Originally Posted by
vonfilm
Good job. You are a wise man.
Originally Posted by
icemilkcoffee
Guess what? There are objective reasons for why Dura Ace costs that much. Shimano used to publish a chart showing the materials used in each groupset, and you can see exactly how your money went towards titanium parts, forged aluminum parts, ball bearings instead of brass bushings, etc. And you can also see the additionally matching done to lighten the cranks and brake calipers, the 2-piece bonded hollow crank arm, carbon reinforced hollow chain rings, etc. So it’s not just ‘yeah, that’s what people will pay. What’s it to you?’
At no point was I justifying paying for this bike. I was explaining why the bike costs so much.
Now you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Obviously ‘made in USA’ applies to the parts made by Specialized.
Feel free to rebut that assertion. You go ahead and count the parts count for a motorcycle and compare it with a bicycle.
Anyone who has worked on both motorcycles and bikes knows that motorcycles are vastly more complex with much more engineering and machining on every part. The much vaunted disc brakes on bikes is roughly at the 1975 level for motorcycles. The Di2 brains is rudimentary compared to the engine/traction control/speed shifting ECUs on the Motorcycles.
Anyways feel free to debate that premise. That would be an interesting debate. Whereas ‘it is what it is’ is not an interesting topic for debate.
You know what's not an interesting topic for debate? Whether a bicycle can "possibly" be worth $14,000.
Since "worth" is a subjective value, that really is arguing for the sake of arguing.
You've so obviously deliberately distorted everything I said that I'm not going to bother addressing all your pointless quibbles and just make the following two rather obvious points:
1. The value of an object may have absolutely nothing to do with the costs of its individual components. For example, a few dollars worth of paint and canvas can be used to create a work of art for which someone will pay 10s of millions of dollars.
2. The fact that Shimano Dura-Ace costs so much because it's made of x is still not any kind of answer as to why it is or isn't "worth it" especially when there's a lot of very good somewhat cheaper alternatives.
As to your assertions regarding the comparison between motorcycles and bicycles, counting numbers of parts is really besides the point. You made a bunch of claims about costs per unit and numbers of units sold that I seriously doubt originated from anywhere outside of your butt. And again, even if they are true, it really has nothing to do with whether a $14,000 bicycle is worth $9,000 more than a $5000 bicycle. Just because OP wants to pretend it does is no reason to play along.
If we want to have a real discussion about how we determine value for ourselves, that might make sense and even broaden our perspectives, but setting up yet another snob vs. slob argument is really pointless.
Not everything has to be a debate.