It goes without saying that capitalism sucks and corporations suck. I don’t have loyalty to any “brand”. But I do care about me and my comrades being able to afford to live.
There’s that phrase that “it’s expensive to be poor”, which I think is very true. When you’re poor, you can only afford the cheapest commodities. These inevitably break, so you have to spend more money on a replacement.
I’m trying to break out of this cycle myself as much as possible. Instead of buying the cheapest replacement, I’m trying to save up my money to buy a replacement that will last. Unfortunately, researching this is hard. There’s so much astroturfing and “sponsored content”. So I figured I’d ask my fellow hexbears, what products do you know of are made in a way that they will last and actually cost less than buying replacements? There’s a few suggestions I can offer:
I used to work in a pretty solid outdoor gear store, and I was really impressed with the Deuter backpacks. They were always really durable and cheaper than Osprey. I have one I bought in 2007 and I still use it regularly today.
I own a Casio G-Shock watch. The “squares” are usually relatively affordable. The bands and batteries can be swapped out. I’m pretty tough on mine and it still looks mint. I do expect I’ll be wearing mine for a very long time. Or if you don’t want to spend money the F-91W is like $10 and still works well even though it’s not ruggedized. Worn by Bin Laden, too.
Something in the ideal category of durable and cheap are Sungait sunglasses. They’re like $15-$20 each and have UV400 protection. Mine have lasted a while and have handled a lot of being thrown around
As a parent, we have some Hape toys our kids beat up and they stay together well. My wife bought some Primary dot com clothes thinking they would last but they don’t seem any better than the super cheap clothes at Walmart or Target we normally buy.
I like wolverine for work boots. They lasted just as long as my coworkers red wings and cost way less, and personally I found them to be way more comfortable out of the box.
I really liked the Hankook S10 Nobel tires I put on my last car. Great price/performance ratio.
As far as clothing goes get a needle and thread kit and learn to patch up your own clothes. I've given up on quality clothing, I've yet to find a brand of pants or shirts I can't put a hole in. So I just buy all my clothes second hand and repair as needed.
Older Toyota's/Lexus' are fairly bullet proof and will run for as long as their maintained. My grandma's camry she bought new decades back that is now being driven by a cousin has over 300k on the clock and still fires up like the day it was bought.
Corporate/commercial laptops. Find an old Levono Think Pad or Dell Lattitude, they are absolute work horses. My last job had an e-waste program and I'd dig as many of these old laptops out of there as possible because they usually only needed either a new hard drive or ram module.
I got my think pad from a state university surplus shop. Those are great for finding good stuff.