> An investment is when a resource is expended in order to gain profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value. Being able to spend your free time over the next year playing video games is not a profit.
I'm paid for my time, and my unpaid time is incredibly valuable. Anything that increases the value of my paid time has an obvious investment gain, by the author's metric, but so does that for my unpaid time.
If a purchase that I make increases the value of that unpaid time, then doesn't that constitute some form of return? Certainly, I cannot _sell_ that value, but it has served as a multiplier of value that isn't normally fungible: my happiness.
> So their ROI is their happiness. So now anytime you spend money on absolutely anything it’s an investment. Which renders the word “investment” completely indistinguishable from the word “purchase”.
Er, no, not at all. There are _definitely_ purchases that I must make that do not appreciably increase my happiness. Some service other needs that do not directly increase or decrease my happiness, while other purchases are necessary but misery-making.