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My time is worth $x per hour

In the all too recent history I was feeling proud of my day job, and I thought to myself "I can made $x per hour." A bit more thinking I came to the conclusion "I shouldn't do anything that takes me an hour that I could pay someone else to do for less than $x per hour." I believed this rubbish and began spouting it off to some of my friends. I sadly and horribly believed this for a good few months.

The reaction of my friends to this idea was a mixture of good and bad. A few friends seem to agree and gave some examples of things they don't do because they have a similar perspective. Other friends were somewhat silent on the matter and didn't seem to agree.

I began to have doubts as to the validity of this idea. It was particularly suspect because I began to see correlaries of this sort of thinking to obnoxious perspectives from those I really think are horrible people.

I'll give a few examples of this same logic that I think are bad:

1. Person makes $1000/hr at their day job. They realize that all time spent going anywhere is very costly. They no longer leave the house. They realize that watching a movie cost $2000. They stop watching movies. They realize that socializing with their friends isn't worth what they get out of their friends. They cut off all friendships. This person is proud of all these decisions, spends more time working than anything, and amasses a large amount of monetary wealth. This person is a total asshole. Fuck this person.
2. Person begins to look down on everyone around them once they pass the average income/hr of their peers. They feel happy about this and come off as smug to their peers. This is a bad perspective and a direct result of the "I'm worth $x/hr" mentality. It is measuring their own worth against the worth of others.
3. Person stops eating the same food everyone else does, choosing only to go to expensive restaurants or to have food cooked by their personal chef. Why? Because the cost of doing so is minimal compared to how much money they make per hour. If one can make $x in an hour, that covers the cost of all such meals for a day, then why wouldn't you choose to have higher quality food?
4. Person stops doing any and all volunteer work or favors for others, because "My time is worth $x, if I don't charge everyone for what I do they won't appreciate it." This is horrible because it is treating money as having more importantance than the inherently high value of being a decent human being and improving society for all.
5. Manager needs to hire for a job. They immediately turn down candidates that could do the job but don't have past job experience making $x/hr. Instead of finding the best canidate for the job, this person simply measures everyone by $/hr.

You might ask "How can this be?! The logic is simple and sound." It's easy. Logic doesn't solve all problems. Life isn't math. Also, your time isn't "worth $x/hr" except in a twisted money obsessed mentality.

You might then counter "I'm not that way at all! I'm not obsessed with money. Quite the opposite. Without me giving all these jobs to others that aren't suited to me, none of those people would have jobs. I'm being extremely generous by deferring all of those things to others. I'm doing the work best suited to me."

Nope. You are wasting your money and essentially enslaving others. There is also a societal problem that you are getting paid what you do per hour but I won't address that in this particular post. The easiest way to explain the problem with your perpsective is that you feel "What I make in a day is what X others put together make in a day, therefore it's reasonable for those X to do what I want each day so long as I do what I do best in that day."

The chain of thinking goes:

1. "I'm worth $x/hr"
2. "Others are worth $y/hr"
3. Those with the highest ratio deserve to direct those with the lower ratio
4. Those who make less are best suited for that
5. I'm best suited to be at a higher level than them

This is classism. Segregating society into classes has been done throughout society, and doing it by using money is just the latest capitalist variant.

The question then is: What can we do about it?

The solution is to never do anything purely in the interest of money. Instead what you should do is whatever benefits humanity the most. You may very well scoff at this and say "I'm already doing what society wants most, and it is easy to see because what society wants most they are willing to pay the most for."

Do you see the problem with that? The problem is that what people are willing to pay the most for is not what is most beneficial for humanity as a whole. Classes are realistically in effect, and those in the upper class have in their own selfish best interest to keep as many people in classes below them as possible. They have the most money, so inevitably if you pursue money as your pure goal then you are just playing into their hand.

Also, more generally, in broad society there is very little that ties pay to benefit of humanity. It is actually somewhat opposite. Those who focus on helping humanity as a whole typically make very little money doing so. Taking care of the poor or building infrastructure for those in the 3rd world is not a highly attractive and well paid profession.

Am I going to quit my job in IT and become a volunteer rebuilding the 3rd world? Well... no. I believe that I can improve humanity better doing what I do currently. Is that delusional? Perhaps. It takes time to accept the reality of living and choose to help others rather than oneself. I am in no way an expert at this. I am though trying to think about it and take care not to think of myself as "better than others." I'm not. We are all in this together. The planet belongs to everyone on it, and we ought to work together to build a better future together.