Trade all your bikes to help a sick puppy
 

In another thread a poster made the following comment: [edited for brevity] So my question is this: Who here considers a $10,000 bike to be a lavish luxurious extravagance? It seems kind of normal to me. At least in my geographic area. Sure $3, 4, $5,000 bike are pretty much normal & everywhere as far as I can tell. $10,000 May be a bit on the high side of things, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary.

[defining "fine bicycle" as one costing 5 to 10% of your annual income] Would you trade a fine bike to buy a meal for a street begger? I wouldn't. All things adjusted for income level, I dunno if the poster in the other thread would trade his $40 bike for a meal either.

[/virtue signaling rant.]
What are your thoughts? Would you?

Subscribed.

Heading out for Indian for lunch. I will check back afterwards.

If you're not a professional racer, of course $10,000 is a lavish luxurious expense. It's not even a question.

TBH, I don't know which is more obnoxious signalling--the grandstanding virtue signaller, or your need to let us know how rich your neighborhood is, which seems to be the real point of your op.

I don't care whether or not you have a $10,000 bike, but pretending it's "ordinary" to do so in your circles is a bit over the top on the status-seeking bit.

Around my area a $2000.00 bicycle is out of the ordinary. Less than $1000.00, maybe much less, is more common.

Now if I have a job to do at one of the oil and gas firms downtown, I have seen the special cages with bike racks inside for the few that commute to work, and those bikes look to be in the $1000.00 to $2000.00 range. But those people live fairly close to downtown in the expensive real estate neighborhoods.

Other cyclists I see that commute to downtown are from the east side and they ride garage sale finds or Goodwill bikes that are maybe worth $100.00 after new tires are mounted. That is pretty normal for that part of town and others like it.

This thread is stupid. One person says he is the greatest humanitarian because he rides cheap bikes ... as if free will doesn't exist, or choice, or as if people who spend a lot on stuff the poster does not, might not also do more than he does to help those in need .... and from some points of view, "people in need" are people working off karma from past lives and "helping" them by easing their "burdens" is actually increasing their burdens ... the only real help is to help them understand their situations and accept them better.

Self-satisfied people with tiny brains and tiny world-views who think because they think they know one thing, must know everything ... and think they must be the best, because they think of themselves all the time ......

And others who like to put people down for other reasons. For all I know a lot of people on this site live in upscale neighborhoods, ride upscale bikes, and join cycling clubs where a lot of people ride upscale bikes. And if any of us hang out with racers---racers will spend ridiculous amounts on their bikes ... many ride with wheels which cost more than my most expensive bike (which is CF with full Ultegra, so we aren't talking Good Will here.)

I have seen a lot of the people I ride with buy $1500 bikes, ride a while, get stronger, and buy $3000 bikes .... and in a few years I bet they buy another, maybe more expensive. And then they need gravel bikes too. They have the income, they have the credit, it is what they love. And I don't live in a particularly wealthy area.

People just love to put each other down. As proof, I am doing it too.

Fact is, we are all a bunch of Richards.

I know my wife and I have done what we have done charitably, and are happy with it. We did it purely for us, and almost no one knows about it. We did it to help, not to gain social standing.

For all anyone here knows we gave everything ... or nothing. Not anybody else's business. And bragging about generosity only soils it ... and Not being generous is not bad, because We have Choice. Not choosing honestly, lying to ourselves, and hating on others .... that's bad.

Seeking status can be bad ... but we all do it. Even the people who accuse others of acting to seek status are themselves seeking status---They want to be seen as superior for not seeking status---directly. No one is fooled, though.

Our egos infect everything we do.

I think I have done enough to stir things up so that Indyfabz will find some amusing retorts when he returns from his repast.

I spent about two grand, but I account for it on factors to do with it's use. There was no cheaper option that'd be up to the job it does. It replaced a car.

Ten grand, well that's investment money from where I'm standing. A business vehicle, competition sports equipment, that sort of thing. Can build a hospital in Rwanda for that.

Well, to dispell any prejudices, I am a blue-collar factory worker. Not even one who has economically benefitted from the growth of my region. My income is spot on exactly average for my region. Contract negotiations in troubled times assured that my income has been stagnent for better than 10 years. I just recognize what I see. The circles I hang out in don't generally have $10k bikes, but those circles are readily available if I chose. So let's do away with the "my neighborhood" part of the question. That is why I made a point to frame the question "adjusted for income." Can we accept that I don't want "me" to be part of it? Thanks.

So adjusted for income, wherever you are, would you?

Presumably it is more amoral to spend $10K on a car, as it is the same amount of money ripped from the mouths of starving pit-bull and chewawa puppies, plus it dumps fossilized carbon into the atmosphere. Yet most would consider $10K on a car to be cheaping out.

Using your income percentage definition of "fine bike", I wouldn't ever own one that expensive, so the question is utterly meaningless to me.

You could build a pet hospital in Rwanda for that kind of money. :D

A ten thousand dollar bike a lavish luxurious extravagance?....oh yeah, it is. I don't personally know anybody who would think differently.

I do not have a problem spending money on bikes either.

It's called "normalization." It is frequently used to standardize a metric in relation to other factors. For example: "Larger tires have lower rolling resistance at the same pressure as smaller tires."

The "at the same pressure" is the normalization part that puts CRR on the same terms. Though that part is frequently left out in the game of telephone we call Bike Forums.

It's ok to say "No." I sure as heck, wouldn't. That's ok & does not make you a bad person, or anything at all actually. Taking issue with the question, the questioner, & deflection actually says a lot, though.

HA!
:lol:

Hashtag: Irony.
Good show & well done!
:beer:

it is almost as if value is a purely personal metric, and some people value money differently than others, and some people see spending money of different things differently, and each of us is a unique individual and there is no universal scale of monetary worth ..... yeah, I guess it is better to grab a torch and pitchfork and join a mob than to try to figure all that out.

Sorry, folks, I was about to go out and run errands but we got slammed with thunderstorms which I know from experience should slacken off in a little while ... so you get more of my drivel in the meantime.

You lose.

I don't need to justify how I spend my money.

I don't need to occupy myself with pursuits like rescuing dogs.

I am not defined by the things I do not do.

You asked the question--"would I trade a fine bike to buy a meal etc." I guess I can answer "no" because I would never own a fine bike using your own "normalization" standards, but that doesn't seem to be significant of anything than I am too cheap to spend a lot on a bike. It is a meaningless question to me because you are asking, using your own relative scale, whether I would part with something I would never own for a hypothetical reason that will never arise for the simple reason that there is nothing to part with.

Basically, this is a stupid thread based on absurd premise. And it's not my damn fault you started your post with an absurd assertion that $10,000 bikes are "ordinary".

Does this same person eschew a smart phone, car, eating out, and other things so they can donate money "if they had $10k" for a bike? No nice coffee either? No nice beers, just the cheapest possible?

You can rack up a few grand a year in coffee and beer expenditures. So who is more righteous, the person who keeps hold of a $10k bike for 4 years or a person who goes through $2500 a year in coffee and alcohol expenditures?

Where's it stop?

It's not the acquisition and using of wealth itself, it is the HOW you do it. If you are a dick or not.

We're on a bike forum for people who are talking about bikes. Lamenting high bike cost versus donating the money instead is simply social signaling on that person's part.

Trade all your bikes to help a sick puppy? Give up on your sick puppy and donate the $10k to a children's hospital instead and let the sick dog die and save a human child?

You could construe the line of thought as coveting. You covet the bike to such an extent that you would even fantasize about that you'd do better than the person who does own the bike if you could afford it.

The woman coveted the other woman's baby to such an extend she would have rather had Kind Solomon cut it in half.

The bike is coveted so much, they'd rather that nobody have it.

It's a thought as old as sin. "Well if I had that instead, I'd do better."

It was good. Southern Indian cuisine. Plenty of leftovers for dinner. Not going to give them to one of the beggars who hang outside my office building. I will be flying (first class) out west very early Saturday morning to start a bike tour and still have some prep work to do, so not having to cook tonight will be nice.

Deflections ("you could've/I would've done this instead of that with the money") are silly and dishonest, but even in my high-tech circle an S-Works (easiest ~$10K bike to recognize) is considered a luxury badge, and when the rider is clearly not up to snuff with what it signals, there is mocking. Of course not everyone thinks the same (I reflexively roll my eyes at the ever-increasing heaps of giant Tesla Model Xs rolling around and am probably an outlying judgmental curmudgeon in my demographic), but I wouldn't say blingy bikes are normalized.

This.
You helped me put a finger on it exactly.
Thanks! :hug:

But have you ever had a truly good bicycle?

So, on the Trek website, they sell 7 models of road bike that are $10,000+. The page tells me that they have 100 different road models in total (but that includes bare framesets, so maybe something like 90 total models). I know Specialized has a number of models up there but their site is down at the moment. A $10,000 bike isn't just "a bit on the high side", it is the top 10% of the range and almost certainly low single digits in sales volume. Heck, it may be the very definition of the 1% in bikes. In short, that is a very, very large sum to spend on a bike.


TBH, while I can afford it, I struggle to justify even $3000 on a bike. That's simply a lot of money for something that depreciates as badly as a bicycle. I'll work on the motor instead.


As far as the charity angle, I give to some causes that I care about. For the rest of my charitable giving, the Government takes plenty of my money in taxes and spreads it around enough that I have no guilt spending the remainder of the money I earned on whatever I feel like.

Where can I trade in all my sick puppies for a bicycle?