"Subterfuge of Economy"

 The aforementioned Omnibus Project podcast did an episode this time last year on the so-called "Boots Theory"—a piece of observational economics attributed to Terry Pratchett. The essence of the theory is that the purchasing of cheap goods is actually more expensive in the long run, due to the shorter shelf-life of the inexpensive goods and the constant need for replacements. Thus, the theory goes—this (along with things like the higher interest payments charged to lower-income borrowers with poor credit ratings) is yet another way in which it is actually more expensive to be poor than it is to be rich. Poverty costs more, that is to say, because it forbids the larger up-front payment that is necessary to afford higher-quality and longer-lasting goods that do not need such frequent replacement. 

The articulation of this theory led to a hunt for literary precursors, according to the podcast, with people finding antecedents of the boots theory is such sources as the works of twentieth century working-class socialist novelist Robert Tressell. No one so far, however—to the best of my knowledge—has previously identified a different forbear of the boots theory that occurs in literature, which I uncovered in my recreational reading this week: the Pooka's theory of cheap factory-made clothes, as it appears in Flann O'Brien's experimental novel (often characterized as a work of metafiction and proto-postmodernism) At Swim-Two-Birds. Since I have not elsewhere seen the passage discussed in connection with boots theory, I offer an account of it here for purposes of our collective enlightenment. 

The "Pooka" in question—described in O'Brien's novel as a creature "of the devil class"—is one of myriad figures from Gaelic folklore who materialize in the book's overlapping layers of narrative. Some of the most delightful passages in O'Brien's tale are the characters' many deadpan pseudo-academic disquisitions on intrinsically preposterous subjects: such as the ruinous effect of tea-drinking and caffeine consumption on the human character; the need for inverting the importance commonly ascribed to sleep and that to wakefulness; the question of the "kangaroolity" of various members of the human species, and the relation the term bears to the larger genus of marsupials; and the number of generations of angelic impregnation that would be required to create an entirely disembodied race of offspring. 

Another of these discourses—the one that concerns us here—occurs while the Pooka is carrying another character from Irish folklore—the "Good Fairy"—in the pocket of his shirt, and is blundering into prickly bushes and brambles as they proceed. The Good Fairy alerts the Pooka to his discomfort, but the latter merely seizes the moment as a chance to propound his theory of the greater longterm expense involved in buying cheap clothes. "I do not mind telling you," says the Pooka, "that there is no greater subterfuge of economy than the purchase of cheap factory-machined clothing. I was once acquainted with a man who committed himself to the folly of a shoddy suit. [...] It lathered in a shower of rain and that is the odd truth. [....] It frothed on him on the street the like of a pan of new milk boiling over." 

While the Pooka's specific illustration of the phenomenon may be an uncommon one, here is surely the heart of boots theory, presaged in a 1939 Irish novel. The essence of the boots theory is to name "subterfuges of economy" for what they are. It may appear that one is saving money by purchasing the cheaper good—but if it froths over on you due to the emulsion of soap particles in its interstices, then the expense that it will take to replace or repair it is likely to be greater in the long run than the money one initially saved by buying it. And so, I submit another literary precursor of the boots theory to add to the list: Flann O'Brien (the pen name of Brian O'Nolan) gave us the fundamental outlines of the concept as early as 1939, through the words of his unlikely cast of characters.