Common sense is not universal, common, or necessarily sensical.
I did not grow up with parents who raised me this way and had little to no contact with grandparents. My parents were also often cash strapped.
You and I know that saving up for quality products is a better approach. I learned it by watching my parents buying a cheap stand mixer every two years (max) growing up. Then I worked at a kitchen store and learned that there were some KitchenAids still working after 75 years. I saved up my paycheck and may have been one of the only 17 year olds to ever buy a KitchenAid. I'm still using it over 15 years later.
Thing is... I didn't have three kids, a mortgage, and other more pressing uses for my money. Once you get into a debt spiral you rarely have the cash needed to purchase the stuff of the quality you need to make it last. Instead you buy crappy stuff at the dollar store to make until the next paycheck.
Of course, they do still purchase more things than I do as they haven't learned the other part of this lesson -- if you can't afford the quality version you should probably make do without it.
Also note, the equipment, space, and know-how for repairing things is not available to many (probably most).
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
A huge advantage of disposable things is it's no big deal if they are damaged. Stuff breaks outside of normal ware use. Cars for example often fail due to an accident which limits there maximum useful lifetime.
Time value of money also hits in. A cheap mattress that last for 7 years is arguably better than spending 2x as much for something that last 14 years.
Finally, some things simply don't get used much. Often buying say a cheap snowboard to start with is much better simply because it might not maintain your interest. High end home exercise equipment can be a great investment, but it's likely to just end up as an expensive coat rack.
Purchasing stuff several times leads to an enormous amount of waste and energy spent on construction, transport and recycling.
Following on your mattress example, some swedes take pride on owning the same Hästens mattress for more than 70 years. They are expensive, but not outrageous if you ignore their recent flashy models. Regular ones are maybe 3 or 4x of what a decent mattress costs.
Same can be said about lots of items, like chairs, tables, pens, kitchen tools or even clothes. Good stuff can last for long. There's even a reddit community that discusses these: http://reddit.com/r/bifl
You have any idea how much dead skin would be in those things after 70 years ick. Anyway for some real numbers a friend uses a 50$ foam pad that last ~5-10 years. It's not great, but it's better than a lot of older mattress people get used to.
Considering the light weight and minimal materials it's probably better for the environment than you might think. It's not like dumping the things in a landfill cases much harm and for the price not much resources / energy can go into making it.
I did not grow up with parents who raised me this way and had little to no contact with grandparents. My parents were also often cash strapped.
You and I know that saving up for quality products is a better approach. I learned it by watching my parents buying a cheap stand mixer every two years (max) growing up. Then I worked at a kitchen store and learned that there were some KitchenAids still working after 75 years. I saved up my paycheck and may have been one of the only 17 year olds to ever buy a KitchenAid. I'm still using it over 15 years later.
Thing is... I didn't have three kids, a mortgage, and other more pressing uses for my money. Once you get into a debt spiral you rarely have the cash needed to purchase the stuff of the quality you need to make it last. Instead you buy crappy stuff at the dollar store to make until the next paycheck.
Of course, they do still purchase more things than I do as they haven't learned the other part of this lesson -- if you can't afford the quality version you should probably make do without it.
Also note, the equipment, space, and know-how for repairing things is not available to many (probably most).