There is a popular internet video game where goblins often say, "Time is money friend," and for the most part that is true. However, I just spent 30 minutes on the phone catching up with a friend while at the same time watching 2 yearlings and a doe eat the earth share portion of some apples. How does one put a price tag on watching something like that? IMO, You really can't. It's an beneficial accommodation we have with the earth as practitioners of Permaculture that allows moments like this to fill the intangible parts of our humanity. It's ethereal, which in my reality is priceless. What are your thoughts?
Time is only money when you're working AND you require that work to generate a predetermined amount of money/profit. What's crazy, is paying over (sometimes much over) $100 an hour for some basic repair / service for something or another, and then spending the entire afternoon in the garden doing some seed saving and compost making for the net equivalent of $10-$20 (If you were to purchase seeds and a bag of compost). I'm not saying it's not worth doing, but it is a symptom of the way time is valued the way things currently are.
my time is precious as i've only got so much. the question to me becomes one of at what points do you switch from infinite value time that is precious and then go to the market view of time and being paid for something... to me it is the decision to make something a market driven event or product vs. what i do for my own personal appreciation. the time spent this past weekend doing beets wasn't that much but that i could have my brother over helping and talking was priceless. the beets themselves if i valued them with some market prices would come to about $5 per quart. take out the wage i'd have paid myself to do it and that goes down to $0.60 per quart. so it just depends to me upon what things i'd choose to charge for and since it is for personal consumption or for gifts i don't bother charging for time.
Everything else has gone through commodification. And no matter what the cartel goblins say, I try my best to reject placing a price on everything. It isn't easy. And thanks for the visions of a green, long armed, lady gaga dancing.
