[scarface74]

Yes there are transaction costs to doing anything that you pay someone else for. In the IT industry it’s just like deciding to build versus buy and using managed services. Setting up a few VMs on Linode and hosting all of your own databases, queueing systems, etc is much cheaper than buying the same from AWS, yet and still organizations pay more for AWS everyday, why is that?

Every time you go out to eat, you are paying a markup over something you can do yourself - do you go out to eat?

Would it be more efficient for me to cut my own grass and maintain my yard on the weekend than pay someone else since I can’t convert that time I save on the weekend to cash - of course. But that’s time I can spend with my wife or relaxing. I also haven’t washed my own car, preferring to go to the car wash since I got my first real job out of college.

My maternal grandfather was a “man’s man” he built his own house, could fix cars, he took his pigs to the slaughterhouse and had a ranch with cows that he maintained until close to the time he died. On the other hand, my father isn’t as mechanically inclined, always looked up to his father in law and it took him years of convincing that it wasn’t emasculating to pay someone to do something that you’re not good at.