Inexpensive and Cheap
Something I’ve heard all my life is the distinction made between something that’s cheap - lacking in quality - and something that’s merely inexpensive, which I guess just means something that’s priced below its actual value. I think these two terms really are completely equivalent, since you can’t really have inexpensive goods without them also being cheap in some way.
My barber thought that the price we paid for our bamboo flooring was exorbitant at $5 a square foot, when we could have just gone down to Lowe’s and bought bamboo at $2 a foot. Some people think it’s funny that we boycott Wal-Mart, and wind up paying more for some things as a result. But the bamboo at Lowe’s can be scratched by a human thumbnail, so it doesn’t have a hope of holding up to our dog; and you can bet there’s a lot more behind the scenes of how Lowe’s brings flooring that carries the name ‘bamboo’ to its customers at $2 a square foot. It’s cheap flooring, and it cheapens everything associated with it, from the growers that sell an inferior raw material to the homeowner who tries to salvage a bad investment by mentioning the bamboo-like flooring on the realty flyer. Wal-Mart is at least as bad, since it cheapens human life itself with its claims of lower prices that don’t reflect the lower wages that back them up (that’s not even mentioning the abusive practices that go on outside our country in the name of these lower prices). When you look at the cost in terms of wages, the environment, and the loss of choice for consumers, it doesn’t even matter that the of products coming out of these stores are of shit quality; quality of product barely factors into the cost of these low prices.
Conversely, when you see a business trying to do the right thing, and you think its products are over-priced, take a closer look. If it’s a given that everyone you pay money to in exchange for goods is in it for the money to some extent, who is the greedier? Can small businesses depend on slick marketing campaigns and overwhelming physical distances to hide the ugliness of their greed? If their prices are depressing to you, think about those things we give up every time we step foot inside a Wal-Mart. Think of how that act cheapens our communities, and our very lives.