Essays in Idleness

Cost is often denumerated in dollars or pounds, which have the advantage of being plain and material. They can be counted, using simple arithmetic, which is why we go to so much trouble to conceal our costs. But still more, we go to the trouble of pretending that things which are very expensive must really be almost free, because we have decided that each is necessary. Cars, for instance; who would be without a car, if he has a job? He rides it just to get to work, or on holiday sometimes, for “leisure” has also become a convenience. Therefore cars are as if free, unless one cannot be satisfied with a car that is boring and conventional. Then one buys a car that costs money, though of course little money if one can also afford a private jet. Simply getting to the aerodrome then becomes the convenience. Or the aeroplane is merely a convenience, if one is Elon Musk, or a successful politician.

But generally, it is convenient to be rich, on the large scale, but also on the small. There are more and more things that one may take for granted, and therefore count as a convenience. And with socialism, the extraordinarily expensive infrastructures through which movement happens is not even consumed as a convenience. It is simply expensed, to the taxpayer, which is why everyone expenses more and more. Only right-wing people realize there are limits, and then only when paying for something they don’t want.

My fanciful suggestions about road and highway policies are meant to call attention to this. Who will pay for the convenience that we all are driving in vehicles, including those who only ride in buses? If one adds, or tries to calculate our vast expenditures for the convenience of roads, and for the vehicles that use them, now that we live in megacities and no longer in farms, villages, and towns. Hint: the vehicles are the cheapest part.

And the thing about the cost of convenience is that it mops up what we might spend on something else; or what would not cost nearly as much were our choices not dictated by politicians and the other various control-freaks. Cathedrals, for instance, would be more common. And let us forget about healthcare, which costs far too much. (Get your exercise, and then die!) Being well is just a convenience, it is merely “necessary” for getting to work.