It is from this third perspective that we will discuss smart-buying. So, closely studying a product and all related circumstances isn’t inherently more correct than buying without looking. You may regret your decision—a mistake—or you may not. This is possible in either case: both “smart” and “stupid” buying. What’s more, people who don’t bother with thorough selection (stupid-buyers) are, for the most part, perfectly aware that you should study the product carefully, read everything you sign, and so on. They simply don’t do it. And there are no absolutely perfect models of behavior to begin with. It’s simply impossible to foresee and account for everything. So, in the end, comparing smart-buying to stupid-buying is rather beside the point.
What is really interesting is something else entirely—why do people who recently bought everything under the sun now scour the internet, gathering every scrap of information? The answer is this: setting aside the case of error, the stupid-buyer differs from the smart-buyer in that he is willing to pay for additional risks. He prefers those risks to the time he would spend minimizing them—searching the internet, surveying neighbors, holding a global referendum. Will the product break? No problem. Get scammed on the warranty? God bless it. Stuck with unnecessary “add-on services”? We’ll muddle through somehow. He is willing to pay; for him, the value of what he will do with the freed-up time exceeds the value of the money he will hand over for the product. This is called “not giving a damn.”
What happens when such a person transforms into a smart-buyer? It is unlikely he suddenly became an anti-globalist and fell out of love with corporations. It is unlikely that hours of digging through the web and reading EULAs bring him pleasure in themselves. The answer is simple—he became poorer. Money means more to him now; he is prepared to spend time minimizing risks and getting the best possible value for his dollar. He is ready to sacrifice those alternatives he previously valued more than the cost of accepting risk. The phrase “we are not rich enough to buy cheap things” captures this perfectly, since the word “cheap” should be understood as “inferior.”