DIY vs. Specialization and Trade

Roland Fryer discusses the issue

Roland Fryer writes,

I still mow my lawn and cook most nights for my family, even though I work 80 to 90 hours a week, not counting my side hustle as an unpaid driver and sideline soccer coach for my two daughters. I’m an economist, able to think through these decisions rationally, yet here we are.

When a friend invited me to play golf and I declined because the yard needed mowing, he didn’t hide his disbelief. “You can pay someone to cut your lawn,” he said, “but you can’t pay someone to have fun for you.”

He meant it as a joke. I took it as an indictment. He was calling me out on one of the most basic principles in economics

“Do it Yourself is a market failure,” I used to tell my economics students. Economic activity consists of specialization and trade. We should work at what earns the most money and outsource everything else.

Even if Roland Fryer is the most efficient mower of lawns anywhere, he can still earn more money as an economist. So he should outsource mowing his lawn.

The most basic source of market failure is having a fixed salary. Fryer cannot simply tell his employer, “I would like to be paid for another hour’s work as an economics professor.” If he could, then in one hour he could earn enough to pay for many hours of lawn care, and he might think differently about mowing his own lawn.

Another source of market failure is taxes. If I do my own laundry, I incur no tax cost. But if I outsource to a business, then sales taxes, payroll taxes, and income taxes all get triggered by this activity. Similarly, there is a “tax wedge” that raises the cost of eating in a restaurant relative to home cooking.

Fryer cites a number of reasons for mowing his own lawn that come from outside of economics.

We attach pride to doing things ourselves, and pride has value, too.

For some of us, mowing the lawn isn’t only about grass, time or money. It’s about what it says about us. It signals: I take care of my things. I don’t rely on others. I’m not above the work. Sometimes I wonder if I’m pushing that mower out of principle or because I want others to see me pushing it.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. But I contend that if you took taxes out of the picture, and if you could always get additional income by working an hour at your comparative advantage, then there would be a let less DIY.

Think of the market as providing you with servants who will do household chores for you. No one is stopping you from doing those chores yourself. But if you don’t get satisfaction out of doing them, and you prefer to use servants, that makes economic sense.