I think the failure of both of these articles is that they imbue things with meaning without considering that doing so is a <i>choice</i>.<p>Curtis buys "the best" things so that the things he owns reflect back an ethos of caring about the things you build, making choices deliberately and carefully, and being able to rely completely on what one owns.<p>Moxie buys "the worst" things so that the things he owns reflect back an ethos of focusing on people and experiences over material acquisition, and having a life of serendipity and unexpected but gratifying hardship.<p>Neither of those are wrong, but the mistake is to believe that the items themselves carry that connotation. They don't. Curtis could carefully select a perfect spoon from the 50 cent thrift store spoon bin and that spoon would still be "the best" and reflect his values. Moxie could win the lottery, buy a yacht, and run it into a jetty without a care in the world and that yacht would be "the worst" according to his principles.<p>Conversely, Curtis could feel obliged to use some $1,000 parachute material daypack perfectly designed to carry his equisitely selected pen and paper when what he feels like right then is grabbing the pretty purple bag because he is an unwitting slave to having his stuff reflect his higher principles. And, likewise, Moxie might refuse to be caught dead behind the wheel of a BMW even though it turns out he would love the experience of roadtripping it in with friends and the way it feels cruising down the Interstate at night because having it would mean "selling out".<p>Curtis and Moxie can still both end up slaves to their things because they've given them totemic power without realizing it.<p>The trick is to realize that we can choose to apply meaning to things, or not, and we can give and take it when we want.
For the longest time I had this crappy serving spoon that I got in college. It was flimsy and would bend almost to the point of breaking every time you used it. It made it difficult to use it for its one job of scooping food out of large containers into smaller containers, but still I put up with it for years.<p>I don’t know why it took me so long to realize I could just, you know, buy another one. Eventually I did, and it’s much more pleasant to use.<p>I don’t see any particular virtue in burying yourself in daily annoyances out of…what exactly? So you can pretend you’re better than other people because you “don’t care” about material things? So you can play at being a fun-loving free spirit who stomps on their flatware during an impromptu dance party?<p>You can buy decent stuff and still not need to feel owned by it. That’s an issue that’s all in your head. Pay $50 for a fork but also let it go that your friend might ding it up.
> No matter how much research they do, a partisan of the best might not ever know as much about motorcycles as the partisan of the worst who takes a series of hare-brained cross-country motorcycle trips on a bike that barely runs, and ends up learning a ton about how to fix their constantly breaking bike along the way.<p>I don't know much about motorbikes, but I do about mountain bikes. Since it's so expensive, your first bike can and almost should be a shitty one, just to validate you like the sport. But once you determined you like it, you're so much better off investing in a good, stable, reliable bike, and go into harder terrain, rather than risking your life on simple trails with a shit bike. For once it will be more fun, but also you'll progress faster with equipment that you already over-class.<p>If the point is to maximize your enjoyment of life, I think generally speaking it makes sense not to spend on stuff that doesn't matter. But saving your nickels and pennies on stuff you actually enjoy doesn't make any sense, because it will in fact make your experience worse.
<i>> Any reasonable person wouldn’t feel liberated by a $50 fork, but constrained by it. [...] is it going to get dropped or stepped on if a dance party erupts in the kitchen?</i><p>I've always thought part of the "flex" of owning certain expensive things isn't just that you're rich enough to afford it, but that you're rich enough you <i>don't care about it getting damaged</i>.<p>Plenty of people could afford to <i>buy</i> a $10,000 watch (if they wanted to save up a bit). Not many people could afford to <i>lose</i> a $10,000 watch.<p>If you buy a $100 wine glass and a guest drops it by accident, you gotta be ready to laugh it off.
> A whole language can start to develop around not just the consumption of goods, but the consumption of experience: “We did Prague.” “We did Barcelona.”<p>Couldn't agree more with that statement. I hate that terminology, it maps travel and experience into check-boxes that you ought to complete. I don't know why, but it feels wrong to me.
I have an appreciation for Moxie's argument but I think the first guy (Dustin) is a bit of a strawman here. As someone who more or less agrees with the "buy nice stuff once so you aren't constantly accumulating shit" mantra, I would never buy a $1000 silverware set. My personal silverware set I think cost maybe $40 because as Moxie mentions, I'm not particularly worried about a fork malfunction.<p>I have a $200 coffee grinder though. I use it once or twice a day and it's 3 years old, meaning I've paid maybe 10-20c / use over it's life time and it's 20x better than the $50 one I used before it that constantly caused me headaches and was terrible at it's only job which was to grind coffee.<p>I also don't wanted to be surrounded by other peoples old gross used junk. I'm not a slave to my $40 dollars in silverware and I'm happy every time I used it that I'm not wondering if it was some rat's and cockroaches play thing for 20 years before someone found it behind a refrigerator while cleaning a house and threw it in the good will bin.<p>There's a middle ground.
I don't really have a comment except some random associations having to do how people feel about objects and processes. It sounds to me that Dustin Curtis and the HN people responding favorably are searching for material objects that give a certain feeling.<p>I first heard the word <i>Numinous</i> used by Terrance McKenna to describe objects with spirit:<p><i>numinous, adjective, having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity,"the strange, numinous beauty of this ancient landmark"</i><p>Upon further research, I found a related Japanese word "Tsukumogami":<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukumogami" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukumogami</a><p><i>"tsukumogami are tools that have acquired a kami or spirit. Today, the term is generally understood to be applied to virtually any object "that has reached its 100th birthday and thus become alive and self-aware", though this definition is not without controversy.</i><p>Robert Pirsig wrote a book related to these concepts:<p><i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a book by Robert M. Pirsig first published in 1974. It is a work of fictionalized autobiography, and is the first of Pirsig's texts in which he explores his "Metaphysics of Quality".</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_...</a><p>Finally I once picked up a stainless steel spoon at a Portsmouth, Virginia thrift store for a quarter while in the Navy that had "NYC Rikers Island" engraved on it. That was my favorite spoon for a long time.
"Any reasonable person wouldn’t feel liberated by a $50 fork, but constrained by it." I mean define "reasonable person".<p>I feel content is just about being divisive now-a-days. Moxie is someone I always put on a pedestal for his seemingly altruistic values. But this content seems to be a passive aggressive attack consumerism (nothing wrong with that) through Dustin Curtis, which in turn seems kinda personal.<p>I don't know when we stopped: "live and let live".
(2012) and repeatedly submitted to HN in the past, at least 7 times.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=moxie.org" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=moxie.org</a>
As with most things, the real answer is somewhere in the middle.<p>Obsess over extremes of design or performance if that's what you need. Cheap out on the dollar store version if it gets the job done. Buy the middle-of-the-road version if that's the best value.<p>The "best" of anything can be defined along many axes (price, performance, design, durability, weight, etc), and compromise is usually necessary. It's strange that both authors abandon this nuance.
Neither extreme makes sense as an absolute, however I think there is more truth in "the worst" or maybe "the ok" or "the threshold after which diminishing returns take a nosedive", we certainly shouldn't be owned by our possessions and the vast majority of people can't afford the best of everything.<p>However for select items it is worth taking "the best" route - the key is to not be owned by them even then, find the best item (for a usually more subjective definition of "best") and <i>use</i> the fuck out of it, because that's what it's for. Identifying when it's worth getting "the best" is the trick to learn, but it should be a low number of items.<p>I think the problems comes when "best" is distorted into something highly biased towards aesthetics, taste or status - which is a consumerism trick - I'm not a brutalist, I understand aesthetics are important to the human experience, but when those attributes become the main focus people start behaving weirdly, and not necessarily in a healthy way.
I think this was the original megathread:<p><i>The Best</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4755470" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4755470</a> - Nov 2012 (295 comments)<p>I feel like this response also got discussed on HN back then - but if so, I can't find it. Anyone?
Ha, the best part of all this is due to these posts that cutlery set is being copied by a Chinese manufacturer and will be on Amazon next week so others that share “the worst” philosophy will be able to buy it for 20 bucks for a set of 4 and use it to play spoon drums all day long.
Far be it from me to suggest that the <i>$50 fork</i> is an artificially constructed edifice set up for the sole purpose of being tilted at, but the $50 buys an entire place setting of five items, not just the fork.<p>A set by the late David Mellor, the British designer who invented the pillar box, the traffic light and the bus shelter as well as arguably the 20th century’s most iconic cutlery, will set you back twice that much.<p><a href="https://www.davidmellordesign.com/cutlery/stainless-steel" rel="nofollow">https://www.davidmellordesign.com/cutlery/stainless-steel</a>
$50 for a place setting is not that outrageous for something of quality. My one suggestion would be to get twice as much silverware as you think you need because somehow pieces end up going missing. Our pattern was discontinued and when I looked up getting replacement pieces, it was going to be some ridiculously large amount per piece (I think $40 or $50—whatever it was was high enough that I’ve been trying to talk my wife into just getting a whole new set of silverware with at least 12 place settings, but better 16).
As others are saying here, this seems like taking it to the extreme.<p>As usual in life, the middle path seems best.<p>Unless it is your hobby, it isn’t worth finding the absolute best of anything. Find something that is good and that you like and you’ll be doing well.<p>At the same time they are just material possessions, so don’t get too attached.<p>Things were meant to be used. When they get scuffed, scratched, and dinged in the course of duty why worry about it (unless it impacts the use of it).
I guess moxie no longer abides by "the worst":
<a href="https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/signal-moxie-marlinspike-house-los-angeles-1203414449/" rel="nofollow">https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/signal-moxie-marlin...</a>
I'm much more in favor of the original compared to the cynical response.<p>The original focused on owning few items of ultimate quality. When you read about the examples, they are not status items, they are "best" in their utility and durability. Owning few items of high quality is not snobbery, I consider it common sense.<p>It's more sustainable. It rewards good product design and craftsmanship. I hope we can all agree that expecting a towel to actually dry is not an elitist thought.<p>The only matter worth discussing is whether you should obsess in finding the best in every single category of products that you buy. No, probably not. But you can make the counter point that this means that apparently we don't have reliable reviews. Because if we did, somebody else would have done that for you.
One time I dropped my iPhone and broke the screen. Apple wanted $150 to fix it but I can buy a whole Android phone for that much so that's what I did.<p>Now I don't really give a fuck if my phone breaks.
Meh. Own what you want. I get personal satisfaction out of having all of my items be high quality. The hand feel, the weight, the craftsmanship. I feel comforted and at home when surrounded by "the best."<p>Just because I own nice things doesn't mean that they are the "focus of my life," but rather that I simply appreciate owning nice things.
I think Seneca said it best: “It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it was earthenware is no less great.”
My life is more similar to that of a "partisan of the worst", so I sympathize with his general sentiment. However, this is full of strawmans.<p>For example, this is from the Dustin Curtis post he's criticizing:<p>> Reasonable people would probably not spend the time to read a book about the history of flatware, buy twenty sets, and test the feeling of each metal utensil against their teeth. That sounds completely insane. But who cares about reasonable people?<p>Moxie reduces that to just "internet research [which] isn’t necessarily the same as understanding".