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What the Ninja Blender Can Teach Us

Who knew that the market for blenders is so complicated? I feel like I just waded into an incredible thicket of expertise, vociferous opinion, infinite choice, and high-fashion kitchen confusion.

It began inauspiciously enough. I needed a blender because everyone seems to be making smoothies. Surely this is no big deal, I thought. I need a machine that grinds stuff up and turns it into a drinkable liquid. I’ll head to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and grab one.

How difficult can this be?

I found out pretty quickly. At first I shopped based on price. Here is one for $20. Perfect. But wait, here is one for $50 that seems fancier. And here is one for $100 that seems mighty impressive. But hold on one moment. Here is the one that seems like The Thing. It is a super impressive and highly value blender called the Ninja!

My goodness, it is $150!

Sounds crazy, right? Except that in 1955, the average blender sold for $350 in inflation-adjusted dollars. It seems like the premium blender is now half as much as it was 60 years ago and is probably more than twice as good. What’s not to love?

But let’s think about this more deeply. How can a blender that costs that much sit so close by to one that costs a fraction as much? If you never made it out of an introduction to economics class, you might suppose that competition would lead to one price. No one would willingly spend nearly 8 times more on a blender than is seemingly necessary. Surely not. Both blenders can’t possibly survive.

But then again, the blender market is like every other market. There are low-end products. Maybe they break quickly, maybe not. There are the middle-brow products that seem reasonably priced and they are solid. Then there are the luxury goods that people buy partly for quality but, let’s admit it, largely because of the status.

So, for example, let’s say that I really want to dig deep and buy the Ninja blender. Someone comes over and says, “Wow, you have a Ninja blender? Do you just love it?”

That comment alone might make the extra spending worth it all. And let’s say that no one ever comes over and says that. Maybe every time you use it, you think: “I have a Ninja blender!”
That might be all you need.

Or it could be like what just happened. I asked a co-worker: “What blender do you have?”
She said, rather nonchalantly, “A Ninja.” I expressed astonishment and she beamed with pride and told me every detail. She started dancing around and talking about her great life with her blender. Then another coworker piped up and said he has a Ninja blender too and that it is so powerful that he can make a smoothie out of a brick.

All of this is great, and I’m very happy for these people. What I finally did point out is that neither of them have a VitaMix Professional Series 750 in Candy Red. The retail price on this honey of a blender: $750!

As Qui-gon Jinn says in Phantom Menace, “there’s always a bigger fish.”

Just raising this point introduce dgenuine controversy.

It turns out that Ninja Ultima owners are extremely resentful of the owners of the Vitamix Professional Series 750 in Candy Red. They have tried to show me as series of web links that prove that the Ninja is just as good as the Vitamix, even if some people say that the Vitamix is easier to clean. In any case, the Ninja owners are absolutely convinced that the Vitamix people have wasted their money.

Suffice it to say that passions run very high on this topic.

As with every consumer good on the market. Whether it is blenders, or dryers, or soap, or shoes, or dresses, or coffee makers, or sunscreen, the market has offered us an amazing array of products from which to choose. And, contrary to what the rationalist might expect, it is not always about quality and price. It is often about status, identity, personality, social standing, and a thousand other considerations known and unknown.

The makeup of every sector of the market is as complex and ever changing as the human personality itself — indeed, a flourishing market looks very much like the diversity and complexity of the social order. You can’t plan it. You can’t slice and dice it and model it to perfection. It’s an ever changing kaleidoscope of preferences and speculations crashing into physical realities and economic possibilities with results that can’t be anticipated or fully understood by the human mind.

But the socialist says: this is all a ridiculous waste. We should not have the kind of society in which people are allowed to blow $750 on a blender! But they should think again. We do indeed want the kind of society in which anyone can create and innovate and advertise, even to the point of making outrageously expensive products. And we want the kind of society in which people are actually free to use their own resources to purchase what they want, even if it seems crazy.

What I find particularly remarkable is that the Vitamix company has managed a profit even given the competition. How can you persuade people to spend 37 times the lowest price available on a product that, more or less, seems to do the same thing? That takes some doing, as impressive as any feat in sports or academics. If it seems so easy, try it yourself.

Why not treat this achievement as evidence of genius?

Compare real markets with the fake markets that government tries to create. Obamacare’s authors imagined that they knew precisely what kind of health care we all want. Public schools posit that they knew what kind of education we want. And government police and courts are premised on the idea that there is only one kind of security and one kind of justice. The results in every case are homogeneous — and awful.

The whole of human products and services should be like the blender market. We should have the freedom to create and consume.

What blender did I buy? I went for the $20 one. And you know what? It blended up a beautiful smoothie. I’m happy. The seller is happy. The world is a slightly better place to live in because of this mutually beneficial exchange.

A version of this piece first appeared on Fee.org.

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Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialog. Feel free to leave a comment!

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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11 comments

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  • You friendly neighborhood bartender would probably recommend the Waring. Every bar I ever worked in had Waring blenders. They cost between $100 and $200, but they go nonstop for years. Damn those strawberry daiquiris!
    Then of course, you’ll find yourself singing that great old Warren Zevon song. . . Poor Pitiful Me.
    “Yes, he really worked me over good
    He was a credit to his gender
    He put me through some changes
    Lord, sorta like a waring blender”

    Sing along. . .

    • I am that friendly neighborhood bartender — and semi-recently I went with Blendtec, whereas Chef Troy, screwing around in the back-of-the-house, went with Vitamix.

      Rather like swingers, we’ve swapped blenders a time or two. They’re both quite good. And yet it’s been more-or-less definitively decided: Vitamix doesn’t quite create the same airy frothiness that the Blendtec does. Blendtec has more horses, more testicularity.

      The real eye-opener, however — for me, at any rate — was exactly what J.T. talks about: who knew the market for blenders was so complex?

      I did not.

      I spent a full week reading reviews and trying to decide. I heartached over it.

      Understand, of course, the biggest issue for a bartender and her blender isn’t just the effectiveness of the blender, but also longevity, durability, size, staying-power. And it is precisely here that the Waring has always left me wanting: she wears out too fast. She can’t hang. She can’t hang with all those fucking suburbanites and their blended Pisco Sours, I guess. (And, to be candid, I don’t really blame her.)

      I’m sincere when I say that I was astounded by the sheer power of both the Vitamix and the Blendtec. They take blending to an entirely new level. I’d never seen anything like it. I had no idea. Big hard ice cubes? Please. Those blenders chew them up and spit them out. They could make mince meat out of a whole cow. They could puree a pig. The greenish vortex they generate when blending a candy-ass marg is like something you’d see in outer space.

  • Great article!
    Passionate blender person here. I’ve gradually climbed the blender ladder for the last 10 years. Eventually, my wife and I received a vitamix as a wedding present (we’d never have spent that much for a blender). It blew us away. It has been at the heart of every dinner we’ve hosted. We’ve made almond milk, hazelnut icecream and we’ve even heated food from raw using nothing but the friction. If it broke, we’d buy another one without hesitating (well, we’d have to hesitate a bit while we saved up for a new one) but luckily vitamixes don’t break.
    The best part about my story is that I don’t have to convince the politburo of the virtues of the vitamix. I don’t need to convince anyone. I can just get it and be happy (and boast a bit).

  • Lovely article! I’d like to add another variable to the equation of selecting a blender.
    Rpm are very important for your health. The lesser rpm bring: higher nutrition, less oxidation and foam and better flavor. The state of the art slow juicer runs at 42rpm, but you can save money buying one with 80rpm. The price is around 300$.

  • Spot on, we need the Free Market as individuals have preferences for products and services at different “levels.”

  • A blender for every need! The Vitamix is remarkable and well-worth the power, if you can benefit from what it provides or need a commercial blender. My wife is a cook of cooks who insists on making everything from scratch–from our garden to our mouths. We purchased a Vitamix in 1992 at the lofty price of $500, a lot of money at the time. During the long warranty period the company faithfully replaced the parts worn. From grinding flour to making various herbal concoctions. And since the warranty expired we’ve replaced the canisters and a few blades, as well as some less obvious parts. And it still runs. OK, not perfectly, but it still has a few more years in it, I think. I can’t think of many products we have ever gotten so much value from.

    I dread the day that some statist decides that the Vitamix needs to be regulated. Perhaps it uses too much power and isn’t green enough. Or finds some danger in it that requires a governor to be placed on output, or modify it with irritating, function-defeating safety mechanisms. Works, cover it with warning stickers.

    • The longer I watched, the more I laughed – especially at the cut shots to the host during the attempt to answer the question.

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