Comment by mschuster91

> From this, I have come up with the "reverse Vimes" theory of boots. That actually the most cash-efficient approach to footwear is to buy cheap K-mart shoes, expecting them to last for a year, instead of buying expensive branded shoes which are actually made just as badly as the cheap ones and still only last a year.

The problem is, it may be cash efficient in theory for an individual, but for society at large it's a significant cost - animal lives (for the leather), fossil fuel consumption (for the plastic parts and synthetic leather, also transport), human time lost in production and sales...