The price of life

v.s.

It's funny when you think of how much certain things are valued in our society. In recent days I have had a few eye opening experiences to say the least. The medical industry had an overall inflation rate of 5.5% last year, more than any other industry, as if it wasn't overpriced enough. A year's supply of bi-weekly contacts cost me $325.00 from the doctor. I can find them as cheap as $190 online, but I won't be able to use my $120 yearly contacts allowance from my insurance if I go that route. It's interesting how the price from a doctor is roughly $120 more than what it costs to buy the same thing online. So out of pocket I'd still be paying the $200 no matter what route I went!

But lets stick with the price of contact lenses for the sake of argument. I get 52 lenses for a year. that makes each lens cost me roughly $3.85. Each lens is about 14.5 mm in diameter. That's a lot of money for such a tiny piece of plastic. You may argue that it's not the material that is so costly and it's all the fancy research and development and equipment required to manufacture said lenses. I argue that is not the case.

The Intel Core 2 Duo CPU has 291 million transistors packed into a space of 143milimeters-squared (about 12mm across). A transistor is one single logic gate (the basic building block of modern computing). The complexity of this system can not even be compared to a simple contact lens, yet you can buy one of these CPUs online for under $100. The factory to fabricate the CPU is so expensive that CPU manufacturers can no longer afford to build them in the United States. Each factory costs around $2.5-$3.5 billion dollars to make (http://www.cpuplanet.com/features/article.php/1499981) The machinery requires a level of precision within 65nanometers (for the Core 2 Duo). That's roughly .00000256 inches. On top of that, the manufacturing facility must be cleaner than a surgical table and no dust must be present because one spec of dust on the chip would ruin it. So the quality control in this process has to be even more strict than the medical field. Yet this ultra complex device is only worth about 26 of my contact lenses. That's only half of my year's supply! Imagine if you'd have to buy a new computer every 6 months like you have to buy contacts.

I conclude that at least in the contact lens industry the items bought and sold are completely overvalued, and I'm sure there are many other cases in the whole medical industry where the balance is even more skewed.

The days of gas station pit stops are gone

When's the last time you've stopped inside of a gas station to get snacks on a trip or to get directions? Well as a guy, you're not supposed to stop and ask for directions, so I rarely do, but I realized that in the past 10 or so years, stopping at a gas station for directions has become a futile activity.

If we didn't have web-enabled cell phones and in-car GPS, a lot of people wouldn't be able to find anything these days. The gas station attendents aren't much help either. In Chicago, it's just about impossible to find a long-term local resident working behind the counter. And if you ask whoever is there for directions, they'll be just as confused as you are. I mean there is absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing how to get everywhere if you're not from the area, but if you don't have fancy in-car GPS, or Google Maps on your cell phone, how are you supposed to find anything? Well, you can start at a large grocery store chain. They're almost as abundant as gas stations and you're pretty much guaranteed to find at least one local resident working there who knows his or her way around. So all is not lost, we can drive assured that if we get lost, we can still get help if we need it!

But another thing I have noticed is that you rarely ever see people stopping in to get snacks at gas stations anymore on their way to work or while doing their weekly fill-up. I think the reason for this is two-fold. For one, gas prices are about 200% as much as they were in 1997 when they were hovering around $1. When there was only an 10-13% per capita income increase in 10 years, you can easily tell that everybody notices this price difference. Right now it costs me about $60 to fill up my tank and I remember it costing under $20 (in 2001). I never bought $40 in snacks, but now I'm paying that much more at the pump, so why would I even stop in to buy overpriced snacks unless I was starving? The second reason I don't think people stop for snacks and drinks at the gas stations anymore is because of the proliferation of places like Starbucks and Panera. Why get gas station quality coffee and donuts when you can pay $5 more and get extra large granules of sugar on your muffin and whipped cream on your coffee???

Have you ever heard of "pay at the pump"? Yeah, everybody has. I'd argue that 90% of people under 30 use it and the majority of Amrericans use it no matter what age they are. That alone has to be a major contributing factor as to why people don't stop inside gas stations anymore. I certainly enjoy the convenience of swiping my card and not having to wait in line to pay for gas.

So today, gas stations are back to just being gas stations instead of that convenient stop to get your directions, snack, and gas filled all in one place. It seems to be a sad end of an era, but times do change.