There is something so incredibly attractive and desirable in being able to buy things – cheap. To find something for cheap, and than even more cheap, and cheaper even still, it is a special thrill and a high. And many times have I ultimately regreated buying things for cheap, things which would actually be very useful to me, and therefore mattered.

If trying to save money on a thing becomes more important than the goal you wished to achieve with that tool in the first place, this purchase becomes such a self deceiving trick, and a switch from a value-looking view to the money-looking view can occur. In the highly materialistic world, the act of overly avoiding money and trying to save it, can actually lead to an even more materialistic view, where money begins to matter more than the original value of things. To sell the value of a thing short for a little bit of money, can ultimately be equal to selling short that very purpose which an item has.

I recently bought a piece of electronic equipment (from a certain most densely populated east Asian country in the world), spent 50 euros, and saved another 50 in this mega-cheap’o deal, with the final outcome that I can not use this equipment at all because it is totally defective. An extreme case, but still a part of the statistics.

Another example – Musical equipment! A perfect example in my case. It is something that I use so often and value so dearly, but it is still so damn nice to be able to ssssaaaaavvveee mmooonneeeeeyyyyyy !!! Here is a picture of my new Behringer MIDI controller. I will not talk much about this Behringer entity, because all those people who have once used a piece of equipment made by Behringer, and then at another time used that same piece equipment made by any other manufacturer, will know the pain of a broken illusion.

So on this picture next to it there is another cheap tool I bought (look very carefully, and after a while you will be able to distinguish them). And on this photo you can see that both items have the same model name “1010”. And you know what, sometimes I get them confused. Maybe it’s because I just got used to them by now, but sometimes I plug the drill into my sound card, and it takes me minutes to realize something is different. Which is of course because this drill has the same feel like using a crappy piece of equipment in the first place… lol…

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that all Behringer is bad. I’m just saying that most of the things made by Behringer are not very good. That is all.