One thing that might be going on here is that you can put money in the bank for later. You can’t do that with time—if you don’t use all your time doing something, you have wasted it, not saved it. When I consider spending money on charity, I’m not usually weighing it against my other expenses—I’m weighing it against the risk that I will be hit by a cement truck and need as much as I can possibly have put away in my savings account. Perhaps this is only because I’m pretty poor.
Another thing that might also be only me or a group of people similar to me is expense compartmentalization. I’m very reluctant to buy most things. I own exactly one pair of shoes and I’m repairing them with duct tape, but I won’t replace them until I have no choice. However, as soon as I enter the grocery store, anything I want goes in the cart, because I consider food purchases to be non-optional. Similarly, I might care more in some very real sense about five dollars’ contribution to Charitable Goal X than I do about a burrito. However, if the overpriced burrito is the only dinner available (if for some reason I can’t go home and eat leftovers on the cheap), I’ll still buy it, because I don’t consider going without dinner altogether to be a viable option. Money is only a fungible unit of value in a situation where the opportunities to spend it are distributed in a more or less flat way.
You can’t do that with time—if you don’t use all your time doing something, you have wasted it, not saved it.
You assume underemployment.
Another thing that might also be only me or a group of people similar to me is expense compartmentalization.
I believe the standard term is “mental accounting”, the same force that leads you to drive across town to save $10 on a $30 shirt but not $10 on a $500 laptop.
Perhaps this is only because I’m pretty poor.
People who genuinely can’t trade their time for substantial money under professional specialization may have legitimate cause to want to walk around handing out pamphlets instead.
I don’t assume underemployment, I assume that employment isn’t usually traded on a direct fungible-time-for-fungible-money basis (unless one is employed as some kind of freelancer). Most jobs come with an expectation of a long-term commitment, or at least constraints on when the work is done. It’s well and good in theory to toss around the idea that people who are volunteering time to a charity could have just gotten second jobs and donated the money, but the odds that they could have gotten second jobs that would conveniently fill the empty time they had to offer—scattered piecemeal around their schedules—are negligible.
I don’t think the abandon with which I purchase groceries is the same phenomenon as that kind of mental accounting, because I’m very conservative about non-food purchases in a similar price range, not just with major expenses.
One thing that might be going on here is that you can put money in the bank for later. You can’t do that with time—if you don’t use all your time doing something, you have wasted it, not saved it. When I consider spending money on charity, I’m not usually weighing it against my other expenses—I’m weighing it against the risk that I will be hit by a cement truck and need as much as I can possibly have put away in my savings account. Perhaps this is only because I’m pretty poor.
Another thing that might also be only me or a group of people similar to me is expense compartmentalization. I’m very reluctant to buy most things. I own exactly one pair of shoes and I’m repairing them with duct tape, but I won’t replace them until I have no choice. However, as soon as I enter the grocery store, anything I want goes in the cart, because I consider food purchases to be non-optional. Similarly, I might care more in some very real sense about five dollars’ contribution to Charitable Goal X than I do about a burrito. However, if the overpriced burrito is the only dinner available (if for some reason I can’t go home and eat leftovers on the cheap), I’ll still buy it, because I don’t consider going without dinner altogether to be a viable option. Money is only a fungible unit of value in a situation where the opportunities to spend it are distributed in a more or less flat way.
You assume underemployment.
I believe the standard term is “mental accounting”, the same force that leads you to drive across town to save $10 on a $30 shirt but not $10 on a $500 laptop.
People who genuinely can’t trade their time for substantial money under professional specialization may have legitimate cause to want to walk around handing out pamphlets instead.
I don’t assume underemployment, I assume that employment isn’t usually traded on a direct fungible-time-for-fungible-money basis (unless one is employed as some kind of freelancer). Most jobs come with an expectation of a long-term commitment, or at least constraints on when the work is done. It’s well and good in theory to toss around the idea that people who are volunteering time to a charity could have just gotten second jobs and donated the money, but the odds that they could have gotten second jobs that would conveniently fill the empty time they had to offer—scattered piecemeal around their schedules—are negligible.
I don’t think the abandon with which I purchase groceries is the same phenomenon as that kind of mental accounting, because I’m very conservative about non-food purchases in a similar price range, not just with major expenses.