I understand that logic, but as a counter, my time and frustration are worth something to me. I've actually owned both a Vitamix and a Ninja, and start basically every morning with a blended combo of protein/fruits/frozen greens, so it's a great example. A lot of the premium for me in a better product isn't just lasting longer and not throwing things away constantly, it's avoiding the frustration of using worse tools.

The vitamix has been thoughtless for me in 6 years of daily use other than sharpening the blade every so often and replacing the bearing for the blade once (both easily done by me at home). I wake up bleary eyed, throw my stuff in there, and let it eat for a minute while I get my coffee going. The ninja on the other hand did a consistently worse job, required me to remove it and shake the contents of the blender, and then randomly fried itself one day in a way that I had no chance at fixing and scrambled my breakfast plans for multiple days. What's daily frustration worth for a half decade of my life? At least to me, a lot more than the premium to get the better tool.

> I find that the cheaper option is often so much cheaper that buying several replacements is better than buying the better one. Ninja blenders vs Vitamix for example. Adding in the fact that I have no trusted evidence that Vitamix is actually better, I’d be fine replacing my Ninja every year vs amortizing the Vitamix over five or more years. And for the record my Ninja has been great so far.

I understand this logic, but the flaw here is that you are only considering bare functionality, not quality of function. This comes up a lot in small appliances and things like power tools, but is especially relevant in the kitchen. It's not only that you can perform a task better with a better quality product, it's that the result of the task is better for you. What do I mean by that? Well most cheaper products heavily utilize plastics, and shed microplastics due to friction wear during operation, where-as better quality products typically have more metal and glass construction and are designed with more isolation between the result of the task and the machine performing it.

The attitude you have here is common, and not necessarily incorrect from one perspective, but it is driving things like fast fashion and the proliferation of plastic on plastic contact in food prep in home kitchens, two of the highest contributing factors to microplastics ingestion, which is a problem that has strong correlations to population-scale hormonal imbalances, as well as key growing diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Our society is literally contributing to killing ourselves in order to shave a few pennies per-unit off basic everyday tools and conveniences.