If Jinjuku's Statements were in a shootout with a hypothetical commercial offering that cost $3000 and the consensus was that they were equally good performers, he would probably say he came out ahead, because he derived much enjoyment from the time spent on his speakers and they cost him much less than the commercial design. Would you then say "hold on, we have to add the value of the time spent on your speakers before you can claim to have come out ahead"?
Opportunity costs (doing one thing vs. another) doesn't necessarily have to come down to just money. It can be something like do you decide to go and play some video game instead of studying in which one decides for themselves the relative benefits and costs associated with each. Sometimes it's a combination of the two as it certainly appears to be in Jin's case.
Now Jin has said, at least initially, that he spent a total of about $1100 on the project. Further that it was better than any $1100 speaker out there. Now, I'm not the one saying he came out ahead. He is and to justify, rationalize, figure it out, whatever, he's setting a labor rate of $0/hr. because in part, the time with his Dad is priceless. But I'm not setting $20/hr as the monetary equivalent to time spent with his father. We can factor that out as some sort of intangible to be added after the fact. That number is nothing more than saying, had he been able to work a second part time job for those same amount of hours, what would he have earned? If it's $2800 then add it to the material cost and you get a more realistic cost for the project.
Now, let's say that the total cost was $3900 and he couldn't tell the difference between that and your hypothetical $3000 speakers. Only Jin can make the personal value judgement as to whether that was worth it. But let's say that he consistently picked the $3000 speakers over his. What then? Maybe it's still worth it and maybe he'd do it again because the value to him of time outweighs everything.
Please understand that I'm not taking a stand against DIY no more than putting in a sink yourself instead of hiring a plumber. 'Course, if that sink leaks, and you've chipped the counter top, you just might have to rethink your thought process. If not, your wife will do it for you. It's nothing more than coming up with a more realistic cost of one's speakers.
Should we arbitrarily double the cost of the materials to come up with a fair market value? Use one's own salary as the basis for the calcualtion? The wage of a labourer in a Chinese speaker factory?
No. What we do is total up the costs for materials which would include glue, stain, rags, tools such as a router, bits, blades, clamps unless he already had those in his possession. As to labor costs, that depends on the individual because each of us, should we choose, just might be able to find some sort of job after hours commensurate with our respective abilities.
Take the case of a woman who knits a scarf and it takes her 10 hours with material costs being $40. If we arbitrarily assign a $10/hr. labor rate, it cost her $140 to make that scarf. That same scarf, or shall we say a comparable one might cost $60. This DOES NOT MEAN she should abandon knitting because maybe she derives some complex personal satisfaction. Maybe it's time spent with her daughter. Maybe something else. But from a purely economic POV, she is willing to incur an economic loss for her handmade scarf because the other benefits, intangible as they may be, to her compensate for it.
If the time spent on a DIY speaker is considered leisure time by the builder, how can we assign any dollar-value at all on it? If so, we should put a dollar value on reading a book or watching a movie.
That depends on what the alternatives are and they're not the same for everyone. Nor does it necessarily involve a dollar figure as I illustrated above.
Another factor to consider is whether the hours spent working on a speaker could have been spent at paid work. If one takes unpaid time off from his job to work on speakers, then yes, absolutely. It would be easy to assign a dollar value to the time spent working on those speakers. If, however, the time spent on those speakers is during off-time, i.e. there is no reasonable prospect of having earned money during that period, how can you put a dollar-value on the labour at all?
I admit, it's a difficult matter. If you were to search for the terms leisure, opportunity, costs, you'd find there's been papers, studies, and what not published on just this thing. There doesn't seem to be a consensus on how to calculate it but by the same token everyone is not unilaterally assigning zero to it either.
I'll say up front, that I'm in Jinjuku's corner on this one. But, I consider myself to be open-minded and if you can present a convincing argument, I won't dismiss it.
If you've read what I've written, then you'll understand at no time am I telling him or others that what he did wasn't worth it. He's said he thinks his speakers are possibly only bettered by moving up to the 10-15K range. If that's the case, then what is there to object in my assigning a total cost of $3900? If then maybe there were other options worth considering. Work the extra time, if possible, to achieve sonic equivalence and go fishing with your Dad, or a road trip, or any number of things.
