You're basically asserting that people are rational agents doing subconscious (or perhaps conscious) algebra in their heads. I thought we learned long ago that

You're basically asserting that people are rational agents doing subconscious (or perhaps conscious) algebra in their heads. I thought we learned long ago that people are not rational agents. Sometimes it is useful to model people as rational agents, and sometimes not. But to say that people are actually motivated, in a real factual sense, by some cost equation, just doesn't correspond to reality.