cost-benefit analyses

'Love is like a joke: the more you dissect it the less pleasure you get out if it.'

The thought popped into my head while I was on the bus, going home after getting my haircut at my regular barber, which was at the old neighbourhood where I used to stay.

From a strictly economic point of view, I wasn't exactly pleased at having to take a bus ride just to cut my hair. I'd rather have just popped down to JP for a $10 haircut. I mean, if you do a simple calculation of opportunity costs, and assume that the quality of haircut is the same, it doesn't make sense:

Option A: going to regular barber

price: $8

transport cost: $1.20 (roughly, not sure how fare system works)

total time spent: 60 mins

Option B: going to JP

price: $10

transport cost: nil

total time spent: 30 mins

The difference in cost is approximately 80 cents. The difference in time spent is 30 mins. So the issue here is about opportunity costs: whether 30 mins of my weekend time is worth more than 80 cents.

Now, the value of my free time on weekends >> value of my working time on weekdays (because I prefer leisure to work; this is a pretty common phenomenon, unless you're a workaholic). Assuming (I'm stretching it a bit here) that my NS allowance is a fair reflection of the value of my working time, and that I work 50 hours a week, the value of my working time is about 20 bucks an hour. Which means that the value of my 30 weekend mins is waaaaaay greater than the measly 80 cent savings I make going to the regular barber.

Seems like a lot of work to decide where to get a haircut. And this is just a simple cost-benefit analysis.

But we make decisions like this all the time. Mostly we don't stoop to examining the minutiae, we just make broad estimates, and decide based on these estimates. But consciously or not, a big part of life revolves around the comparison of costs and benefits.

Take the issue of love. I suspect that to some extent it involves a cost-benefit comparison: is he/she/it worth all the time, emotions and energy that I'm devoting? How much benefit (in terms of pleasure, money or some other measure) am I getting out of this, compared to the effort that I'm making? If the answer is 'Yes', then fall/stay in love; if 'No', then break off/up.

Of course sometimes the costs and benefits aren't so tangible, and sometimes rationality gets clouded. So it's not possible for us to make perfectly rational cost-benefit calculations all the time. After all, I made the trip down to my usual barber, even though I knew it didn't make economic sense. The reason? Because my mum said, 'Help me get two packets of fried bee hoon from the stall at the coffee shop with the carrot cake stall. You know which one right? Get one packet with long beans, one with fishcake. And both put chilli.' (So much for all the exhausting calculations.)

And to be frank, I feel that it's a bit cold, and somehow inhuman, to subject matters like love to clinical examination. Yes, a large part of life involves making rational, calculated decisions, sometimes even unconsciously. But to relentlessly subject our entire existence to the pursuit of economic rationality, that is a disturbing thought. Like love and jokes, some things are more pleasant when left unscrutinized.