Newsletters: The case for buying a fancy trash can

There's a new coffee shop at the top of our office building, and yesterday, I checked it out. I don't really drink coffee, but I know (or have internalized) that it's rude to spend a protracted amount of time at an establishment without purchasing something, so I bought a to-stay latte. It cost me $4.90, which isn't so much money, I suppose, but is a wasteful amount to spend when all you really want is the free view.

I seem to make at least one purchase like this every day, spending more than I should on things that don't matter as a way of asserting my worth. More days than not, it feels like I'm moving through the world like a broken piggy bank, trailing a small but significant drip of change behind me at all times.

Today, we published the second entry in our essay series about value (which we call The Best $__ I Ever Spent; here's the excellent first installment), in which writers we love discuss those precious few purchases where what you gave and what you got actually measured up.

The Atlantic's Amanda Mull wrote about her rose gold trash can, which, at around $100, was an investment that was as much about realizing that the life she's currently living is indeed her adult life as it was about having a really good, clean garbage can. And like everything Amanda writes, it's smart and sharp and funny, and — if you're me, at least — introduces you to a new concept (in this case, "the tragedy of the commons").

—Meredith Haggerty, deputy editor at The Goods

The best $104 I ever spent: a rose gold trash can

Dana Rodriguez for Vox

I learned about the tragedy of the commons in a college sociology class, but I didn't understand it on a spiritual level until I moved to New York City and lived with roommates from Craigslist.

If your major was one in which you learned how to make money instead of learning how humans treat each other and the world poorly, the tragedy of the commons comes into play when humans choose to act in their own limited sense of self-interest instead of in the common good. People are often bad at imagining themselves as a member of the group that would ultimately benefit from the common good, which means scenarios in which a group shares resources become depleted or unkempt as individuals extract what they want and fail to do the work necessary to maintain them.

The best middle-class American example of the tragedy of the commons is probably any workplace's shared break room refrigerator, but the dynamic extends to private spaces too. Because of high housing costs and the large number of young transplants who move to the city, NYC is full of individuals in living situations where they don't feel particularly bound to their roommates, the upkeep of their shared spaces, or the group's shared interests. It's a million little tragic commonses.

For the six years I did it, the Craigslist roommate experience was mostly fine — everyone washed their dishes in a reasonable amount of time, and we were all mostly deferential to the other shared indignities of living with humans whose shower schedules don't always line up with your own. The only place this cooperation consistently broke down was the kitchen trash can, an area of such mutual disgust across apartments and roommate configurations that eventually I tried to avoid being home on trash night so I could eschew extended physical interaction with the trash can, a move I copied from one of my other roommates.

That's how the commons becomes tragic, of course — we acted in our own situational self-interest, which meant avoiding the trash entirely in hopes that someone else would take care of it, and then no one did. Even when one of us eventually got fed up and bought a new can, which happened a couple of times, the situation would deteriorate again quickly. Cheap plastic trash cans, with their stamped texture and lids you have to physically open with your hands in the middle of cleaning raw chicken, just want to be grimy.

That's how, after the better part of a decade spent trying to toss open crusty lids with only my pinky finger, spending $130 on a trash can sounded like a thing I might reasonably do in order to buy my way out of that experience and into a product that promised never to become gross.

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Buying a new purse? This startup wants to help you pay for it — but could also get you into debt.

Susie Cagle for Vox

In an Urban Outfitters ad, a young woman turns on a neon sign on a bedside table that becomes increasingly cluttered with neutral-toned home decor. In another, against a backdrop of millennial pink and macrame, the woman gazes at her phone and grins.

These ads are ostensibly for the youth-oriented retailer and its woven wall hangings, crystals, ceramics, and other midpriced kitsch — but they are primarily for Afterpay, a point-of-sale installment payment service that allows a customer to split purchases as low as $35 and as high as $1,000 into four separate charges.

Afterpay insists it is not a finance company and that its service is not offering loans to consumers. It is "a retail tool, not a finance product," according to founder Nick Molnar. Critics say this is just semantics and that the company is avoiding fair financial regulation.

While young shoppers are earning less and may be wary of adding to their already steep debt loads with lines of consumer credit, they're more likely to take out personal loans. Point-of-sale installment payment services aimed at young consumers and their particular tastes are proliferating; other competitors including Affirm, Quadpay, and Sezzle are proving popular among this cohort.

Their breakout success seems to be influencing the traditional competition, as credit card companies scramble to recapture the coveted demographic with their own attempts at installment payments: In late 2017, American Express launched Pay It Plan It, which allows cardholders to pay a flat monthly fee for the ability to divide large purchases into a set number of interest-free payments.

Afterpay might be best compared to layaway, a service that all but disappeared with the advent of credit cards but has made a recent comeback, allowing shoppers to pay for big purchases in installments over time before actually taking possession of an item. Except with installment payment startups, you get your item now and pay later. And we already have a word for that: debt.

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