It's really a matter of faith.
Note the title of my reply and keep that in the back of your mind, please.
So, BillyK asked us to help him understand why this switch (follow the URL)
http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|328|303333|1330042&id=1329856
is $220 and the other switch (again, follow the URL)
http://www.goodluckbuy.com/lw28-20-...h-combined-switch-rotary-switch-20a-380v.html
is $10. I say, it all comes down to your faith.
While knowledge is good, man is not all knowing and thus is, well, not perfect. Sure, we see the positive relationship between throughput and costs, as well as materials, such as bakelite and brass, or plastic and zinc. Sure, we all know about supply and demand, and some may even remember something called the elasticiity of supply and what that does with price. But we are not all knowing. Turn you eyes to heaven for a moment and think about that.
I will tell you, what you don't know, you have to fill in with FAITH (and give me an "amen" for bringing this up).
Now, if you will imagine yourselves closing your eyes and thinking of the frontage of a sailboat and how you might see in that, a church. The hull of the boat may be the hall of the chuch. The mast and sail, climbing up as the roof does for the steeple.
Regarding the switch, heck, even the price that you pay for switch may be like the offering we toss into the plate. Some of us will be happy to give $10, but others, by guilt or by golly will pony up the 200 plus bucks without batting an eye. So, you really need to ask about your faith (and give me another amen).
Ask yourself, are you the $220 man? Do you sit in your place of worship but daydream about the waters? Would you leave a service early because the temperature is nice but the winds are even nicer? Would you jump aboard your boat and with your eyes looking into the heavens never give a second thought to an avenging lord as you run the switch, brrrrack, from shore to two and brrrrrrrrack, on or off again?
Or are you a $10 man? Do you sit in your place of worship but daydream about the waters? Would you TOO leave a service early because the temperature is nice but the winds are even nicer? Would you jump aboard your boat and with your eyes looking into the heavens never give a second thought as you place your hand on the plastic actuator, sliding the zinc on zinc contacts over each other, arcing the electrons vvzzbrrrrack, from shore to two and vvzzbrrrrack, on or off again?
So I cannot say who is better, but I imagine the $220 man decades from now might kneel by his bedside and wonder how he will explain all those times his skip church to go sailing.
But then I think about the $10 man, his eyes growing wide in disbelief, never quite fully understanding that he is trapped by his own freewill in a paradox of a moment so wrong but brought so rightfully to a flashpoint and as its consequence, his boat, its contents, and for a few hundreth of a second (and no more if His mercy favors him, say amen, again), what was him, are blown to hell in a fiery arc-induced, vapor-fueled explosion.
Let us have an appropriate moment of silence . . . now say, amen . . . .
I am but a simple man myself. I always think that I should leave final judgements up to "Him," if you understand my meaning here. Still, I wounder, who would YOU rather be? Would you want to be the man who trying to explain that he really is "sort'a sorry" for skipping no fewer that dozens on dozens of services or the one who has to say, "Gosh, I really am sorry I bought that cheap switch?"
Myself, if the cheaper one has a traceable certification and is not a counterfeit, I would risk the lower price to buy one or two of the offshore units, and i would examine and test them. if they suck and I am convinced that they're not up to the job, I'm only out the $60 or whatever. 
