Moving on. I have thought about the law of comparative advantages. I don’t think it is justified to use it for salaried professionals. I don’t know if that pertains to you, but it certainly does pertain to one of my jobs. The question is, what is the marginal income of one’s spare-time. For salaried people, it’s $0. Thus in most cases it pays to DIY. If one is paid by the hour it changes completely. For instance, I had my state taxes done by a pro. That cost me 6 hours of my life. I doubt I could have done it faster than that myself, so I here it made sense.

It is not our culture that is broken! Individuals have a natural inclination for the behavior you dislike.

Are we fat because of our culture or because of poor individual self control? Do we have crime because of culture or individual mistakes? Do we spend too much, save too little, and make bad buying decisions because of culture? I think that blaming culture masks two more real causes, human nature (hunter/gather instinct) and lack of self control (future return vs immediate gratification).

We have a privative reptilian brain buried under an advanced prefrontal cortex which regulates decision making and problem solving. Several studies (sorry for no links but Google should find them easily) have shown that our brains light up in funny ways when presented with buying decisions and frankly lots of individuals just aren’t up to the task of wealth building financial decisions. There are also behavioral finance studies based on brain scans which show that people are plain bad at weighing future returns against immediate gratification. This has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with neurology, biochemistry, and evolutionary anthropology.

Frankly, if we were all as intelligent and patient as you, there would not be a spending problem in this country. The problem is that you are rather unique (hence the extreme difference between your financial philosophy and that of nearly everyone else).

I think we should start looking for a pill to combat spending and shopping addiction, I heard somewhere that antidepressants can help

@ NDOutdoorsman

Over the past 8-9 years I have worked in some capacity in the computer and software industry. The work I do is specialize and requires training and skill. For this work I am paid well. Thus, when I have a problem I turn to those who specialize in fixing my problem. In the most basic example, I pay for an expert to fix my car and he pays me to fix his computer.
Labor has become specialized and most tasks are optimally performed by a professional.

Also, when I consider the value of my time, tasks that do not require specialization are most optimally performed by someone else as well. As an example, it is economically best for me to pay a neighborhood kid to cut my lawn as opposed me to do it. I pay him $7 an hour plus expenses while I can earn $50 an hour working (or be paying only $7/hour for extra relation and leisure time).

By extension, if there were an effective treatment for weight loss that did not have significant negative side effect, I’d take the pill and pay my fee. I hate the gym so paying $20/hour (or more) to get the effect of working out would be a god send! Unfortunately that is not the current state of medical science (hard work and self control really is the only real route).

Unfortunately its time sign off the net and head over to the gym