[ExI] prices

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Sent: Monday, 24 November, 2025 9:46 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
Subject: [ExI] prices

 

A few years ago I needed two mattresses - one for me and one for my wife Roz.  I bought her one called Avocado or something like that.  It was about $1000.  It has been fine.

 

On a whim I bought myself a mattress from Walmart:  $88 delivered to my door.  Can miracles exist?  It has been just fine, fine as any mattress I ever owned.

 

Price as an indicator of quality?  Sometimes, it seems.

 

bill w

 

 

 

 

 

Billw this conflates a material technology advance with quality.  John Galsworthy wrote an excellent short story on the topic, but there were few technology advances in his benighted times.  Fortunately now is not then.  These are our… bedayed times.  Now, technology advances and our stuff gets better.

 

I too bought one of those cheapy Walmart mattresses, as did my son for his dorm room.  Both found them most satisfactory, better than their predecessors which were more expensive.  Reason: a material known as memory foam, which was (and is) still expensive and doesn’t breathe well (memory foam doesn’t work for everyone) was mostly replaced with a lower cost alternative. The alternative become commercially available for mattresses, still a semi-closed foam which is marketed by the price leaders (Walmart and Costco) as Future Foam.  It doesn’t work for everyone, but it does for me.  It doesn’t cost as much as memory foam, and in some ways works better.  Material technology advances.  Advances are our friends.

 

Now of course the bed marketing people scramble to find features they can add to mattresses to make them expensive once more.  Inflation is bad, deflation is ruinous.  An example of features being added to bring up mattress cost is future foam toppers with individually-inflatable cells underneath.  I would never have given that whole notion a second glance had not I used one for several days at the hospital (non-life threatening, thx.)  They had those things, and oh how they work.  A marvelous absurdity is this luxury item.  I want one.  

 

Before that recent stay, I would have considered the notion just silly.  Now… I have been looking around for a foam topped alternating load inflatable bed, as the use as preventative accommodations for geezers with bed sores.  It has a little compressor and moves the load points even if one is perfectly still.  Cool!

 

These are great for bed-sore geezers.  Well OK, did anyone stop to ask, how do these work for others, such as me, a geezer without bed sores?  Answer: great!  I love em.  I will pay good money for one.  Haven’t had enough time for deep research yet, because duty calls, family members needing help, that sorta thing, but… I predict I will purchase a foam-topped sore-geezer mattress  before my 26 calendar comes down.

 

spike   

 

 

 

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