6 ms·

Because it's more efficient. If your a software developer, 1 hour of your time could probably buy many hours of time from someone else.

by UK-AL 9y ago

dalbasal 9y ago
Efficient by what standard? IE what are we optimizing for?
- UK-AL 9y ago
  Time
- IshKebab 9y ago
  Free time in that case. If I work for one hour to pay a cleaner to work for two I end up with more free time.
grecy 9y ago
If you sit down and run the numbers, it's not even close. Going to work to pay other people to do things for you to "free up time" simply does not work. You will work a lot more than you would if you just did things for yourself. Money is an extremely inefficient middle-man, given taxes and everyone wanting their cut. Keep in mind you have to deduct taxes from your income, and the expenses it costs you to earn your income (clothes, transport, bought food, parking, car & maintenance, expensive housing, etc.). Also keep in mind you must pay others with after-tax dollars. So when you pay that mechanic or plumber $85 per hour, that's a LOT of money, not even similar to you EARNING $85/hr. I wrote a book about it, and in all my research and calculations, it roughly works out that most people earn only around 30-50% as much as they think they do.. so even if your salary is $120k, you're only earning something like $30/hr at absolute best, which is much lower than you pay a plumber or mechanic.
- sideshowb 9y ago
  What would your alternative suggestion be though? Toil on a farm growing your own vegetables? (nb for me this is in the "don't like doing" and "I'm bad at it" quadrant). And if the implied alternative is to be workable for everyone, we have to magic roads, healthcare etc out of nowhere with no tax dollars.
  - grecy 9y ago
    > What would your alternative suggestion be though? My alternative is only go to work as much as you need to. Food, shelter and some basic enjoyment, not more. That's something like $10-20k per year, at most. Which means you really only need to work 2ish days a week. > And if the implied alternative is to be workable for everyone, we have to magic roads, healthcare etc out of nowhere with no tax dollars. Not no tax dollars, but certainly less. It's clear that if everyone only went to work half as much we'd only need to build half the roads and trains and airports. If every single person went to work only 4/5ths of what they do now. (i.e. 4 days per week instead of 5), The economy would only grow at 4/5ths of what it does now, but otherwise, everything would continue to function more-or-less like it does today. Once you see that, you realize it's also true for 3/5ths or even 2/5ths.
    - CJefferson 9y ago
      No, that maths is way off. If everyone went to work 4/5 of what they did now, the economy would contract by 20%, one of the biggest crashes in history.
    - adwn 9y ago
      > It's clear that if everyone only went to work half as much we'd only need to build half the roads and trains and airports. Not only is this not "clear", it's also false. To connect two towns, you need 1 road. If everyone only went to work half as often, you still need 1 road – you can't have 0.5 roads. And if people work half as much, but only 4 hours per day, you wouldn't save anything. Sure, with less utilization comes less need for maintainance, but not all wear and tear results from direct use.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        > you can't have 0.5 roads Of course you can. Half a four-lane road is a two-lane road.
        adwn 9y ago
        Most roads are not four-lane ones. Think residential roads, for example.
- UK-AL 9y ago
  This is demonstrably false, because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself. Including growing your own food. The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value. I.e Get more stuff with less resources spent(which includes time) If it didn't work. Market economies wouldn't work. Are your perhaps not including the efficiency of the worker in your calculations? Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a hour of research and work grabbing the right replacement before you even start. Most farmers have a large of agricultural knowledge which allows them produce food cheaply in large quantities.
  - grecy 9y ago
    > because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself The logical conclusion is to do as much as you can yourself, and only get others to do things you are unable to do yourself. Where possible, don't use the work/income/tax/payment cycle to do it, try to use bartering or something more efficient where there are not so many middle-men taking a cut. > The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value Ah-ha, you're right - but it doesn't create "higher value" for the individual worker.. it's higher value for those at the top of the pyramid. > If it didn't work. Market economies wouldn't work. Again, you are right, they don't work! The rich are getting vastly richer while the workers are getting vastly poorer. Look around you. You might not have noticed, but the reason everyone goes to work every day for their entire lives is NOT because it's the most efficient or smartest thing for them to do. It's because they have been convinced that it is, and they are chasing the carrot dangling on a stick in front of them (house, car, new iPhone, etc.) >Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a few hours research before you even start. I can tell you have never tried. Even the first time I did it I took less than an hour (inc research), and actually it would still have been "cheaper" even if it took 8+ hours (I was earning ~$70k as salary, mechanics where I live start at $145/hr)
    - UK-AL 9y ago
- cloop_floop 9y ago
  Even if I accepted these calculations, I still have to work a 40 hour week. I can't optimize time spent on my profession, time spent on life maintenance, and leisure time. So I just work with what I have left over, and given these constraints I choose not to change my own oil, sure as I am I could do it.
- dnh44 9y ago
  If you're self employed or have your own business you can use pre-tax dollars for a lot of those expenses. Out of curiosity why would you include food, housing, and transport, etc in your calculation. Those are sunk costs so if the premise is "I'll work 2 extra hours a week" in order to pay someone to 6 hours of cleaning, cooking, etc, then those sunk costs don't really enter into it. It's seems like what you're really calculating is profit per hour. Do you have a link to your book?
  - grecy 9y ago
    > Out of curiosity why would you include food, housing, and transport, etc in your calculation. Because they are all higher as a result of going to work. i.e. if you buy lunch at work everyday for $15, you would only spend $5 if you were at home and ate a sandwich you made yourself.. so the $10 per day difference is a "cost" of going to work. Same for transport (would be $0 without work). Housing is often greatly inflated because of work. i.e. I want to earn the big bucks in Silicon Valley, so I pay $4000/mo rent. Or I just move way out someplace and only spend $1000/mo.. therefore the $3000 difference per month is a "cost" of going to work. > It's seems like what you're really calculating is profit per hour. That's an interesting way to say it.... I guess I would say "how much are you really getting ahead for every hour of your life you are selling. (hint: it's massively less than most people think) > Do you have a link to your book? "Work Less to Live Your Dreams" http://amzn.to/2vVzpbG http://amzn.to/2vVzpbG
- anotheryou 9y ago
  Numbers are not the only thing though: - to re-do a roof would take me ages, while professionals are pretty quick at it - I might not even be able to do the roof - Cleaning personal might mean untinterrupted and fully free time at home on the weekend. - most employees (at least here in the EU) do their 40h and it is not easy to find other deals. (disclaimer: I own no roof and have no cleaning personal either)
  - grecy 9y ago
    > it is not easy to find other deals. I didn't say any of this would be easy. Nothing rewarding ever is, in my experience.
- brightball 9y ago
  There's some areas where the trade off works. I hire a yard company that comes out to take care of my yard every single week, brings equipment, hauls of trimmings and otherwise does maintenance that would take a couple of hours a week for me to do myself. They show up with a team of 3-4 people for about $180 / month. We do something similar by hiring a house cleaning service that comes in every 2 weeks to do a heavy and thorough cleaning of our house for about $200 / month. That job would use an entire day of the weekend to do ourselves. It's not every little task, but if there's a market for it there are certainly some areas where you can buy your time back relatively efficiently. For $380 / month I buy back about 30 hours of my non-working time every month with those two services.
- smcdow 9y ago
  > You will work a lot more than you would if you just did things for yourself. Nonsense. I would work no more nor no fewer hours in a given year regardless of whether I hired a plumber or mechanic. In fact, given that I won't adjust my work hours either way, then hiring people gives me more free time. I may (or not) have a smaller bank balance, but that appears to be beside the point you're trying to make.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  But, a professional plumber or mechanic is probably many times more efficient than I am. I recently fixed the air conditioner in my car by replacing a bad relay. It took me about 5 hours to figure out what was wrong, figure out how to fix it, find the right replacement part and then replace it. A professional mechanic probably could have done it in 15 minutes which they probably would have rounded up to an hour which would still cost me much less than my after tax earnings for the 5 hours it took me. If it had been something more complicated that actually took specialized tools and more specialized skills, I probably would have come out even worse trying to fix it for myself. Even with something relatively unskilled like cleaning someone who does it every day is still probably at least twice as fast as I am which makes up for the entire cost of taxes even if my hourly rate is the same as theirs.

Because it's more efficient. If your a software developer, 1 hour of your time could probably buy many hours of time from someone else.

by UK-AL 9y ago

Because it's more efficient. If your a software developer, 1 hour of your time could probably buy many hours of time from someone else.

dalbasal 9y ago

Efficient by what standard? IE what are we optimizing for?

UK-AL 9y ago
Time
IshKebab 9y ago
Free time in that case. If I work for one hour to pay a cleaner to work for two I end up with more free time.

grecy 9y ago

If you sit down and run the numbers, it's not even close. Going to work to pay other people to do things for you to "free up time" simply does not work. You will work a lot more than you would if you just did things for yourself. Money is an extremely inefficient middle-man, given taxes and everyone wanting their cut. Keep in mind you have to deduct taxes from your income, and the expenses it costs you to earn your income (clothes, transport, bought food, parking, car & maintenance, expensive housing, etc.). Also keep in mind you must pay others with after-tax dollars. So when you pay that mechanic or plumber $85 per hour, that's a LOT of money, not even similar to you EARNING $85/hr. I wrote a book about it, and in all my research and calculations, it roughly works out that most people earn only around 30-50% as much as they think they do.. so even if your salary is $120k, you're only earning something like $30/hr at absolute best, which is much lower than you pay a plumber or mechanic.

sideshowb 9y ago
What would your alternative suggestion be though? Toil on a farm growing your own vegetables? (nb for me this is in the "don't like doing" and "I'm bad at it" quadrant). And if the implied alternative is to be workable for everyone, we have to magic roads, healthcare etc out of nowhere with no tax dollars.
- grecy 9y ago
  > What would your alternative suggestion be though? My alternative is only go to work as much as you need to. Food, shelter and some basic enjoyment, not more. That's something like $10-20k per year, at most. Which means you really only need to work 2ish days a week. > And if the implied alternative is to be workable for everyone, we have to magic roads, healthcare etc out of nowhere with no tax dollars. Not no tax dollars, but certainly less. It's clear that if everyone only went to work half as much we'd only need to build half the roads and trains and airports. If every single person went to work only 4/5ths of what they do now. (i.e. 4 days per week instead of 5), The economy would only grow at 4/5ths of what it does now, but otherwise, everything would continue to function more-or-less like it does today. Once you see that, you realize it's also true for 3/5ths or even 2/5ths.
  - CJefferson 9y ago
    No, that maths is way off. If everyone went to work 4/5 of what they did now, the economy would contract by 20%, one of the biggest crashes in history.
  - adwn 9y ago
    > It's clear that if everyone only went to work half as much we'd only need to build half the roads and trains and airports. Not only is this not "clear", it's also false. To connect two towns, you need 1 road. If everyone only went to work half as often, you still need 1 road – you can't have 0.5 roads. And if people work half as much, but only 4 hours per day, you wouldn't save anything. Sure, with less utilization comes less need for maintainance, but not all wear and tear results from direct use.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      > you can't have 0.5 roads Of course you can. Half a four-lane road is a two-lane road.
      - adwn 9y ago
        Most roads are not four-lane ones. Think residential roads, for example.
UK-AL 9y ago
This is demonstrably false, because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself. Including growing your own food. The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value. I.e Get more stuff with less resources spent(which includes time) If it didn't work. Market economies wouldn't work. Are your perhaps not including the efficiency of the worker in your calculations? Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a hour of research and work grabbing the right replacement before you even start. Most farmers have a large of agricultural knowledge which allows them produce food cheaply in large quantities.
- grecy 9y ago
  > because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself The logical conclusion is to do as much as you can yourself, and only get others to do things you are unable to do yourself. Where possible, don't use the work/income/tax/payment cycle to do it, try to use bartering or something more efficient where there are not so many middle-men taking a cut. > The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value Ah-ha, you're right - but it doesn't create "higher value" for the individual worker.. it's higher value for those at the top of the pyramid. > If it didn't work. Market economies wouldn't work. Again, you are right, they don't work! The rich are getting vastly richer while the workers are getting vastly poorer. Look around you. You might not have noticed, but the reason everyone goes to work every day for their entire lives is NOT because it's the most efficient or smartest thing for them to do. It's because they have been convinced that it is, and they are chasing the carrot dangling on a stick in front of them (house, car, new iPhone, etc.) >Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a few hours research before you even start. I can tell you have never tried. Even the first time I did it I took less than an hour (inc research), and actually it would still have been "cheaper" even if it took 8+ hours (I was earning ~$70k as salary, mechanics where I live start at $145/hr)
  - UK-AL 9y ago
cloop_floop 9y ago
Even if I accepted these calculations, I still have to work a 40 hour week. I can't optimize time spent on my profession, time spent on life maintenance, and leisure time. So I just work with what I have left over, and given these constraints I choose not to change my own oil, sure as I am I could do it.
dnh44 9y ago
If you're self employed or have your own business you can use pre-tax dollars for a lot of those expenses. Out of curiosity why would you include food, housing, and transport, etc in your calculation. Those are sunk costs so if the premise is "I'll work 2 extra hours a week" in order to pay someone to 6 hours of cleaning, cooking, etc, then those sunk costs don't really enter into it. It's seems like what you're really calculating is profit per hour. Do you have a link to your book?
- grecy 9y ago
  > Out of curiosity why would you include food, housing, and transport, etc in your calculation. Because they are all higher as a result of going to work. i.e. if you buy lunch at work everyday for $15, you would only spend $5 if you were at home and ate a sandwich you made yourself.. so the $10 per day difference is a "cost" of going to work. Same for transport (would be $0 without work). Housing is often greatly inflated because of work. i.e. I want to earn the big bucks in Silicon Valley, so I pay $4000/mo rent. Or I just move way out someplace and only spend $1000/mo.. therefore the $3000 difference per month is a "cost" of going to work. > It's seems like what you're really calculating is profit per hour. That's an interesting way to say it.... I guess I would say "how much are you really getting ahead for every hour of your life you are selling. (hint: it's massively less than most people think) > Do you have a link to your book? "Work Less to Live Your Dreams" http://amzn.to/2vVzpbG http://amzn.to/2vVzpbG
anotheryou 9y ago
Numbers are not the only thing though: - to re-do a roof would take me ages, while professionals are pretty quick at it - I might not even be able to do the roof - Cleaning personal might mean untinterrupted and fully free time at home on the weekend. - most employees (at least here in the EU) do their 40h and it is not easy to find other deals. (disclaimer: I own no roof and have no cleaning personal either)
- grecy 9y ago
  > it is not easy to find other deals. I didn't say any of this would be easy. Nothing rewarding ever is, in my experience.
brightball 9y ago
There's some areas where the trade off works. I hire a yard company that comes out to take care of my yard every single week, brings equipment, hauls of trimmings and otherwise does maintenance that would take a couple of hours a week for me to do myself. They show up with a team of 3-4 people for about $180 / month. We do something similar by hiring a house cleaning service that comes in every 2 weeks to do a heavy and thorough cleaning of our house for about $200 / month. That job would use an entire day of the weekend to do ourselves. It's not every little task, but if there's a market for it there are certainly some areas where you can buy your time back relatively efficiently. For $380 / month I buy back about 30 hours of my non-working time every month with those two services.
smcdow 9y ago
> You will work a lot more than you would if you just did things for yourself. Nonsense. I would work no more nor no fewer hours in a given year regardless of whether I hired a plumber or mechanic. In fact, given that I won't adjust my work hours either way, then hiring people gives me more free time. I may (or not) have a smaller bank balance, but that appears to be beside the point you're trying to make.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
But, a professional plumber or mechanic is probably many times more efficient than I am. I recently fixed the air conditioner in my car by replacing a bad relay. It took me about 5 hours to figure out what was wrong, figure out how to fix it, find the right replacement part and then replace it. A professional mechanic probably could have done it in 15 minutes which they probably would have rounded up to an hour which would still cost me much less than my after tax earnings for the 5 hours it took me. If it had been something more complicated that actually took specialized tools and more specialized skills, I probably would have come out even worse trying to fix it for myself. Even with something relatively unskilled like cleaning someone who does it every day is still probably at least twice as fast as I am which makes up for the entire cost of taxes even if my hourly rate is the same as theirs.