Originally posted on my old blog on November 4th 2016.

As I write the notes for this piece there is an advert on the radio telling me about cheap fireworks. Now, I can’t speak for any of you, but when I am buying potentially fatal explosives “cheap” is not a word that I want to apply.

“Safe”, “Reliable” and “Not likely to leave soggy bits of me spread over a wide area” are modifiers that I much prefer in this situation.

It makes me wonder about our seemingly relentless drive to push prices down, and it is a trend that worries me. Cheaper things are great though, aren’t they?

Well, yes to an extent. So is giving people what they deserve for the products that they produce.

Is there a sweet spot where price and quality intersect? Below that on the price curve you get a shoddy product that will do most of what you want but may do someone in your family actual physical damage. Your choice is between how much you like that product, and how much you like that family member.

Some of you may want that, I won’t judge. Well I will, I am doing right now, just do not invite me to any of your family events that’s all I ask.

Still judging you, just so you know.

As we seem to be intent on driving prices up and thundering headlong towards another recession *, this is a question that we are seriously going to increasingly have to ask ourselves.

“Is it worth the extra?”

If the answer is yes, and you can afford it without ending up hiding behind the sofa to avoid the big chap called Dave knocking on your door then excellent, off you jolly well pop.

If the answer is no, on either or both accounts then go for the cheaper product, or, and this is a biggie here, do without.

I know right, it’s a crazy idea, isn’t it? In these consumerist times we are told that we should always want new and shiny stuff. Sometimes though we maybe do not need all of the things that we desire. I am not talking about essentials here, and I dutifully accept that we are not all in the same boat financially, but I am personally pretty skint as I write this. I have a job that does not pay anything near what I should be paid considering the work that I do and the danger that I am in daily.

“You should be glad to have a job.” Well yes, I kind of am, but how long for exactly? No one seems to know the answer to that question.

I have produced comedy things over the years, some professionally, mostly not. I certainly have never been lucky enough to make a living out of it. I used to make a podcast and we had tens of thousands of downloads every month, it was in Apple’s top ten comedy podcasts on a few occasions, and we provided that for the excellent price of nothing. I know, how do we do it for the price? Well, we don’t anymore.

I had a donation button on the webpage with the intention of it mainly covering the cost of running the website hosting. We never even made enough to do that. So all of those people got to enjoy the podcast, and they must have as they kept coming back to download the next one, and I could not even cover my costs. This was one of the reasons that I stopped making it.

I never wanted to be rich, far from it, but it would be nice to get something back for the chuckles that I have provided. There is a well known piece about the fact that people are willing to pay three quid for a coffee, yet they baulk at paying the same amount for digital content that they could enjoy repeatedly.

If you enjoy the same coffee more than once then you are doing it wrong.

So as you can see, there is a correlation between price and quality, and lot’s of people get that wrong.

I did.

* Personally I do not feel like we had crawled out of the crater that the last recession left us in but the press keep telling us things are better now, and why would they lie to us? Oh hang on, they generate their income from adverts you say? So, if no one is buying anything then they stop getting ad revenue?

Oh now, that is just cynical.

P.S. Still judging you, just so you know.