The laptop example used by Jack and echoed here is fair, but the most realistic one I can think of, as a bona fide non-rockstar and non-founder, is in-flight Wi

The laptop example used by Jack and echoed here is fair, but the most realistic one I can think of, as a bona fide non-rockstar and non-founder, is in-flight WiFi. Prices have gone down quite a bit over the past year, but I remember being locked in an inner struggle with myself to spend $50 for two hours of WiFi. The first line of thinking is: well, can I generate $50 in those two hours if I have WiFi? Chances are, yeah, you can -- but will you? I don't know if you've ever tried to get work done on an airplane, but I'm miserable at it; its cramped, loud, and just generally unpleasant. I might end up staring at a blank terminal for two hours. But lets say we decide that we're going to be uber-productive and we'd spend those two hours coding away diligently. We value our productivity here at $50/hour, so buy spending $50 on wifi we gain $100 of productivity. The next question is: how productive would we be without wifi? Economic decisions aren't made in a vaccuum: a programmer can do an awful lot without WiFi -- and its up to your heuristics to decide if the bump in productivity is worth the $50.