I’ll never understand this.
Unless your time can be directly traded for money, it has no monetary value. I think it’s just a trick people use to talk themselves into spending money.
So, in the context of this rah-rah Amazon email, maybe I do get it.
I believe the common name for this transaction is "work".
Maybe get on Uber?
Specific results are tradeable for money. I get paid far too much for what I do most of the time, with small windows of specialized action that justifies the waste. It's sloth and inefficacy (due to an inability to measure efficacy) that makes it look like time for money, when it's largely an accounting trick that is more like a payment schedule than a time-for-money.
But I prefer to invert this thought experiment - my time isn't worth $x because I intend to use that time for something I can invoice, it's the amount you'd _have_ to pay for my time in order to incentivize me not to spend it walking around the park, watching a movie or whatever but rather do some marketable work.
So yes, I kind of know the value of my time, I'm willing to pay $x not to be bothered with some things, e.g. a washing machine. I don't care about spending +10 minutes when buying some item.
Yes but that’s an arbitrary value you’re assigning to your time not the the value someone else is willing to give you for your time.
These people work 9-5 and are paid a salary. I don't get it. Do it after work? Or on a day off. Or weekend...
You have to be making a very high income for DIY to not make sense. Paying someone skilled to do my brakes costs over $80/hr. And paying someone unskilled leads to showing up on /r/justrolledintotheshop later. Meanwhile with $600 or so of tools you can do all the basic maintenance for the rest of the car's lifetime (and re-use those tools for home improvement and other jobs). Something simple like brakes is a couple of hours and you can listen to a podcast or audiobook.
Of course, the professional shops invariably overtorque the lug nuts on reassembly and cause damage/issues for the next service...
I totally get why they did in this letter, and I also think it's a laughable reach to talk about $126B in "value creation" in that way..
But at the same time, I do value my own time, in terms of being free to choose how I spend it.
Ordering from Amazon (or online in general) has absolutely increased that freedom for me. Rather than having to find and drive to a store to get something (and I think 1 hour per trip is a good metric), I spend 3 minutes ordering it, and it arrives at my door the next day.
Meanwhile I spend that hour doing other things that are more valuable to me. I may not acknowledge this each time, but in aggregate it certainly adds up.
So it's not about making more money as much as it's about the value of reducing toil for yourself.
You have time currency and you have financial currency. they are not divisible in the same way. they have some additive components though. If I spend 5 hours a week on house work like cleaning and then i use money to hire a person to do it for me i now have 5 hours of time currency.
that time currency could be invested into enjoyment, learning, or for some direct financial currency creation.
this how it works, your likely being overly litteral material making your life worse. as normal people will view you as obtuse vs the wise person you think you are.
Unless I’m taking an hour off of work, that hour is not worth any specific amount of money.
Every so often I think about buying some thingy or other, then get lost in a rabbit hole comparing all the options and sifting through fake reviews.
Sometimes I'll "come to", having wasted 45 minutes, close all the tabs, realising I never actually needed the thing anyway.
As a metaphor an "opportunity costs" is helpful for thinking about the value of time but it becomes an ideology in itself if you take it literally.
I think we do that implicitly. You would probably love to play with your kid all day but you chose to make some sales calls so you have money to support the family. But you don't make all the sales calls you could make so that you have family time.
So while sure we don't put a monetary number on our hours explicitly, we do have points at which selling our time is and isn't worth it.
I agree that the convenience of Amazon does create value for customers and that it makes sense to try to quantify that somehow; otoh that convenience also manifests negatively in things like unneeded purchases and comparison shopping paralysis. So I think the math on it is indeed a bit suspect.
Though I suppose as big box and discount retail has eaten the lunch of specialty stores, malls, and so on, many of those other benefits (discovery, browsing a curated selection of products, trying things out/on, conversing with a knowledgeable salesperson, etc) have faded somewhat. But on the far end of all this, I'd expect the only brick & mortar stores who are going to "make it" against online retail will be those who can not just promise and deliver on these extras, but also persuade their customers that the extras are worth paying for, whether that's via higher prices, a direct patronage model, or the ability to offer an exclusive paid product not available online.
Would you want in an hour long line outside McDonald’s for example if they offered a free burger? If yes, then it means you think your time is worth the cost of that burger $3 per hour.
I'm sure there's a dozen more creative explanations for your proposed situation. Just because I'm willing to spend time on something doesn't mean I think my time is worth less than the cost of paying not to spend it.
What I think my time is worth and what someone is willing to pay me for that time are 2 separate things.