Why do people hate cheap things?

I find a lot of people hating cheap things. Maybe the economy is doing too well and those who are employees forget what it's like to be laid off.

So much so, that when I eat out as part of a group, I fear for my social life when I suggest we go for, Sushi Express instead of Genki Sushi, the humble McDonald's instead of Burger King, or the friendly neighborhood noodle place instead of Big and Shiny Tsui Wah.

So. Why?

People have this massive misconception about the relationship between quality and price. Most people believe that quality is proportional price. Fair enough, what's wrong here?

Well, firstly - what people call quality is not really quality. They mean grade. Grade would be the difference between a Nexus 5X and 6P - the Nexus 5X is not of lower quality, it just has a lower performance grade.

But back to the dining example. Herein lies a problem. If they provide the same stuff, why should I go for the more expensive one?

I dislike working harder than I need to to pay for a premium for things I don't need, especially with my own money.

I believe that being efficient means that the optimum grade is not necessarily the highest grade, it just has to be adequate.

But not everybody thinks the same... It doesn't answer the question at the social level. Why does this "hate of cheap things" exist?

It's very simple. People do things for a reason (which is usually a kind of incentive). So what's the incentive here? Well, for one, this trait allows one to feel superior. Or try this - it filters out people who aren't willing to spend as much, or don't work as hard, or don't make as much (and are therefore tighter on their disposable income), or have less disposable income. So a classical case here is if you are a young female looking for a mate (or mates). Biologically, you're looking for guys with lots of resources that you can tap into for nesting. So having "high standards" helps you filter out the cheapskates, exponentially speeding up your selection process and potentially allowing you to turn more resources into more descendants. Multiply this by tens of thousands of generations and you end up with a lot of people who hate cheap things.

Suddenly, it all made sense to me, why that fear for my social life arose out of my subconscious.

They say in evolutionary psychology that you can basically boil down everything to reproduction. And I think at the end of the day, that is the natural meaning of life, and incidentally, why people hate cheap things.

End