5 minute walk then 20 minute wait then 5 minute walk back.
When you're earning $50+ an hour, which many in cities are easily clearing, it starts to make a lot of sense to pay someone else to do your waiting for you.
When you're earning $50+ an hour, which many in cities are easily clearing, it starts to make a lot of sense to pay someone else to do your waiting for you.
It’s not the “opportunity cost” you should be measuring. It’s the “opportunity cost of the next best alternative.”
If I am an hourly worker making $50 and going to get food would be an hour that I wouldn’t be working, then yes it is worth $50 to not spend it going to get food.
But if I am choosing between watching Netflix and going to get food. The next best alternative pays $0. From a purely financial view it makes sense to get food.
I find this become more true the more someone is compensated and the more they have to work.
There are three concepts that HN commenters don’t understand
- “Monopoly” and anti-trust
- the legal concept of censorship.
- opportunity costs.
So, say, an hourly contractor who orders delivery so they can get back to work sooner still makes sense to you, right?
If he makes $50 an hour and he can get an extra hour in working, if it is cheaper for him to order food then yes it makes economic sense.
On the other hand if he were at home watching Netflix and he spent the money set aside for his utility bill to eat out and his lights got cut off , the opportunity cost wasn’t the $50, it was that he could have had lights.
Thanks for taking the time to elaborate. You have a good one.
Opportunity cost is exactly that: the next best alternative.
> But if I am choosing between watching Netflix and going to get food. The next best alternative pays $0.
If you could be spending that time earning $50, and you choose to watch Netflix instead—all else being equal—then obviously watching Netflix is worth more to you than the $50. Going to get food thus implies foregoing at least $50 worth of leisure time. The fact that no one is paying you to watch Netflix is irrelevant; monetary compensation is not the sole (or even most signficant) measure of economic value.
That’s the entire point.
This is an economic decision just One that not easily seen by dollars. I value a movie more than running errands.
It is at least $50 per hour if you could have been using that time to work. Anything else that you choose to do instead of working is prima facie worth more to you than the $50 you could have been earning. The opportunity cost—the next best alternative—is either working and earning $50 or else something you value even more than $50.
You are attempting to claim the opposite: that if someone can make $50 per hour working, but chooses to do something else, then that time is somehow worth less than $50 per hour. This makes no sense at all. This would presume that the person knowingly and deliberately chooses the option which is less valuable from their own point of view.
The only reason that I would work around 40 hours a week instead of slacking off is because ethically, that’s what I agreed to do.
Most people aren’t in a position where they could put in every waking hour into pursuits that generate money.
What percentage of people that post on HN are working hourly billable jobs?
How many people who put in extra time actually get recognized by their company for doing so at their equivalent hourly rate?
Put in just your 9-5 then bail or put extra time and effort in to your career. Many high earners in cities are doing the latter. You take the time you'd be using not only be getting your food but cleaning, mowing, looking after your car; all of the work that isn't your job, and use it to earn more instead. The higher you earn, the more this makes sense to do.
Hours are interchangeable. Sure if you order food at 7:30, get it delivered at 8, and you spend 7:30-8 watching Netflix then yeah the next best alternative for that half an hour was $0. That's not where the trade off happened though. It's when you left work at 6 instead of 5. It's when you answer that phone call or email you otherwise wouldn't have later that night. It's going out for drinks the next day with that weird guy you shared an office with until he left a few weeks ago to work at a company you really want to move to.
I am saying that the intellectually honest reason is that “I have the money to spend on doing things I don’t want to do myself”. Not, “Because I make $50/hour, for 8 hours a day, my time is worth $50 and every hour I get back in my life is worth $50/hour”.
Their lives are all about optimization of time resources / time management, and everyone should bow to their needs - if it results in them shaving off some minutes here and there.
After all, they're making $300k/year working on important products, so it's only natural that every corner that could be cut, should be cut - even if it means driving people out of business.
When confronted with the logic, they regurgitate the same "But you see, my time is worth $xx, 24/7/365 - so 30 mins saved on task x is a net profit for me" (even though, in fact, they would not be working during those 30 minutes)
Every time we eat out, pay a lawn service to cut our grass, have someone else wash our car.
Yes. It is dumb though to justify it based on how much you get paid hourly. They don’t understand the real concept of opportunity cost.
imo my time is actually worth many multiples of what my employer pays me for it.
But your time is only “worth” monetarily what the market will pay for it.
You're right. If their leisure time were merely worth as much as their regular wages then they ought to be working those 30 minutes instead. Since in fact they made the opposite choice, they clearly value their leisure time more than what they would have earned by spending that time working.
You make it seem like they have a gun to the heads of the landscaper they hired to do a job, in which the landscaper now has money to do whatever want to do it with it.
To your other claim about not “working” during those 30 minutes. You are working every single minute of the day. It might not be for a paycheck, it is probably for your mental sanity by chilling out with a drink waiting for some food to arrive.
That was purely an economic decision that they value doing X over doing Y. That’s done with every transaction done throughout life.
- better delivery options
- an aversion to walking, or no walk-able options
- higher risk tolerance for lukewarm food
People differ in more than physical appearance.
I am working and/or enjoying highly limited relaxation time. I am willing to pay a premium to have the food arrive, and have the time surrounding "getting food in hand" be minimized, so as to minimize work interruption or maximize current recreational activity.
It's essentially the opportunity cost argument, applied to utility measure rather than literal dollars.
If you are being paid hourly, you should be billing for thinking while walking down the street or taking a shower. That is some of your most productive time.
Also as another commenter mentioned, cold food. Furthermore, avoiding all of the extra zero-use plastic waste they throw in the bag by default.