Originally Posted by Gear_Admiral

And a lot of college students who are lazy and think about getting in shape and whose parents are rich. The kid thinks he or she will "get into biking," if only he or she had the right bike.

No experimentation. Boom! Straight to super expensive pre-built racing bike that weighs less than 5 kg, which will then collect dust after a few months because the rider got a flat and won't fix it or got muscle fatigue from riding more than half a mile for the first time ever ... or it gets stolen because the idiot used a Kryptonite megalock around one spoke of the quick release front wheel.

I have been to college in America and worked on a university for 5 years later in life. This is depressingly common. One youth will get and lose more value in bikes or bike parts in one year than I will spend in two decades. If anything, this has gotten worse in recent years.

Most students have simple bikes, but 1 in 50 in September will literally be the $5,000 bike chained up by the front wheel only and every one of those bikes will be gone by October, either stolen or sitting in a dormitory stairwell rusting up (well, not the carbon frame itself, of course).

This does happen. I am not going to defend my estimates of frequency. I just mean to say that when this *does* happen, then it is a waste of money. Same goes for any hobby or thing where a newbie goes whole hog out of the gate. Think of the person who wants to try archery and drops thousands on a brand-new bow before experimenting first. This isn't to say that X person buying Y equipment is wasting money, but that when anyone buys Y equipment and does not use it, then that was a poor financial decision. Some of those "someones" will fit into one or another stereotypes.

I just think it stands to reason that an 18-year-old who abandons $5,000 property didn't think long and hard about buying that thing and didn't work hard for that cash to readily abandon the thing he or she bought with thay money. These people exist is all I am saying, and they seem to be more common than mid-life crisis racing bike shoppers.