The incredible value in some services

There are a lot of things we purchase that aren’t cheap, but we buy them anyhow. This could include your house, your car, or even your coffee from Starbucks. None of those are a great value, but we consider those expenses to be worthwhile.

In thinking through what things cost, though, a few seem very underpriced for what they deliver. Market forces and competition have forced them to stay low, which is a win for all of us.

Trash service

The trash company we use ( and love) isn’t the cheapest around, but they’re still an incredible value. At $72/qtr for trash pickup, that’s just $5.53 for each one.

Imagine making this proposal to someone else: “I’m going to leave a bunch of trash in front of my house. I want you to get a big truck and come and pick it up. Do this every week at the same day and time, and I’ll pay you $5.53 for it”.

That’d be crazy! For a single person to handle a single house, even $50/pickup would hardly be worthwhile. The economies of scale and competition help bring that price down to something that is just unbelievably inexpensive, and I love it.

Fiber internet

The other one that comes to mind is our internet service. We pay AT&T $70/mo for 1GB fiber to our house, with essentially no…