose battery last 35 DAYS on standby as backup.

I have both a double edge razor and a cartridge razor. I used to use the double edge razor more. I now use the cartridge razor more, for two reasons: first, it takes less time. Second, I figured out how to make it cost less money and generates less waste.<p>The trick on the latter is that I discovered I can keep a single one of Target&#x27;s store brand Mach3-compatible cartridges going for 3-ish months. This was due to a combination of tricks I had already been using to keep Mach3 blades going for a while (dry after use, store in a dry place, strop before use), plus the more recent discovery that Target&#x27;s generic blades are higher quality and greater durability, at a fraction of the price.<p>With double edge blades, on the other hand, I can get two shaves out of one, tops, before it starts to give me nicks. I&#x27;ve tried stropping these blades, too, but without much success.<p>So that works out to me being able to get about 2 years&#x27; worth of shaves for about US$7 with the cartridge razor. I&#x27;m not sure what the exchange rate is right now, but I think that works out to about 1&#x2F;3 of the £10&#x2F;yr that the author calculated for safety razor blades.<p>(On the other hand, I can definitely get a <i>better</i> shave out of the DE razor.)

I think there&#x27;s an accidental old-vs-new comparison which is causing a conflation between the (a) low up-front cost vs low per-use cost and waste (b) convenience and ease-of-use vs products that require slightly more attention from their users.<p>E.g. some here are saying &quot;multi-blade cartridges are easier and faster&quot; ... which is true. Users of old-fashioned safety razors often have a little learning curve when they adopt, and have to be a bit more careful even after they&#x27;ve on-boarded. But that ease of use doesn&#x27;t come from the cartridge per se -- it&#x27;s from the multiple blades and pivoting head. Recognizing this allows for the possibility of low-waste multi-blade pivoting-head safety razors (e.g. leafshave.com but I think they&#x27;re not alone).<p>Lower cost-per-use and lower waste doesn&#x27;t have to get rolled up with some nostalgic return to products as they existed decades ago. But I think both consumers and systemic corrections (e.g. we should tax externalities associated with waste streams, and with carbon) need to nudge companies away from making disposable or short-lived products.

Semi-serious cyclist chiming in about this part of the article:<p>&quot;Well understood mechanical bike shifting transitions to electronic shifting which requires you to pay more and charge your pedal bike (Not sure about this example, as in theory a bike derailleur needs not be a repeated purchased)&quot;<p>One of my bikes has a Shimano electronic shifter. The others are a mix between mechanical SRAM and Shimano components. The electronic shifter has two advantages that mean something to me. First, you never have to deal with &quot;cable stretch&quot; whereby the alignment gradually shifts off-center and you have to use the micro-adjustment knob to re-align. It starts out perfect, and it stays perfect. Second, &quot;oops&quot; shifting (i.e., failing to shift before you&#x27;ve hit a hill and have to shift at low a RPM while applying force to stay moving) is much smoother. Those are both real advantages to me.<p>The problem I&#x27;ve run into, at least with the Shimano electronic shifter, is durability. Both the front and rear derailleurs have failed on me mid-ride for different reasons. The front because there&#x27;s a part that pushes against a plate when up-shifting, and that fatigued to the point of snapping off completely after a couple of years of use. The rear because of a minor slide-out. Some sensitive part broke in the mechanism, and the entire thing had to be replaced. I&#x27;ve slammed plenty of mechanical rear derailleurs into the pavement or a tree stump or whatever, and they&#x27;ve all survived just fine, so long as the hangar was intact. I&#x27;ve even subjected a mechanical rear derailleur to the dreaded &quot;get caught in the rear wheel spokes&quot; abuse, and it came through just fine after replacing the hanger.<p>I&#x27;ve never forgotten to charge the battery, but I&#x27;ve heard of people on longer group rides (think 70+ miles) losing the ability to shift when they&#x27;re 40 miles out into the countryside because their battery died.<p>The electronic shifter just seems much more fragile to me. But it&#x27;s a really nice shifting experience while it works!<p>All that said, my N+1 bike I just picked up last weekend has mechanical shifters. I&#x27;ll adjust the knob when the cable stretches and deal with the occasional &quot;oops&quot; when I hit hills in the wrong gear because I value durability and robustness more.

&gt;&gt;A set including the razor body and some heads generally costs a little above £20 and replacement heads cost in the region of £1.75. Gillette claim that each blade can be used for 15 shaves. This sounds pretty optimistic to me. But who knows.<p>Who knows? I cannot possibly be the only male here who disputes this math. I have a Gillet razor, one with a fancy 5-blade rotating head. It also has a silly vibrator that I am too afraid to use. The blades last <i>forever</i>. Not 15 shaves. More like 150 or more. I have to shave literally every morning, often in a hurry and without shaving cream (military). But I never have any issues. I think that the last time I switched out the blade might have been September of last year when. I had dropped it on concrete and damaged the plastic head. The blades were still fine. The metallurgy behind these things is frankly astonishing.

Oster small animal trimmer: $100 or so initial investment; no ongoing costs. Electricity to run it is trivial compared to the light to see yourself shaving.<p>Might need a new set of blades after a couple decades.

Why shave? Just grow a beard. Get one of those mechanical clippers [1] to keep it at the length you prefer and you&#x27;re done. Your can also let it grow to $legnth, cut it to a stubble and let it grow out again. Whatever you do you&#x27;ll be doing your skin a favour by not pulling a blade over it every day.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.etsystatic.com&#x2F;21375310&#x2F;r&#x2F;il&#x2F;668221&#x2F;3688482515&#x2F;il_1140xN.3688482515_6e25.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.etsystatic.com&#x2F;21375310&#x2F;r&#x2F;il&#x2F;668221&#x2F;3688482515&#x2F;il_...</a>

&gt; shaving is too expensive<p>maybe, but many men have decided not to shave anymore anyway<p>&gt; about gillette and co<p>I have used both the &quot;disposable&quot; blades (that barely last a week) and the more robust ones that last a month (proper razor blades), and the thing is, the shaving experience is completely difference. The proper razor blades are very sharp and can result in cuts if you are not careful, whereas it&#x27;s fairly difficult to cut yourself with a Gilette or Schick for that matter. They work in very different dimensions. It&#x27;s almost not the same product.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Panasonic-Electric-ES8103S-Nanotech-Flexible&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B001DNE3KQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Panasonic-Electric-ES8103S-Nanotech-F...</a><p>is a solid product that I&#x27;ve been using over 15 years

Electronic bike shifting is a bad example here imo. You do have to stay on top of the charging (you get about 20 hours of riding out of a single charge), but aside from that the precision and consistency is waaaaaaay better than anything that had come before it, at least from my perspective. I used to have to adjust my derailleur every couple of rides on my mountain bike, but with electronic shifting I haven&#x27;t had to adjust it in _years_.

Yes, modern razors are a scam; they have AMAZING marketing teams. You still can buy old-style razors and blades cheap from Amazon because there&#x27;s still a healthy demand.<p>As for the rest of the article:<p>&gt; Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis. They also seem to be poisonous.<p>No, no, and no. Teflon pans perform wonderfully, are replaced maybe every 10-20 years depending on workmanship if you don&#x27;t scratch them up with metal utensils, and are not poisonous unless you&#x27;re eating the flakes from your scratched up pans.<p>&gt; Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.<p>They produce good coffee in many styles that would normally require a lot of work, and are MASSIVELY convenient. Press a button and a couple of minutes later, your cup of coffee is ready to drink.<p>&gt; Televisions moving from being screens which accept input, to self contained &#x27;smart&#x27; devices that require software updates and thus have a shortened useful lifespan.<p>Their lifespan is unchanged. You can continue to use them as &quot;dumb&quot; screens using HDMI input and plug in an external device. You can also buy a smart TV and never connect it to the internet.<p>&gt; In many inner city shops it is now hard to buy an individual piece of fruit.<p>For some fruit maybe, but if the point is saving money, why are you buying individually?<p>&gt; Subscription services like Hello Fresh, where you can pay well over the odds to have some vegetables delivered to you.<p>So buy them from the market like we&#x27;ve been doing forever. If you&#x27;re lazy and rich, use these delivery services. You have choice.

I found that wiping down Gillette cartridge blades with Isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol after use significantly improves their longevity, specifically how long they keep a sharp edge for.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just convenience. Shaving with a Mach3 is a hell of a lot easier than a DE. Cooking with a Teflon pan is a hell of a lot easier than looking after a carbon steel skillet. The vast majority of people have busy lives, and don’t want to deal with that hassle. For those of us who do, great.

I stopped buying Gillette products after their bizarre woke advertisement. That being said, cheaper cartridges can be had from other retailers, making their economics look more favourable compared with double-edged razors. Not to mention that I’d rather avoid the bloodbath of shaving with the latter.

I have been exclusively shaving with a double edged safety razor and hard soap&#x2F;brush for about 2 years. My skin is in much better condition now than when I used either a 5 bladed monstrosity or an electric shaver, an I generate less waste. I used to get a lot of red blotchey rashes on my neck, no more. The blades I use cost between 7 and 14 cents each and last a full week of shaves. I did accumulate about a half dozen handles, some vintage and some high quality modern ones, but one of the most comfortable and reliable has been the Qshave Adjustable, which is a clone of the Merkur Futur after it’s patent expired. It costs $10-$15 dollars from the usual online retailers. Throw away the blades it comes with and buy 100 Astra SS for $10 and you have 700 great shaves for $25.

Meuh. I have a light-coloured beard and modest growth. Daily shaves are more than adequate - due to the light colour, a spot missed one or two days is practically invisible. Hell, you can hardly see the beard until 10 or so days of non-shaving. You can feel it though.<p>Anyway, I use similar razors such as his and tossed them when I realised they were too dull. A 10 pack could last me a year, but only if I pay attention. Otherwise, it&#x27;s bound to be closer to 2 years. Note that I don&#x27;t deliberately do this for costs reasons - I just prefer not to thrash something that is still decently usable.<p>Obviously, your mileage may vary. Nevertheless, for at least some people, shaving costs about one 10-pack per year.

I&#x27;ve been using a Philips electric razor that someone didn&#x27;t want and gave me for the past 15 years. The battery (I think it&#x27;s still a NiMh, that&#x27;s how old the thing is) is getting bad, but it&#x27;s still OK. Never changed a blade.

Maybe this is why beards are popular again?<p>Anyhow, as a bearded man, only trimming&#x2F;shaving the edges with a razor, a pack of razor blades lasts me probably 3 months.<p>Also on the double edge vs cartridge, as another poster mentioned, cartridges are foolproof and give a good shave.

Word of warning from a 15 year double edge razor user.<p>Just because it can theoretically be cheaper to go the double edge razor route, doesn&#x27;t actually mean it will be.<p>First there are all those blades to try. Then soap brushes, then soaps (so many artisan soaps). Then you find yourself looking at aftershaves (so many of those too), and balms, you might even decide to try pre-shave products. Then you will find more soap, or cream, or shave sticks you want to try. Then more razors, slants, open comb, shavettes....<p>If you let it, you can find yourself spending way more on products after switching to a double edge razor per year than you were with cartridges.<p>Yes, you can bring some of these costs down by buying samples.

Another example is dishwasher detergent. I can rarely find the powdered stuff anymore. And even the gel is being pushed out in place of pods. I bought new detergent last week and the shelf was full of pods with only a couple options for gel.

Unlike Gillette, safety razors do not use proprietary systems for their blades. The consequence is you can use any double edge blade and you can have fun finding the double edge blades that best matches your razor and beard. Shameless plug: years ago with my brother I made this small site (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.razorbladesclub.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.razorbladesclub.com</a>) that I presented on &quot;Show HN&quot; exactly to allow people to buy samplers of blades and try them out. It didn&#x27;t get much attention then but years later the site is still alive and hopefully it still serves people well :)

I’ve never understood shaving. Why not just buy a trimmer and trim it down to 1mm? Much more convenient, faster and cheaper. Also there’s very little visual difference - especially now that everything is remote.

Disposable Gillettes have lasted me the longest with the least headache. more than 3 blades is insanity. I bet I get 25 shaves on a razor. not eco friendly but the plastic handle waste is minimal for 12 a year.

I&#x27;ve been experimenting a bit with different razor brands recently. I&#x27;ve been using Schick Hydro for years, currently US$19 for a four-pack at CVS. I tried Dollar Shave Club at US$12 a pack but came away very unimpressed. Lots of pulling, and not great for smoothness either. Harry&#x27;s at the same price seems like more of a direct alternative to the Hydro. I use one cartridge a week, so that&#x27;s ~US$80 per year without even having to try anything significantly different or change technique as with an old-school razor.<p>The other part of the cost equation is gel&#x2F;foam&#x2F;soap. I stopped buying overpriced gel and foam quite a few years ago. Hair conditioner (with maybe a bit of shampoo or liquid soap to make it foamier) works pretty well for a <i>tiny</i> fraction of the price. Liquid hand soap or body wash works even better for slightly more. The same goat-milk soap I use for everything else (including hair) doesn&#x27;t work quite as well when lathered by hand, but it&#x27;s closer with the one-time purchase of a brush. While the direct cost isn&#x27;t the greatest, the marginal cost is near zero since I wear the shower bars down to slivers at a sufficient rate to support shaving as well.<p>In short, it&#x27;s pretty easy to save a couple of hundred bucks a year without really changing the experience. If you want to go further than that because you enjoy the challenge (or for any other reason) you certainly can and should, but the incremental savings at that point are a bit smaller.

I just use my clippers and call it a day.

The author is overlooking the fact that good quality cartridge blade is superior to old-style double-edged one. It gives a closer shave and cause more skin irritation. Depending on your skin type it could be worth extra money. I still recall ocassional cuts from using double-edged blade.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gillette.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;shaving-tips&#x2F;shaving-science&#x2F;why-do-more-razor-blades-matter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gillette.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;shaving-tips&#x2F;shaving-science&#x2F;why-...</a>

I have been using the classic double edge shaver for a decade now. It&#x27;s as shiny as the day I bought it. I use a blade about every couple of weeks (my facial hair is kind of &quot;average&quot; I would guess). I shave every 2 or 3 days. I think I use one blade every couple of weeks. It&#x27;s extremely cheap. If interested I have a Parker brand long handle (do no like the short handle versions) and I use dove soap as my &quot;lubricant&quot;. There is no reason to use those money pit plastic polluter, 20 blades. I hear Merkurs are pretty good too. I use cheap Shark brand blades that a 100 pack lasts me basically forever, but I&#x27;m sure there are other great brands as well.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Parker-99R-Heavyweight-Butterfly-Platinum&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B003NTHWLU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Parker-99R-Heavyweight-Butterfly-Plat...</a><p>Other things I&#x27;ve done, all my pans are cast iron, all my storage is glassware, all my utensils are silicone or metal, I drink only drip or Moka pot coffee. I do have a ceramic coated dutch oven though, but the coating is said to be real ceramic and not ptfe (or any of the &quot;safe&quot; coatings that are claimed out there). All my cutting boards are wood or bamboo. I tried to get as much plastic out of my kitchen as humanly possible.

That two-bladed razor is the same style as the one my father gave me when I was 16. In those days it was called a &quot;safety razor&quot;. Nowadays I use a straight razor (&quot;cutthroat&quot;) for the first over, and a Mach III for a second over, &quot;against the grain&quot;. I&#x27;ve been using cutthroats for 15 years, but I still don&#x27;t have the confidence to use one against the grain.<p>No electric razor has ever &quot;cut the mustard&quot; for me. If I can&#x27;t have a wet shave then I&#x27;ll stay with the beard, thanks.<p>A cutthroat of course has no replaceables; but you do need a strop and a stone. I have a belgian stone, which I pass the razors over every 6 months or so.<p>No pressurised cans of foam for me; I use a cream from The Body Shop, but I could just use a puck of soap like everyone else. Anyway, that means I need a brush: I use a silverpoint badger brush.<p>So two cutthroats: call it £100 each. One badger brush: about £50. Belgian stone: £120. Total: £370 one-off cost (brushes do wear out, but if you dry them properly they should last 20 years). The Mach III blades are good for about a dozen shaves each, and give a pretty good &quot;baby&#x27;s bottom&quot; finish. I use a bay rum cologne as an aftershave lotion.<p>Truth is, I happen to like sharp blades. So I use the belgian stone on my carbon-steel chef&#x27;s knife and my Buck pocket knife.

&gt; It is, however, hard to find these sorts of razors. If you go into a shop to buy a razor, you will almost certainly not be able to buy one - but you will be faced with a wide range of very similar cartridge razors. The double edged razor has become a product that you can only buy on the internet, and which you will only buy if you know that it exists.<p>So... I did buy mine off amazon; but that was mostly due to living in the rural areas where there wasn&#x27;t much for shopping choices to begin with. With that in mind, consider this.<p>I was still able to find double edged stuff at the local store now and then too, but it was generally a Christmas gift item, and stuff like that. Or tucked away in the top corner of the bathroom section, where only the old fella from the early 1900&#x27;s might be interested in looking for some Dapper Dan or something like that.<p>I can even find them in some stores like... I think it was Shopper drug mart?<p>But all in all, just going on amazon and typing &quot;Double edge razor&quot; or &quot;Single blade razor&quot; is generally enough to find what you are looking for and have in on hand in 3 days or less usually.<p>For context, I am in Canada. So this might be more of a thing for us here in Canada what with being able to find this stuff without having to go to a specialty store for it, like those fancy beard barber shops.

I have one of those double edged rasor, I&#x27;ve been using it for like 20 years. Mine is made of silver, which is a good anti bacteria. For the blade, I use carbon steel ones made for cleaning the vitroceram&#x2F;induction hot plates. They cut much better than stainless steel, and are cheaper, but must be changed once a week to prevent rust and also it is better to unscrew the razor a bit to let them dry. I don&#x27;t use any cream, just regular soap and water.

The opposite could be argued in other markets too:<p>Spotify&#x2F;Apple Music is super convenient and relatively cheap, if you listen to music even at moderate levels. Yeah you don&#x27;t own the albums, but you get all the value-added features like music discovery, playlist, sharing etc.<p>Netflix also the same: have access to many movies and series at a very low cost (if you watch even moderately), also comes with the same: you don&#x27;t own the content (but how many times were you planning to watch the same movie&#x2F;episode in average anyway when there are thousands to pick from? And even if you do, it&#x27;s still cheaper if that episode is not literally the <i>only</i> thing you watch), and recommendations.<p>Tinder&#x2F;Bumble also the same: you don&#x27;t go out to places (which would cost MUCH more than the app subscription) and try to find a mate: you match and have sex. You might or might not have a partner in the end, but that&#x27;s not the promise anyway.<p>Same for iPhone subscriptions in US (the one you pay a monthly cheap fee and always have the latest iPhone).<p>Pretty much sure there are many examples out there too.<p>They are all convenient, and are actually cheaper than the &quot;old way&quot;, giving access on demand to whatever you like from a big catalog.

I switched to shaving with the double edge safety razor 15 years ago from the cartridge style and haven&#x27;t looked back. I get a better shave for considerably less money. I find that I can shave daily and get a week&#x27;s worth of shaves before replacing the blade, each of which costs just pennies. Coupled with using a soap puck and badger hair shaving brush, I&#x27;m completely satisfied with my shaving ritual.

Having a beard, i have a trimmer, i only just replaced one i had for fifteen years because i saw a sleeker, smaller and more modern one on sale. I still use razors occasionally for some things, but i’ve never bought more than one pack of blades a year, seems if you only use them for bits of hair in weird places and rinse them well, they last a long time<p>Pans i understand and probably don’t replace my non stick ones as often as i should, i consider cast iron but it seems like a huge hassle.<p>I do like teabags, actually particular cheap brands from my home country that i just really like the taste of. At work we have tons of fancy loose leaf tea, but i just really, really like my imported stuff.<p>I have a mocha pot at home, these are great. I always thought the nespresso machines were slightly less convenient. I have one coffee a day and those machines take up valuable kitchen real estate.<p>I walk to work or use public transport<p>I find the packaging of veg intensely annoying, if you’re single and want a handful of a particular veg for dinner it is hard to find. And i hate wasting all the excess i have to buy for one meal i want to cook. I have 2 supermarkets right by me, and they mostly offer loose veg, but on some they don’t (green beans seem to come only in hugely over sized bags) there’s some supermarkets (and markets) in the city that offer all loose veg, but i find i can only use them at the weekends. I find this ine particularly annoying as it discourages healthy eating.<p>My smart tv is disconnected from the internet and it works just fine with a combination of my playstation as media server, and a raspberry pi running a plex server<p>I live close to supermarkets, am a fussy eater and the idea of having unknown and unexpected food stuffs delivered to me frightens me

I use safety and very non-safety straight razors for trimming my beard. The converse of the TSA thing is also true: using a straight razor allows you to travel anywhere with a very, very dangerous weapon in your bag that nobody will look twice at. I just check my bag like a big ol grownup who doesn&#x27;t need to Tony Stark it directly off the plane to get into my caravan of black SUVs.

Why author doesn&#x27;t take a change in quality into account? I never used a double-edged blades for shaving, but I think that 2- or 3-bladed cartridges will generally shave better or at least quicker. Not sure about 5-bladed, but whatever.<p>Teflon skillets are much more convenient for cooking than cast iron, that I can tell from the experience. I once bought a super-expensive cast iron with non-sticking coating, and it became unusable after about a year, same as Teflon one. So the problem obviously a coating, not a skillet material.<p>All right, I am a selfish being who wants to just put the skillet into dishwasher machine and press &quot;start&quot;, thus I have to buy a new skillet once a year instead of once a decade. But where are we heading to if we try to reverse this process? At Malta, where wood was in a scarcity, they developed a communal ovens, one for a village, where everybody was coming to prepare their food for the day. It even gave a birth to a very specifiс local cuisine. Do we want something like this in our cities?

I also used to hate shaving. I&#x27;ve switched to &quot;classical&quot; Timor Solingen razor recently ($25) + hard soap. While shaving took me some more time initially (+5 minutes every other day), overall quality of life was improved. This is single piece razor, so changing blades is as fast, and it gives better results than 5 blade heads. And much reduced plastic waste is also important to me. I don&#x27;t know from where this myth of how faster or better &quot;G* Mach3&quot; (or similar) razors are, but sure the marketing department of those companies did a good job.

I&#x27;ve literally heard it referred to as the &quot;razor razor blade model&quot; when referring to a low cost disposable where you make your money and a loss leader capital piece of equipment that is fancy and helps you sell more of the disposables. Much of the medical device industry has oriented itself to this kind of model.

My favorite trick is to buy imported Gillette cartridges from foreign countries. These cartridges have been discontinued in the U.S. market but remain my personal favorite brand. I get my cartridges for around $1&#x2F;each. Not cheap, but half the price of contemporary cartridges, and with far less plastic waste than fully-disposable razors. (I’m willing to pay more to protect the environment.)<p>As someone who fully shaves his head almost daily, closeness, speed, and minimal risk of injury are the most important factors for me. I’ve tried all the alternatives - electric shavers, old-school double edged blades with handles, etc. and found them either to not provide a close enough shave, or to be too high-maintenance or slow (too many passes required) to be worth the cost savings. Electric is out because I shave in the shower and they don’t cut close enough anyway. (Also, electric shaver blades dull over time, too.)

These shavers are why I now grow a goatee. Even a goatee will cut your shaving costs in half, beards much more. Obligatory Onion satire on the subject:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...</a>

I use a double headed razor, and this article is ridiculous. I don&#x27;t use it because it&#x27;s cheaper or works better, I use it because I rarely shave and one pack of blades has lasted me <i>years</i>.<p>But it&#x27;s so problematic. It does not shave nearly as well as a modern multi-razor disposable, it&#x27;s prone to cutting me if I&#x27;m not careful, and takes more time. You can&#x27;t bring the blades on airplanes. It&#x27;s clear that you actually need disposables sometimes, and that they often shave better and for longer.<p>The best and cheapest shave is from a straight razor. You know how many people use that? About zero. ~$150 for a decent razor and you have it for life. But then it&#x27;s a chore to maintain and not easy to shave with.<p>It&#x27;s clear that we pay more for products that are more convenient. They are providing additional value, even if the cost is inflated.

You can get a box of 100 Astra superior platinum double edge blades for £8 on Amazon last time I got them. Something like the Fatip Picolo is a quality razor that will last you 5+ years. It cost me £15 plus shipping.<p>DE shaving is also better for your skin by a wide margin. It also gives a closer shave. I can’t recommend anything more highly.<p>However you may get sucked into the rabbit hole and DE shaving can become a hobby and suddenly you have a Muhle SS [1] that cost you £120 together with 100 different shaving soaps that cost £10-20 each and ultra fine ultra thick shave brushes that can cost £80<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.executive-shaving.co.uk&#x2F;muhle-r41gs-stainless-steel-double-edged-safety-razor?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7LasuvbN9wIVqYBQBh1ZIwokEAQYASABEgJIQfD_BwE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.executive-shaving.co.uk&#x2F;muhle-r41gs-stainless-st...</a>

As I became older I found that the fancy multi-blade razors don’t give as good a shave as the safety razor (called double edge in the blog post). The blades are just too flimsy.<p>The biggest advantage of the flimsy multi-blades is that groggy morning shavers are less likely to cut themselves (but at the cost of being less likely to get a complete shave). In this regard they are good for kids.<p>And what’s the deal with shaving cream? For my whole shaving life I have just used the same soap I use to wash the rest of myself.<p>Funny side note: webcams are almost all pretty terrible. I switched to using an iPhone as an external webcam (I use the camo app to make this work) and now it’s clear whether I have a good shave or not. Luckily most of the time I don’t care :-)

Biggest issue with an injector razor blades (single edge&#x2F;straight razor) is carry-on traveling through TSA. Apparently they want to keep a monopoly on barber studios at 30,000 MSL<p>Switched several years ago from cartridges to an injector blade system, and have never considered switching back.

What a stupid article, for 20GBP you can easily buy electric razor&#x2F;clipper which will last you for 5-10 years minimum with almost zero maintenance and cost besides electricity.<p>I just replaced my clipper after maybe 8 years because spring in blade finally broke, it cost originally around 12€, I cut my hair, sons hair and shave myself occasionally. If I didn&#x27;t mind waiting 1-2 months for replacement blade from China I could get it replaced for 3EUR (oh and I replaced broken pet cable for maybe 1EUR USB cable with special connector). Instead I splurged for new 20EUR clipper but can&#x27;t say I&#x27;d be particularly happy, so probably will end up ordering replacement blade anyway, but at least no need to worry about backup.

This reads like something my 88-year-old father would write.<p>&quot;Everything used to be better, and hamburgers should cost a nickle!&quot;<p>Look, as consumers, we make choices. You can still get a safety-razor on Amazon if you want.<p>The trouble is... man, if you don&#x27;t know how to use them right, you can get some nasty cuts. For me... modern idiot-proof razors that this article rants against... well they&#x27;re just bliss. I can&#x27;t remember the last time I cut myself shaving.<p>My Dad said something like, &quot;They sure don&#x27;t make cars like they used to!&quot; And I said, &quot;No, they don&#x27;t... they&#x27;re much safer now, much better gas mileage...&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck</a>

I don&#x27;t know how much money I have saved over the years by just switching to an epilator. Women&#x27;s disposable razors tend to be even more expensive than men&#x27;s where I live; it&#x27;s always felt like a rip-off.<p>On the topic of razors, double edged blades also tend to be better at preventing ingrown hairs and irritation compared to the layered 3-4-blade system from what I&#x27;ve read and experienced. My experience is just with minor peach fuzz and not proper facial hair, but after years of trying different methods for this (eyebrow razors, chemical options, facial trimmers, regular razors), getting a cheap razor that takes double-edged blades is the thing that has worked the best so far.

&gt; Pay attention to what you buy, especially when you are changing from an old well understood product to a new, more convenient, equivalent.<p>Key phrase: more convenient.<p>We haven&#x27;t been sold products as much as we&#x27;ve bought into convenience matters above all else. Marketers can market all they want. Some times they do well, others not so well. Evidently they&#x27;ve been most successful selling the idea that we as individuals aren&#x27;t responsible and&#x2F;or accountable for our (consumer) decisions.<p>Blame the razor manufacturers. Blame Walmart. Blame Amazon. For what exactly, meeting a need in the market? I&#x27;m certainly not in favor of these outfits, but they&#x27;re not making our collective decisions either.

I recently bought a 300 pack of double edge razor blades for $31Cad. You get like the article says 3-5 shaves. Gillette is crazy if they think you can get 15 shaves; ya if you want a screwed up face and a breakout rash from the roughness of it. You still only get like 5 shaves before those too start to hurt. You can actually get a double edge razor blade body in the stores Walmart has them for like $20. They also sell blades but they are like $5-$6 for 5 blades it was much cheaper to buy a 300 pack off amazon. The thing is when I started shaving I didn’t even know that type of razor existed. I would have switched years earlier but just didn’t know they existed.

One that nobody seems to have mentioned:<p>Not being able to buy an individual piece of fruit in many inner-city shops. This isn&#x27;t about making it cost more, but about reducing waste.<p>When fruit is loose some people will simply grab what&#x27;s in front of them, but some will be choosy taking the best specimens. The inferior ones get rejected--but they were handled to do so. They get picked up, looked at and put down again and again--and pretty soon they&#x27;re not in shape to sell.<p>When you package fruit you considerably reduce people&#x27;s ability to determine which are the best specimens and you considerably reduce the amount of inspection&#x2F;rejection going on.<p>Thus more of the packaged fruit actually gets sold.

You can say what you like about razors, but I like shaving foam. It seems it has some additions to reduce sensitivity and to stop bleeding. So if you blades are dull, you will feel nothing. No more need to overcome pain or to run to a store early at the morning for new sharp blades. Or if you manage to shave off a bit of skin, you will stop bleeding in seconds. No more chewed paper bits on your face to stop bleeding. I really like this.<p>Though I totally agree about tea bags. Wildly bad tea, I cannot drink it. Did they boil tea for ten minutes to make it as bad as coffee? I think brits in any case boil their tea, so they probably do not know better. But what a waste of tea.

&gt; The double edged razor has become a product that you can only buy on the internet, and which you will only buy if you know that it exists.<p>If you have skin sensitivity issues and&#x2F;or ingrown hairs, then these razors should be at the very top of your wishlist. There is also quite a bit of joy in the art&#x2F;routine of using one of these. And I&#x27;ve nicked myself far more often (and far more painfully) with cartridge razors.<p>Cartridge razors are definitely one area where the newer technology is worse than what it replaced.<p>The only thing to be careful of is safely disposing of the razors, remember that they can cut through your trash bag and hurt anyone involved with your garbage collection.

&gt; Gillette claim that each blade can be used for 15 shaves.<p>Just because Gillette claims you need to replace the blade after 15 shaves doesn&#x27;t mean you need to. If you shave regularly, one of these five-blade heads will easily last you 50+ shaves. You may have to run it over your skin a couple more times with an old head - whereas with a new one just once would be enough.<p>If you let your hair get long then yes, it does get stuck in the razor sometimes and then may get plucked out - which is painful and can lead to infections as well.<p>Even an old Gillette Fusion is way safer than a double-edged blade or a straight razor, but if you really want to save costs one of those would be the way to go.

shaving with a double edged razor is virtually free after the initial small investment.

I stopped shaving year ago and I couldn&#x27;t be more happy.<p>I don&#x27;t have to worry about shaving almost every other day, replacing razors, shaving creams, aftershave lotions and on top of that I actually look better with a beard.

1 Bought Gilette razors at highway robbery prices 2 Bought Gilette Razors at Slightly less highway robbery prices at Costco 3 Bought Harry Razors at a significant savings (Gilette publishes ads &quot;Won&#x27;t you think of our employee&#x27;s familes!?) 4 Grew a Goatee, stopped shaving as much 4.5 Got a Braun to maintain the goatee 5 Found Gilette Razors offer a superior shave to the Harry ones Now Shave whole face every two weeks and just the non-goatee parts once a week. (Replace Gilette blades about once every two months.)<p>I&#x27;m good with what it&#x27;s costing me now.

Try wet shaving with a double edge blade and old fashioned security razor. You will find that your costs will go down significantly, your shave may improve and you will be using quality products too

If you&#x27;re reading this thread and wondering how to get started with a double edged safety razor, try this starter kit from Maggard. I wanted to try it for years but never knew where to start. I&#x27;ve solely been using this kit for about a year. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maggardrazors.com&#x2F;collections&#x2F;kits&#x2F;products&#x2F;maggard-razors-basic-traditional-wet-shaving-starter-kit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maggardrazors.com&#x2F;collections&#x2F;kits&#x2F;products&#x2F;maggard-...</a>

People used to resharpen safety razor blades. Not worth their time. DE razors are fine as long as the blade is sharp, but you have to change it 50-100 times per year, and there&#x27;s a decent chance of cutting yourself.<p>At least on the first few shaves, the three bladed ones have a lot of research behind them, and are technically superior to the single bladed ones; there&#x27;s a lab in long island that pays men to test razors that has evaluated this.<p>Whether the increase in quality and reduced effort is worth it is a personal preference

I bought a double-edged razor as mentioned in the article. Tried it several times, including staring at youtube videos to try to learn. Fucking destroyed my face every time, which is quite embarrassing and upsetting. Found it impossible to get a close shave. Maybe I&#x27;m just low IQ but I gave up. Superior people that can do it can fairly look down on me, but there is a market for people like me.<p>I didnt buy a brush, but if it takes a huge ritual to prepare to shave even after a shower, i&#x27;d rather just pay Gillette

I use one of those Philips rotary electric shavers and while it doesn&#x27;t get nearly as close it also lets me get hundreds or more shaves before I finally give in and get a new set of blades. I even wonder if the fact that the blades are against the metal shield means they effectively self sharpen, since it goes so many shaves.<p>I&#x27;m amazed there is so much waste with these exposed blade shaving systems. Even if they could be sharpened and re-used a dozen times you&#x27;d cut the waste down to 1&#x2F;10th....

This will probably sound weird but, what is the point at which are you changing blades?<p>I am using mine with just water and I always make sure that I clean&#x2F; shake off everything afterwards. My first proper blade lasted for 4 years. Then I changed just because I clicked on ad to receive free razor from Gillette. That one is already working for 2 years.<p>So I get that new blades are bit nicer to your skin, but as blade getting dull is gradual I never see the tipping point when I should get a new one. My skin is perfect by the way.

I own a variety of pans bought over the years but I&#x27;ve found that I am almost exclusively using a 10&quot; cast iron pan my grandmother used to use and a 12&quot; pan I bought for maybe $30 or $40 some decades ago as well as a 5-quart cast iron dutch oven. They&#x27;re both seasoned and so are basically non-stick. They heat evenly and retain that heat for a long time. The only downside is that they&#x27;re heavy so you do not want to drop them on your foot.

Modern &#x27;razors&#x27; are a scam. You don&#x27;t need 2 blades, 3 or even 4. One blade will do the job better than any combination of gillette rubbish and for a much lower cost.<p>I would recommend investing in a decent safety razor - which will last forever if well cared for. ($40-80 range). Then your razors run about $0.20 each for good ones purchased in bulk.<p>edit: I now see that safety razors are the point of the article.. great minds?

The free market is great at solving problems. And then afterwards, it&#x27;s great at problematizing the solution so profit margins can be maintained.

Overall, I think the author is reaching a stage in their life where they recognize that things are &quot;passing them by&quot;. They are proverbially &quot;over the hill&quot;. Often this is chronologically after 40&#x27;s or so, but can come sooner or later. It came about for me in my 50&#x27;s. I raved and ranted for a few years how things are no longer available, changing, and changing for the worst. I now enjoy that I know the history why thing as they are, and whipper-snappers eat up my &#x27;sage&#x27; story telling.<p>I do use a double edged safety razor, but I run into the same problem. Blades have to be ordered online. Disposable razors was a convenience, that become the norm.<p>&gt; Cooking equipment<p>I buy it the commercial grade, ugly looking ones from bulk&#x2F;wholesale stores. They are not pretty, but they are functional, very sturdy, very inexpensive, and work both on the stove top and in the oven. Fancy pots &amp; pans is a luxury in my opinion, that become the norm.<p>&gt; Tea bags replace loose leaf tea.<p>Bagged tea is less expensive (Irish breakfast) where I travel than loose leaf.<p>&gt; Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands<p>Agreed, this is purely paying for convenience, at an extreme premium. This is a luxury in my opinion, not the norm.<p>&gt; Well understood mechanical bike shifting transitions to electronic shifting<p>Electrified bikes and bikes with electric shifting is not the majority. This is a luxury in my opinion, not the norm.<p>&gt; Televisions moving from being screens which accept input, to self contained &#x27;smart&#x27; devices<p>Agreed, this is a nightmare as it binds two different vendors together, increasing the chances of stuck with an obsolete system. This is a luxury in my opinion, that was forced upon us to be the norm.<p>&gt; In many inner city shops it is now hard to buy an individual piece of fruit.<p>Not the places I have been (Asia, Central &amp; Eastern Europe, all of the Americas). Walk into grocery store, and start picking the individual fruit.<p>&gt; Subscription services like Hello Fresh, where you can pay well over the odds to have some vegetables delivered to you.<p>This is a luxury in my opinion, not the norm, that is forced on us. The recent forced isolation make it a necessity for some.

I had to switch to a dual edge razor because of skin problems: I had a not so good combination of soft face skin and hard beard hairs. The multi blade razors are a scam, because you pass 4-5 blades at once on the skin instead of one, that will make your face all red. Oh, the shaving foam it’s expensive as week, but not even close to a real shaving soap in quality.<p>The power of marketing!

I&#x27;ve been using a safety razor (a Merkur Futur, for the curious ones) for years. Add in a decent brush and the upfront cost is about 100€.<p>As far as consumables go, I pay about 10€&#x2F;year in blades (I buy 100 Voskhod blades at a time), 15€&#x2F;year in shaving soap, and 20€&#x2F;year in miscelanea (aftershave etc.).<p>Shaving is quite cheap if you don&#x27;t fall into the printer cartridge model.

I am 47 and I have never used any shaving cream more than maybe a handful f times in my life.<p>I shave in the shower, and I use Aveeno Body wash for shaving. For years, I simply used conditioner in the shower - basically rub it all over my hair and face, then shave my face. I have never used a mirror to shave either. I just use my hand on my face to know exactly what has been shaved.

I shave with a non-cordless Phillips, that I&#x27;ve had since like 1986 or 1987. I changed the set of three rotary shaver heads only like 3 times in 36 years, and it never made much difference.<p>The thing makes an irregular squealing sound; you might think it&#x27;s going to go kaput, without the insider knowledge that it&#x27;s been doing it for probably well over 20 years.

They work fine for years, you just need to put them away for a while and the blade will literally rearrange itself to be sharp again.

While expensive, Nespresso is pretty tasty and I can totally understand why some shops use them.<p>Compared to a whole espresso setup, I’m not even sure they are expensive in the short to medium run.<p>Espresso pots are the only obviously cheap way to get espresso, but I often wonder if they aren’t really a different category.<p>Compared to drip coffee? Sure, but drip coffee isn’t espresso based coffee.

Recently bought a single blade shaver as seen in the picture, it&#x27;s awful compared to a three blade Gillette. Reminds me of comparing a Ferrari to a Lada [0] and saying it has four wheels what else do you need, comrade!<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lada" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lada</a>

Smart TVs are the worst. I always hated them but recently my wife had to deal with one at her workplace and now she hates them even more than I do. We&#x27;re still running a very old plasma TV that we rarely use so it still looks really great, doubt I&#x27;ll upgrade any time soon. In fact I&#x27;m looking for a spare to chuck in the basement.

My only comment to this entire article is that businesses primary goal is to make money, everything else is the outcome of this

&gt; Gillette claim that each blade can be used for 15 shaves<p>I don&#x27;t get this at all. I use the cheapest disposable razors (a bag of Bics), and can get 200 shaves out of one. Maybe because I shave at the end of a hot shower when my stubble is soft?<p>I don&#x27;t need a razor that looks like it is a Star Wars prop, either.

&gt; Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.<p>Nespresso virtuoline machines produce (arguably) better coffee than many cafes. In terms of consumer sentiment, they also perform amazingly compared to other at home brew methods.

Fun fact:<p>Gillete Blades are one of the most loved goods to steal in big quantity, light small and expensive, it&#x27;s even better than gold.

If anyone is interested in getting started with DE shaving, there is a really good wiki on &#x2F;r&#x2F;wicked_edge with a beginners kit guide <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;wicked_edge&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;de_kit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;wicked_edge&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;de_kit</a>

Because of this I started using an electric beard trimmer with really low trim length (0.4mm). It does not result in a clean shave but close enough (and I don&#x27;t look like a teenager).<p>But the best part: You pay once 60-100 bucks and can keep using it for a few years (in my case 7 years as I just had to replace my old one).

And RMS was right again.

fairly good coverage of these topics in legal writing<p>&#x27;the durapolist puzzle&#x27; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=496175" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=496175</a> is about 20th century history of durable goods marketing + how consumers prefer small up-front discount to long-term quality<p>&#x27;neo-luddite&#x27;s lament&#x27; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;economics.mit.edu&#x2F;files&#x2F;883&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;economics.mit.edu&#x2F;files&#x2F;883&#x2F;</a> is about forced upgrades and oligopolies<p>there&#x27;s a famous-ish law review paper called &#x27;the durapolist&#x27;s dilemma&#x27; about the 20th century history of durable goods marketing. conclusion is that consumers are not totally savvy about buying things that last

If you keep a piece of old denim or cotton fabric around, you can keep resharpening the cheap cartridge razors for an extremely long time. I can basically keep using them until the plastic parts start to fall off. A pack of cartridge razors can easily last me more than a year when I do this.

I use an electric razor made by Philips and I shave dry once a day, although occasionally I skip a day. I am not a &quot;werewolf&quot; person, so I think I get away with this. If I had more aggressive beard growth, I&#x27;d probably want to do a wet shave and also maybe use a proper razor.

This post sounds a bit like an ad but i havn&#x27;t looked back from the phillips oneblade. Its cheap, can be used wet or dry and cost like £30 and its the first razor that actually manages to remove the hairs on my neck effectively, only have to replace the blades every 6 months...

Lots of very questionable assumptions in this article. Let&#x27;s start with the part where flat razor blades are more dangerous in multiple ways. Having used both types of razors, I would never go back to the flat ones. Similar major issues with most other substitutes listed.

One of the few objects from my dad (RIP) that I still have is his shaving brush. He didn&#x27;t use a straight razor, though, in case you&#x27;re wondering.<p>Now if one of you says you use one of <i>those</i>, you&#x27;ve got my undying respect.<p>(Never used it, though. I&#x27;m an electric razor guy myself.)

Shaving flush with a razor always gave me in-grown hairs anyways.<p>Between that, &quot;razor burn&quot;, and the likelihood of nicks&#x2F;cuts, it&#x27;s obviously unhygienic vs. just a close no-guard clipping.<p>Actually spending money regularly on consumables to do this to yourself is utterly misguided IMO.

Tip I learned from an interview on Motley Fool money podcast.<p>Take a cheap plastic razor, use and dry it after every use. Quite dry, e.g. with a towel and blowing on it. It will last from 3 to 6 months, depending how dry you keep it.<p>Meaning, the razor degrades primarily due to rust, not from shaving!

Ha! I figured this out 30 years ago and only buy the cheap disposable razors and shave after I shower without any shaving cream. The hot water loosens up your beard enough to “dry shave”. I have a trimmer if it gets long. I maybe spend $10&#x2F;year on shaving.

I have liked the Hexclad pans. Similar nonstick properties to Teflon but it has no chemicals and no annoying maintenance like cast iron. They seem to last quite well (and have a lifetime warranty). Only downside is they cost a bit more but it is well worth it.

I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s just me, but I&#x27;d always nick my face using multiple-blade razors (Mostly used a Gillette Mach 3). This pretty much stopped when I switched to safety razors. That, and the price, is why I&#x27;ve stuck with it.

15 shaves per blade is maybe for the ultra-cheap ones. The Gillette Mach Turbo 3s I&#x27;ve been using for 15+ years last maybe 50+ shaves each, much better than other brands. Even the &quot;ordinary&quot; Mach 3 blades last much shorter.

If you aren’t looking for the closest possible shave, I can’t say enough good things about the Philips Norelco OneBlade. While the replacement heads run about $15 each, in my experience they do in fact last ~4 months as the manufacturer says.

Did this submission’s title really have to be changed? It went from the author’s choice<p>“Shaving is expensive”<p>to:<p>“Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money”<p>I appreciate the HN mods’ often thankless task, but there are times when title overrides feel overzealous and IMO this is one.

Aside from the significant cost benefit, double edge razors are functionally better at cutting - particularly three-day growth.<p>I find cartridge razors will clog up well before they lose sharpness. Double edge razors, on the other hand, are easily cleared.

&gt; It is, however, hard to find these sorts of razors. If you go into a shop to buy a razor, you will almost certainly not be able to buy one<p>Maybe where he is, but I was able to find a huge variety of DE razors both online and in a local store.

I think the point the author is missing is that 50 pounds a year vs 10 pounds a year is a negligible rounding error for most people’s annual expenses.<p>If the cost differences are negligible, people will go for convenience, marketing, and quality.

this x100 - its been one of my pet peeves - if its so obvious to many of us here, how are the bad products doing well and the ones that are better for the world and customers not doing so well? free market is broken?

I mixed my own batch of laundry detergent before the pandemic for like $30 and am still using that batch today.<p>It is shocking how much of our economy is unnecessary products designed to extract money from us.

I use a double edged blade and one blade lasts six months for me with daily shaving. The blades have four edges, not two: you can flip the blade over and use the other side. Sounds weird, but it works.

Reading this was a <i>thank you</i> moment like I haven&#x27;t had for a while. I completely agree with this critique of modern, consumerist nonsense.<p>The only exception is I can still easily buy a single piece of fruit.

Gillette M3 selling point for me is you can’t cut yourself. It’s really effortless shaving. I can basically shave and finish under a minute, no cuts no hassles, no special movements with my hand etc.

The company in question must be taking planned obsolescence very seriously or else with the R&amp;D budget I assume they have, they would have come up with a nearly durable product by now.

Kind of old fashioned advice. But older people will push marriage or college as &quot;affordable&quot; despite evidence and numbers.<p>Tip: instead of shaving foam, use high fat substance, like coconut oil.

A peculiar thing about human culture is how it rejects a part of it&#x27;s natural decor (a beard) and promotes such unmanly looks.<p>Men can just keep their beards clean, tidy and save boatloads of money.

Shaving technology peaked with the Mach 3. I can&#x27;t even think of the last time I needed to buy razors b&#x2F;c the Mach 3&#x27;s last so damn long. It&#x27;s probably been a decade

The TV thing really bothers me too. Just sell me a TV with a bunch of HDMI ports for me to plug a chrome cast or Apple TV into, I am not interested in your shitty “smart” tv bloatware.

I&#x27;ve also switched from cartridge to double edged a couple of years back. Not for financial or even environmental reasons, I just find it more comfortable than the cartridge ones.

You can keep your razor blades sharper by pushing them the other direction on some bald skin. Also, rinse after use and keep clean. I used to get like 30-40 shaves out of a head.

I don&#x27;t understand article&#x27;s complaints on issues with buying alternatives. All &quot;hard to buy&quot; items are available on the internet in a couple of clicks.

I&#x27;ve found that having 2 electric shavers around - one for a beard trimming style shave (I use a Wahl) and one for a close shave (I use a Braun) - is optimal for me.

If you use a double edged razor, it may be necessary to also have a disposable because airlines won&#x27;t let you carry on the flat blades. They have their place.

I&#x27;ve always used single blade disposables. They don&#x27;t work quite as well as other options, but they get the job done and they&#x27;re dirt cheap.

A culture designed to extract maximum value from you while delivering minimum value to you? I think that&#x27;s what you call a <i>cattle ranch</i>. Moo!

what about the alternatives to shaving?<p>laser hair removal. electrolysis. growing it out. waxing tweezing.<p>I like shaving because it removes dead skin cells or some thing like that.

Its asif learning to use a straight razor is hard... pick up some iq points and realise when you&#x27;re ultimately being too consumerist

Indeed. It&#x27;s also sad to see &quot;innovative&quot; new companies like Harry&#x27;s contribute to the mountain of plastic waste.

Question: Why aren&#x27;t there ceramic blades razors. You know, the knife blades that will chip before they get dull?

my impression is there is some kind of shaving cartel and illegal price fixing going on. There is no good reason you some competitor could not sell razor cartridges for like 50 cents each but they are sold for $4 each. The only good explanation is some kind of collusion

Poundland sells the double edged razor blades for something like 2p each. I haven&#x27;t tried them.

Or grow a short beard and just keep it trimmed with a $25 cordless trimmer that lasts forever?

Safety razor, shave bar, and blades. I don’t even think about the cost because it’s so little.

Using an old school razor with razor blades since a few years. It&#x27;s basically 0$ a month

there is consumer choice on the market though, you don&#x27;t need to buy a mach 10. If you want to go cheap , you can buy electric clippers that will probably last a lifetime for $30 and sport a short beard

You can get a 50 pack of razors for $20 on amazon.<p>Or a 100 pack of razor blades for $6.19

&gt; re-use of tea leaves<p>Loose-leaf tea can be reused? Doesn&#x27;t it lose flavour?

you can buy a years worth of double edge razors for your safety razor for $20. The waste product is a bunch of easily recyclable steel and wax paper.<p>Why do people even use cartridge razors??

I just wax my face. Unconventional but it gets the job done

This is probably why beards are so popular these days.

I just use cheap LIDL cartridges for far too long

&quot;Safety razors&quot; (double-edged razors with 10-cent cartriges) take a bit of practice, but are quite adequate in my experience. Its one of those things though that you need to practice your skills a bit with. But once you have the skill, there&#x27;s no point ever going back.<p>Iron Skillet vs Teflon Pans -- Skillets weigh a lot more, meaning they take longer to heat up. Teflon also is way more hydrophobic. Honestly, they&#x27;re two different tools for two different jobs. Skillets should be used for longer periods when temperature is key. Teflon Pans should be used for shorter, faster cooking stuff (really, morning eggs &#x2F; omelets are best on a Teflon pan).<p>Tea -- Loose Tea saves on packaging and is far higher quality. You&#x27;ll have to wash a Tea Infuser regularly (I like things like this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.webstaurantstore.com&#x2F;1-3-4-stainless-steel-spring-handle-tea-ball-infuser&#x2F;7145121.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.webstaurantstore.com&#x2F;1-3-4-stainless-steel-sprin...</a> . Available at almost any tea-store, but I guess you can also shop online).<p>--------<p>I guess I only agree on the tea-point and the safety razor &#x2F; double-edged razor points. The other complaints seem to miss the point. Yes, Teflon pans only have a short lifespan and need constant replacement, but they also do cooking duties that are inconvenient on a cast-iron skillet pan. (It takes longer to heat up my cast-iron than to cook an egg on a Teflon pan).<p>A few of my friends are experimenting with steel-pans, which are lighter (heat up faster), but very similar characteristics to cast-iron... just heating up (and cooling down) faster.<p>-----<p>&gt; Shaving foam: soap pucks transition to self foaming aerosol canisters<p>Self foaming aerosol canisters are only a couple of bucks? While razor costs are pretty high, I&#x27;m not seeing much price difference between soap-puck vs aerosol. I&#x27;m thinking this is more of a personal preference issue than cost-efficiency.<p>&gt; Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.<p>If people want a more convenient coffee, I suggest brewing coffee ahead of time (possibly cold brew, but hot-brew works just fine) and storing it in the refrigerator. Microwave the coffee to heat it back up and you&#x27;re good.<p>Noting beats the convenience of just taking coffee out of the fridge and drinking it (if you&#x27;re fine with cold). I&#x27;ve found that cold-brew concentrate is very inconvenient to make, at least without special tools. I&#x27;ve stopped doing it because it just takes too long to filter out the grinds.<p>Hot-brew (and then refrigerate later) is perfectly fine &#x2F; fast to filter even with crap blade-grinders and whatnot.<p>&gt; In many inner city shops it is now hard to buy an individual piece of fruit.<p>So buy fruit at a grocery store? I guess I&#x27;m not seeing the issue...

Shoes with white along the bottom. What a scam. What putty the mind of the fashion hive is.

Printers are way worse

welcome to capitalism, that&#x27;s what we reward; so why complain?

Just one small disagreement…electronic shifting on bicycles. I have had my hands cramp up on longer rides in humid&#x2F;hot conditions changing gears manually. Electronic shifting makes a difference, especially when shifting a lot and you are out there for a while. Triathlon bikes are using them now as well, they allow for more aerodynamic designs because they don’t have to deal with mechanical cables anymore. I switched to a safety razor years ago. I use about $10 worth of blades a year and just use bar soap for lather.