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by aionaiodfgnio 1061 days ago
Most people know exactly the value of their time and the opportunity cost is in things like food and shelter. Wealthy people don't work for a living so their time isn't obviously valuable at all, have their wealth tied up in stocks and so can't predict their returns, and aren't materially affected by gaining or losing even billions of dollars.

Most people don't fly private because they can't afford it. Duh.

(And when we're dealing with real people, not homo economicus, it's clear that working 100 hours a week and hiring staff to do everything else would be miserable even if it made financial sense.)

EDIT: Replaced "poor people" with "most people".
1 comments
ary 1061 days ago
This is not entirely true. The poor may value their time like anyone else, but they often have a very different grasp on the time/money tradeoff. Not having money warps the value of time since (for the poor) lack of money is acute and how much time they have is abstract.

Anyone who has grown up poor or known those who are poor has seen this in action. People will go to great lengths to not spend small amounts of money to the point that working for minimum wage would take less time to cover the expense.

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aionaiodfgnio 1061 days ago
By "poor", I actually meant "not stupendously wealthy". This includes the merely rich.

A doctor or plumber or engineer or cashier knows how to translate their time into quality of life. A wealthy person cannot possibly do this. They don't know what their time is worth in money, and money doesn't change their quality of life.

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PaulHoule 1061 days ago
My classic example is if you go to a crafts store you will find 200 different skeins of acrylic yarn and one of wool. It takes 20 hours to knit a scarf with either, it will come out much nicer than wool, people really must not value their time very much.
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nerdponx 1061 days ago
This is a good point, and (charitably) this might be what the original author was trying to describe. If you are used to something being particularly scarce or valuable, you might continue to overvalue it on the margin even when it becomes less scarce.
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