commit: ee5fbe45792831f0a4935a28a4de3e9275d198f1
parent e9db2aef43178aaad4d894e59d1987094bbe38ab
Author: Drew DeVault <drew@ddevault.org>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2025 18:09:12 +0200
Price perspective
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 53 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/blog/2025-04-04-Price-perspective.md b/content/blog/2025-04-04-Price-perspective.md
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+---
+title: A Firefox addon for putting prices into perspective
+date: 2025-04-04
+---
+
+I had a fun idea for a small project this weekend, and so I quickly put it
+together over the couple of days. The result is [Price Perspective][amo].
+
+[amo]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/price-perspective/
+
+Humor me: have you ever bought something, considered the price, and wondered how
+that price would look to someone else? Someone in the developing world, or a
+billionaire, or just your friend in Australia? In other words, can we develop an
+intuition for [purchasing power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power)?
+
+The Price Perspective add-on answers these questions. Let's consider an example:
+my income is sufficient to buy myself a delivery pizza for dinner without a
+second thought. How much work does it take for someone in Afghanistan to buy the
+same pizza? I can fire up Price Perspective to check:
+
+
+
+The results are pretty shocking.
+
+How about another example: say I'm looking to buy a house in the Netherlands. I
+fire up funda.nl and look at a few places in Amsterdam. After a few minutes
+wondering if I'll ever be in an economic position to actually *afford* any of
+these homes (and speculating on if that day will come before or after I have
+spent this much money on rent over my lifetime), I wonder what these prices look
+like from the other side. Let's see what it'd take for the Zuck to buy this
+apartment I fancy:
+
+
+
+Well... that's depressing. Let's experiment with Price Perspective to see what
+it would take to make a dent in Zuck's wallet. Let's add some zeroes.
+
+<video src="https://redacted.moe/f/2752d5bc.webm" autoplay loop muted controls></video>
+
+So, Zuckerberg over-bidding this apartment to the tune of €6.5B would cost him a
+proportion of his annual income which is comparable to me buying it for €5,000.
+
+How about the reverse? How long would I have to work to buy, say, Jeff Bezos's
+new mansion?
+
+
+
+Yep. That level of wealth inequality is a sign of a totally normal, healthy,
+well-functioning society.
+
+Curious to try it out for yourself? Get Price Perspective from
+[addons.mozilla.org][amo], tell it where you live and how much money you make in
+a year, and develop your own sense of perspective.
