The relentless increase in opportunity costs

Suppose you spent 2 hours watching a movie. Even if the movie was free, there’s a cost associated with losing that 2 hour block of time. If you could have spent that time working for $10 an hour, then the cost of that movie is $20. This “cost of other opportunities lost” is known to economists as an opportunity cost.

If you look at the last 20 years of technologic advancement, you’d notice that this generation has been gifted with more tools to do incredible things, at a lower cost, than ever before. It used to be that if you wanted to put up a website, you needed to go hardware shopping. Now, with AWS, you can rent a server in Singapore at the click of a button. Or heck, just pick a Squarespace template and drag-and-drop it together. If you have a good idea and a video camera, you can raise millions of dollars on Kickstarter and make it a reality. You can start a club, self-publish a book, write a song, learn a subject, or make a movement. What used to take connections and thousands of dollars, now just requires some time, internet access, and some gumption.

Does that terrify you? It terrifies me.

That 2 hours is a lot more valuable today than it was 50 years ago. The relentless increase in opportunity costs is crushing.