Actually, I do agree with you. (I think I forgot the smiley faces in my previous post to indicate that I wasn't serious.)

Planning is the key to saving money on gear, and buying the best you can afford (then gulping hard and buying one step better, according to Colin Fletcher) means that you might minimize cost over the long run. If you're on a tight budget, then that goes double - you'll want the gear to last a long time, so you want to buy the right thing at the start. Unfortunately, there are a couple of practical problems we encounter.

Unless you're able to spare no expense from the start, you're faced with the problem of needing a full set of gear and having limited funds available. I'll admit to being a huge gear junky (it's become a second hobby for me), but it wasn't always that way. When I began 30 years ago, it was because my son's Scout troop needed additional adults for their trips. I still had a mortgage, wasn't as well established in my career as I am now, had the normal expenses of raising two kids (and saving for their college costs) - and needed to outfit not only myself, but also my son. So, we needed everything and had very little to spend. So, we bought a lot of stuff we knew was, at best, second rate. (Sterno stoves with coffee can cooksets, poly tarps, and $30 American Camper e-frame packs, just to name a few.) But, for about $200, we were able to outfift ourselves. We carried about 15 pounds of gear each, because doing without held the weight down. Within a couple of years, we began replacing gear with better stuff: a Eureka tent, Camp Trails packs, and Peak One sleeping bags. This is when we began evaluating quality.

Another problem in trying to buy good gear once, at the start, is lack of experience. Someone who wants to try backpacking needs gear, but is totally at the mercy of the store clerk in trying to gauge quality. It usually works OK at the local shop, and produces mixed results at larger stores like REI (depends on whether they've got the bike guy working in the camping department that day) - and God help you if you're at the mercy of the ninetten-year-old at Dick's. To get past this, you can rent gear if it's available in your area (not always the case in Ohio) or, if you're lucky, borrow from a friend.

But even if you're lucky enough that you buy good gear the first (or, more likely, second) time around, there's always a good chance you'll succumb to the "Oooh, shiny..." trap. That's what happened to me. I bought a set of really good gear about 15 years ago. And about 12 years ago, and 10 years ago, and 4 sets since then. Like I said, trying different sets of gear, especially as "ultralight" caught on among the mainstream manufacturers, became a hobby unto itself for me. But that, I think, isn't really related to what you're getting at with this thread. (And, luckily, I've been able to avoid having all that gear gathering dust in the basement.)

I'm not sure everyone will take it to the point of applying your formal analytical approach to the problem of equipping themselves. However, I think that (absent gear-junky tendencies), you can save a lot of money (and a lot of discomfort on the trail) by developing a plan that includes an annual gear budget and prioritizes purchases of that second set of gear (I'll put everything toward a really good down sleeping bag this year. Then, next year, I'll get the Jetboil stove and a self-inflating pad. Then..." If you're lucky enough to have a gear-junky friend, you can save a bunch by buying their allegedly-used stuff; if you're lucky enough to live near a good local backpacking shop, you may even be able to minimize that first-cheap-set-of-gear outlay by getting good advice on what gear will work well for a long time.

This is a good thread - maybe you (or someone) could develop it into an article to go with the other "How To" articles on the home page. Those articles tend to focus on the technical aspects of getting started, but there is a definite financial aspect to it, too. (And not everyone wants to start out with a cat-food stove and Folger's cookset.)