CarrollBlog 3.21

There is a discount supermarket chain in Austria (let's call it Delta) that sells almost- things. If your favorite candy is called 'Freddy' bars and they're wrapped in red white and blue packages, what Delta does is sell their own brand called 'Friendly' bars, wrap them in virtually identical red white and blue packages, and charge a lot less for them. Whether it be candy, frozen pizza, red wine... the company's thing is to sell cheaper products that are almost the real thing but not quite. And the same is true about how these products taste or work. 'Friendly' candy bars might have almost the same ingredients as 'Freddy' bars, but they don't taste anywhere near as good. Their dishwashing soap is thin and sort of useless although it's colored and packaged to look just like Palmolive. The meat in their dog food cans is a weird shade of gray and makes the dog fart *a lot*. However as is usually the case, it takes two to dance. The Delta people are saying "Why pay full price for Freddy bars? Ours are just like them but cost half as much." You know though that isn't true. You usually get what you pay for. But you buy the cheaper one anyway and end up disappointed. So is Delta trying to fool you with their almost-goods? Yes. But are you to blame for buying them when you know about 90% of the time products like 'Friendly bars' are crap? Yes. Walking by one of these stores the other day, someone said to me, "You know Michael? He always reminds of something you'd buy at a Delta store." I knew exactly what she meant.