Well, for example, there is a certain amount of "haha people just buy planners to buy planners and they never use them they just like buying fancy planners" cultural meme.
There is also a rather legitimate question of "which things are tools and which are accessories."
Example: when I started learning to play tennis when I was 7 or 8, I dearly wanted a tennis skirt. My parents did not have a great deal of money at the time, and an extra specialized garment that was in no way necessary when I could just play tennis in a pair of shorts was deemed unnecessary. And it was much, much further along the spectrum toward "really" unnecessary than nice colored pencils or better video equipment, farther even than my traveler's notebook.
Would a kid who got to take sensory and aesthetic pleasure in such a thing have taken to tennis more strongly than I did? It's not at all impossible. How strongly do the parents need to weight that possibility compared to all their other budgetary concerns? That's why it's a balance. That's where "but you don't really NEED that" starts to come to the fore.
I could buy every single one of my writer friends a traveler's notebook like mine, and I bet 90% of them would not find it to be the productivity tool I have. So at that point, where is it just buying accessories on a whim and where is it investing in tools? You can't always know in advance, and that combines with the finite nature of budgets to make it not an obvious question.
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Date: 2020-02-28 03:05 am (UTC)There is also a rather legitimate question of "which things are tools and which are accessories."
Example: when I started learning to play tennis when I was 7 or 8, I dearly wanted a tennis skirt. My parents did not have a great deal of money at the time, and an extra specialized garment that was in no way necessary when I could just play tennis in a pair of shorts was deemed unnecessary. And it was much, much further along the spectrum toward "really" unnecessary than nice colored pencils or better video equipment, farther even than my traveler's notebook.
Would a kid who got to take sensory and aesthetic pleasure in such a thing have taken to tennis more strongly than I did? It's not at all impossible. How strongly do the parents need to weight that possibility compared to all their other budgetary concerns? That's why it's a balance. That's where "but you don't really NEED that" starts to come to the fore.
I could buy every single one of my writer friends a traveler's notebook like mine, and I bet 90% of them would not find it to be the productivity tool I have. So at that point, where is it just buying accessories on a whim and where is it investing in tools? You can't always know in advance, and that combines with the finite nature of budgets to make it not an obvious question.