In their defense, in three minutes most people cannot make any money (short of looking for coins on the ground perhaps), but that is enough time to add to your skills somewhat if you have a certain kind of job—I am not certain exactly how you would correlate a small increase in present knowledge to future income but if you free up time every day and actually use it to study something that increases your value in whatever career you chose your long term prospects should improve. Some people actually do walk around with the latest OpenGL specification or whatever else they wish to study just in case a few minutes open up.
They probably could, they just value their leisure time more. As I pointed out, many posting on this site have a minimum opportunity cost of $2-4 an hour—by working on Amazon Turk. Why not? Because Amazon Turk is miserable, $2 is peanuts, and they obviously get more utility out of watching a movie instead or something.
I’m not going to judge them too harshly for choosing leisure over work that pays that little, even if it were for charity—I donate very little and I am very selfish and make similar choices all the time, so it’d be hypocritical.
But don’t try to tell me that there is no opportunity cost there.
This. Several LWers and Randall Munroe take “time is money” way too literally.
In their defense, in three minutes most people cannot make any money (short of looking for coins on the ground perhaps), but that is enough time to add to your skills somewhat if you have a certain kind of job—I am not certain exactly how you would correlate a small increase in present knowledge to future income but if you free up time every day and actually use it to study something that increases your value in whatever career you chose your long term prospects should improve. Some people actually do walk around with the latest OpenGL specification or whatever else they wish to study just in case a few minutes open up.
Why was this downvoted to −3?
(Hey, there are quite a few people who couldn’t translate lots of spare hours into the corresponding amount of money.)
They probably could, they just value their leisure time more. As I pointed out, many posting on this site have a minimum opportunity cost of $2-4 an hour—by working on Amazon Turk. Why not? Because Amazon Turk is miserable, $2 is peanuts, and they obviously get more utility out of watching a movie instead or something.
I’m not going to judge them too harshly for choosing leisure over work that pays that little, even if it were for charity—I donate very little and I am very selfish and make similar choices all the time, so it’d be hypocritical.
But don’t try to tell me that there is no opportunity cost there.