The Cost of Not Yet
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." Augustine was naming something most of us recognize because we're living it. He wanted to be virtuous, but just wasn't willing to pay the cost.
Yet.
Maybe later when he was stronger or when circumstances changed. Just not yet. We're all Augustine right now, browsing through digital marketplaces of endless products at cheaper and cheaper price points. We know deep down what those prices mean, but we can't bring ourselves to confront why we accept this trade off. "Not yet" has a way of becoming permanent.
In 2026, a button down shirt can't cost $15 unless someone is subsidizing the cost in suffering. Maybe you've seen the reports stating aspects of forced labor in the factories that produce for marketplaces like Amazon, Temu, and Shein, but workers in these factories are paid below minimum wage with no benefits. Even knowing this, we buy anyway, because we've been taught that the free market is the highest good. Quality can be substituted for outward aesthetics because of a societal consensus that everyone deserves access to the appearance of everything at the price of nothing.
We've inherited a world built on the concept that true fairness means everyone can possess an image without paying what it costs. If someone in the world can afford a well-made shirt, then justice demands that everyone can afford something that looks like a well-made shirt, even if the cost is that the people making them suffer. Once you've accepted this logic, you've already decided that the people making those things are disposable. You can't flatten the quality curve without destroying it.
Even if you reject fake brands with AI generated images and buy a heritage brand with photos of actual humans, you're not much better off. A "heritage" white oxford from a major retailer isn't what it was twenty years ago. The cotton is thinner and the cut is built for a mannequin instead of a living, breathing person, so it doesn't hold its shape the way it should. The marketing rides the wave of pathos without any of the ethos. Even respected brands have compromised because they're competing against the demands of a consumer base that makes purchases solely based on the MSRP. They've decided that most customers can't tell the difference anyway. Unfortunately, they're absolutely correct. That's the real problem.
I personally noticed this the first time I thrifted a 1980s Brooks Brothers suit. It felt nothing like the ones I had purchased in 2018, but in all of the best ways. It dawned on me that I'd never actually understood what I was wearing until I couldn't afford not to. Without the luxury of waiting, I had to learn more about what dictates quality if I wanted to be an intentional consumer. As a result, I've been better equipped to filter what is worth buying new, what makes more sense to buy after a little bit of breaking in, and what is unnecessary. The material world is sacramental regardless of whether we recognize it or not. What we make and how we treat the people who make things matters.
What's being lost by “fast-fashionization” is twofold.
The first is the willingness to discern what is something worth owning vs. something that is made to keep you as a perpetual consumer. When you can get the image of a well-made shirt for $15, why would anyone spend time learning what makes a shirt well-made? Why would anyone spend the attention required to develop taste that can discern something made with intention vs. something made with no care of its endpoint? The answer is increasingly: if you don't, nobody will. A civilization where discernment becomes irrelevant is a civilization that loses the capacity to recognize authenticity. You can't outsource this aspect of your consumer habits to brand campaigns and influencers. You have to actually know. You have to develop this ability through experience which inevitably means allowing yourself to be disappointed by cheap things so you understand what good costs. This doesn't require being rich. It starts small: one category where you can afford to care - maybe a bar of soap, a belt. Master that. As your knowledge compounds, you'll spend less overall on things that actually last and are enjoyable to use.
The second aspect is more concerning: the capacity to recognize the difference between good and poor quality. What you save on a Shein purchase in money, you pay for in the missed opportunity to learn what authenticity feels like. The learning pathway completely disappears. Darker still, a shirt made to fall apart trains you to treat it like it doesn't matter. You don't care for it, don't respect it, and eventually toss it without much thought. The disposability in the creation process becomes disposability in how we treat what we own. We know they won't last long, so we don't invest in them. Poorly made products create careless owners, and careless owners accept poorly made products.
Why would anyone develop discernment if they can get the image of everything without having to spend the time to know what they're looking at? The real spiritual emptiness is that we've stopped being capable of recognizing authenticity once we've found it. A person incapable of discernment is perfectly designed to be exploited - which isn't by accident. A system designed to keep you financially squeezed while offering infinite images of abundance can only exist through multiple layers of human exploitation. Whether inflation engineered by bad policy, wars that drain domestic resources on behalf of foreign nations, or fraud and corruption by corporations extracting every dollar they can, our economic apparatus is designed to extract just enough to ensure you continue consuming.
It should be no surprise that the same system prefers that you remain spiritually numb. Why? A numb person replaces any framework that asks for sacrifice with the simple pursuit of lowest-cost ease. Discernment requires attention, which requires energy that is not being exhausted trying to survive.
But we don't need to retreat from society. That’s actually the worst thing to do right now. We need to work within it as ethically as possible while knowing it's broken. That might mean thrifting instead of buying new. Maybe it's being attached to fewer objects. It also means living in reality - there are perfectly acceptable occasions to buy generic items. A generic pain reliever is just as effective as name brand, and emergencies happen where money can be tight. There are always exceptions to the rule, but discernment in a broken system requires recognizing authenticity, and that can only be achieved by being willing to sacrifice the ease of lowest-cost consumption. We have to want something other than comfort, and we have to believe that authenticity is worth the attention it requires.
But this isn't really about shirts and colognes, is it?
Knockoffs, rips, and dupes are just the visible symptom of something much deeper. We veneer every aspect of our lives. Not just in what products we buy, but in how we present ourselves in public and the manner we show up in relationships. While this is just part of human nature, what's changed is how many identities are being built based on something that never existed. We're chasing Hiraeth. The carefully curated online identity that bears no resemblance to the human behind it.
Augustine's confession doesn't end with failure or with him retreating from the world. He became the person his conscience told him to become. He writes: "But now how different is my state from what it was." That's available to you now, even within the system you're already part of as long as you refuse to become numb to it. Yes, the counterfeit everything will continue, but you already know the cost. The question is whether you're willing to pay it.
Works Cited
Anti-Slavery International. "The Fast Fashion Model: Why the Problem Goes Beyond Shein." Anti-Slavery International, 15 June 2024, www.antislavery.org/latest/shein-fast-fashion-problem/.
Public Eye. "Shein's Supply Chain Scandal Exposed." Global Training Center, 9 Jan. 2025, globaltrainingcenter.com/sheins-supply-chain-scandal-exposed/.
Sanders, Bernie. "The 'Injury-Productivity Trade-off': How Amazon's Obsession with Speed Creates Hazardous Working Conditions." U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Dec. 2024, help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/amazon_investigation.pdf.
U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "OSHA and Amazon Settlement on Worker Safety." OSHA News Release, 19 Dec. 2024, osha.gov/news/newsreleases/osha-national-news-release/20241219.
