> Tangentially, and pardon my ignorance, I'm not a biker: I can't understand people who shell out thousands of dollars for a bike, are these so much better than a $500 one?
Think about one thing you're passionate about. There's going to be products that are good enough for the casual, every-day user and there's going to be premium goods, even if there's a decreasing price/performance ratio. Since we're on HN, I feel safe talking about computers.
Compare the $1000 3.9GHz i7 from Intel and the $500 3.8GHz version. Do some people need the minor performance increase enough to pay for it? Sure. Enough to create a market? Nope. It's people wanting to buy things just to show they can pay for it.
Well, given the amount I will use that computer over the 2 years I have it and the disruption to flow that processing pauses cause, a ~10% increase in performance might be worth the premium. I imagine there's similar logic for bikes. But you're right, sometimes people just want to show off.
Your 2 year timeframe for a computer - lets call that 500 days (assuming its for work, and rounding to 2significant digits).
That's $1 per day "extra" for the slightly faster processor.
Which is what, well under two minutes of most people reading here's hourly rate.
If you use that computer for anything more processor bound than word processing, that apparently tiny speed bump of under 3% will probably _easily_ pay for it's $500 premium.
Hell, I'd probably save $1 per day in time spent not waiting for chrome to open/render all the links I click from HN in a day on a slightly faster machine…
Think about one thing you're passionate about. There's going to be products that are good enough for the casual, every-day user and there's going to be premium goods, even if there's a decreasing price/performance ratio. Since we're on HN, I feel safe talking about computers.
Compare the $1000 3.9GHz i7 from Intel and the $500 3.8GHz version. Do some people need the minor performance increase enough to pay for it? Sure. Enough to create a market? Nope. It's people wanting to buy things just to show they can pay for it.