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Time is (not quite) money
The relationship between the two scarce resources that dominate our life is more complex than it may look at first sight
When Benjamin Franklin published his essay, Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One in 1748, he probably did not foresee how popular one particular fragment of one of its constituent sentences would become. Nearly 30 years before Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations came out, Franklin explained to his hypothetical reader the fundamental economic concept of opportunity cost. The expense of a half day’s leisure includes the money not earned during that time: “(Remember that) time is money.” There is, however, more to this simple equation than meets the eye.
Both money and time are scarce resources. That means that every pound, euro or dollar (substitute your favourite currency unit) we spend on one thing, we cannot spend on something else. Every minute we are performing one particular activity, we cannot devote to another one. But we can swap one for the other, and that makes Ben Franklin’s observation that time is money so profound.
When we work for our income, we are selling our time in return for money. Even if we do not get paid by the hour, it always costs us time to do whatever it is that others are prepared to compensate us for…
