They may disagree, but they're trying to convey the same message. And both of them are IMO way too extreme about it.

What both Curtis and Moxie seem to want is to not have to think or worry about their possessions after they bought them. You can do this by buying "the best" so you won't have to worry about breaking[1], or you can do this by buying the (cheap) "worst", so you won't have to worry about breaking. If you get "the best", you'll have the added benefit of them being extremely pleasant to use, but a second hand fork eats just fine, too.

And IMO, they're both "consumerism", though someone may correct me if the following is not exactly consumerism, but something else:

> Partisans of the worst will get 15 sets of cutlery (out of a bucket that’s an overflowing fucking sea of cutlery) for fifty cents at the neighborhood thrift shop, and as a result, won’t have the slightest reservation if five of their housemates simultaneously decide to start a band that uses nothing but spoons for instruments. Partisans of the worst won’t give a shit if someone drops a dish while people are hanging out in the kitchen. They can push their crappy bicycle to the limit without worrying if it gets scratched — without even being too concerned about it getting stolen.

Ugh. This is absolute bullshit. I used to feel this way, up to my first few years of college, but then I grew up.

If how much you paid for an object is the biggest factor in how much you care whether it breaks or not, isn't that consumerism too? At the very least it's disrespectful. At least Curtis cares about the things he owns.

See it's fine if you buy cheap dishes because you like to throw the type of parties where things sometimes break. In fact it'd be stupid to get expensive AND fragile dishes. But that's a whole different POV than when you buy dishes because you can just break them, Moxie makes it sound like he already stopped caring about such items the moment he bought them.

(also, it's nice to own some plates that share the same design. You can't really cook up a beautiful meal and then serve it up on heterogeneous plates--but that's a matter of taste)

You can also get plastic camping dishes. They may be ugly but they will not break. Same for cups. You'll have ugly plastic things in your cupboard drawers FOREVER!

And the few people I know that will say to get the most shitty bike possible so they won't care if it gets stolen, I usually want to slap in the face when I ask them where they would acquire such a bike. Invariably on the street, for 10 euros, from a junkie. Not saying the author would do that, but a real second hand bike costs at least 10x that much, which is more than I would not care about getting stolen.

He does address this later in the essay, but I think he still misses the point:

> Some amongst the best will resort to a resources perspective and say that in this increasingly disposable world, it’s refreshingly responsible for those of the best to be making quality long-term buying decisions. But we’re a long way away from a shortage of second-hand forks in the global north — let’s take care of those first.

Because that still sounds to me like he treats cheap second-hand forks as disposable. And makes a mockery of the "Green" in the title of that section, we're also a long way from a shortage of plastic shopping backs.

Now most forks don't break easily. They just become increasingly shitty. Especially the half metal / half plastic ones that will come apart a bit but are still perfectly serviceable as a fork. Those ones are the absolute worst. I bet even most thrift stores throw them away.

Sorry if this post might just seem overly critical at Moxie, I have similar (yet opposite) problems with Curtis' post.

[1] as far as I can judge from the pics, nothing short of a disc grinder would damage those expensive spoons.