Very many people would agree with this. They'd agree with it even if Dustin Curtis said it. This is not the bit that people have trouble with.
Dustin Curtis goes on to say:-
> Reasonable people would probably not spend the time to read a book about the history of flatware, buy twenty sets, and test the feeling of each metal utensil against their teeth. That sounds completely insane. But who cares about reasonable people?
The set he likes sells at MOMA for $50. $50 * 20 = $1000 just on evaluation sets of cutlery.
I can safely say that my cheap cutlery cost me significantly less that $1000, functions well, and will last me the rest of my life.
It's great that there are designers who like this kind of thing. It's great that there are publishers like Phaidon who sell books about door handles or flatware or whatnot. (It's a shame they have a viciously unpleasant website - (http://www.phaidon.com/designclassics/) )
But, really, "good enough" is for many people good enough.
At least Dustin Curtis is saying "buy things that are beautiful because they perform their function well" and not "who cares if it does what it should do, look at the nice twiddley bit on the handle". See, for example quite a lot of stuff at Yanko.
Some context though: Dustin's article expresses that he enjoys the process of researching products that are well-designed. Therefore, I think it's reasonable to elongate the curve just for him and others like him.
Some of the best tools I've owned cost less than the average tools you can find at Walmart.
And if I may expend the discussion to softwares (which are also tools to me), some of the best software tools I love are free -- vim for eg.
To me, Dustin is advocating a very practical position of minimalism. It's about starting from scratch and thinking carefully about everything you own. There is a huge upfront investment involved but you will get that time back (and much more) because you trust your tools. They won't let you down, They won't break, They will work exactly as intended and you will understand why they work in that way. This frees you up to spend more time on the things that are important to you.
I spent a few months travelling this year and I spent an awful lot of time thinking about what I wanted to bring with me. I bought almost everything from scratch and each item that went into the backpack was meticulously researched. I ended up with only 7.5kg (including backpack) of stuff but I had everything I needed and everything I needed was important. I was suddenly less anxious about setting off on my adventure. When others found that their backpacks were coming apart at the seams, mine was as strong as the day I bought it. When spending a month motorbiking through Vietnam, it took my friends 15 minutes to strap their 20KG+ of luggage to the bike every morning, it took me one minute. I always had the perfect clothing for whatever activity in whatever weather (despite the fact that I had about a third as much clothes as everybody else). While others were wondering around rural areas looking for a launderette, I had everything I needed to wash my own clothes (The liquid I used for washing clothes could also be used to wash my hair and shave, and I only needed a few ml of it). I got better sleep in dodgy areas because my fellow travellers were sleeping with one eye open while my bag was securely locked and tethered to something grounded. I could go on.
The bottom line is that I spent less time worrying and more time enjoying the moments and being with the people I was lucky enough to spent those moments with.