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People don't value money linearly. You wouldn't pay an additional $10 for a cup of filter coffee, but most people wouldn't think twice about paying an additional $10 for a car. But it's the same amount of money, so surely that's irrational in that situation.

In other situations it makes complete sense. If you have $1M, losing $10 isn't nearly as big a deal as when those $10 were all you had.

If you try to apply game theory to economics you apply a utility function to money to model this, and a logarithmic function maps quite well to how humans think about money.




> But it's the same amount of money, so surely that's irrational in that situation.

Not necessarily, since many people buy coffee way more often than they buy a car.


Not disagreeing with your conclusion but there’s a difference between spending $10 more for 3 years of utility vs $10 more for 3 minutes of utility.




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