Patrick von Stutenzee's Gay Candy Blog: Only Stupid People Pay for the Same Thing Twice

Am I stating the obvious? I don’t think so, and maybe you’ll follow my reasoning. Far from paying twice for the same thing, sometimes we end up paying for the same thing many times over. Going through an example might help you make up your own mind.

Do you like to watch football (soccer)? If yes, you certainly will go to the stadium to watch your home team. To get into the stadium, you pay an entry fee, naturally enough. But you could have watched it also on television, and with your television licensing fee you already paid once to watch it. You can’t watch every match on free TV? That’s only natural, as pay TV usually pays more money for the rights to show the matches; as a real enthusiast you are sure to have the additional pay TV to watch everything going on in the football world. Which adds up to you paying for the same match for the third time, then.

In the stadium, look around you. Look at all the advertisement placed around the playing field and elsewhere in the stadium. Your brewery, your bank, your insurance company, your fast food joint, and you name it, they are all represented there. The advertisement in the stadium pays for the squad and the match you are watching.

This advertising in the stadium is paid for by your beer, your mortgage, your house insurance, your eating out, and whatever else. You have already paid for watching this match several times over by what you consume or use before you ever decided to come to the stadium. The same goes for the players' t-shirts, shorts, socks, and shoes. With your car, your trainers, and what not, you paid for watching this same game again and again. And that is only on the field; we haven't even talked about the free shuttle service and the players cars all paid with your car.

By using your credit card to pay for the tickets, the pies, fries, drinks, and mementos in the stadium, you have paid once more for watching the game. And should you have decided to watch at home after all, in between the first and second half advertisement will be placed on your screen. While you get your next beer and your crisps that are paying for the adverts, you already are paying for watching this match once again.

My grandmother was no fan of football matches and therefore tried to contribute as little as she could to paying for them. She summed it up in the saying: If they need to advertise for a product, something must be wrong with it. Meaning, if you see it on TV or hear it on the radio, avoid buying it.

My mother on the other hand held to the belief that half the price paid for any product needing advertisement was to pay for the publicity in form of adverts, a host of overpaid public relations employees, so called product ambassadors, self appointed influencers and a token charity. If you could get a product that was good enough not to need to advertise, you would get that much more quantity in a higher quality for the same price.

This belief of my mother is borne out by razor blades which cost five pence in production but sell for several pounds in the shops. There is certainly ample scope to pay for the likes of Thierry Henry, Tiger Woods, and Roger Federer to promote a product no better than any other.

Paying twice? We tend to pay several times over for just about everything. And if you are one of the people who can’t afford to give money to charities, don't feel bad about it, you donate hundreds of pounds every year to many charities in publicity stunts by the likes of Bill Gates, Tesco, or Walmart just with buying the products you need for daily life. There is absolutely no need to give more.