I don't think having a jack stand and a 40x10x10cm toolbox squirreled away in a closet is that big of a hurdle. The tools required for all the examples I mentioned are extremely minimal, and the skills can be picked up by watching 10 minutes of YouTube.

Or I can, drop my car off on the way to work, take the shuttle to work, take Uber home, or bring my laptop with me and earn my living doing what I’ve done for 30 years and pay someone else to do it...

You are a rich person with money to burn and a job that offers you time liquidity. Most people have neither, which is why - and not because of their irrationality - arguments from opportunity cost don't work as well as one would expect.

Seeing that “most people” are paying someone else to fix their car, that means that most people find a way to pay other people to do it instead of learning how to do it themselves.

Nobody is arguing with you about what YOU ought to be doing. I personally disagree with this being presented as good general advice to most people who make a lot less.

> Nobody is arguing with you about what YOU ought to be doing

Current subthread started with this: "Yes, unpopular opinion these days, but car owners should really know how to do at least the bare minimum of basic car maintenance"

Car owners are a class of people that ranges from people living in said cars to the the hyper rich.

It's probable that Bezos has to give zero fucks beyond what brand he prefers. People living in their car are probably just praying it doesn't break down. In between there is a giant middle ground that composes 80% of the car owning population whose benefit derived from car know how is inversely proportional to their wealth.

Most car owners should learn the basics of how their car works and how it is maintained even if they intend to outsource that labor to others just so they aren't trivially taken advantage of. If we assume that MOST people aren't born into wealth most people could stand to learn the basics during the time when they have more time than money and then they could make productive use of this know how later.

I'm not sure how you can even argue this point.

It’s called an existence proof. Most people don’t know anything about car repairs, yet they manage to go through life fine letting other people repair their cars.

There is an entire industry devoted into turning small regular maintenance tasks into big paydays based entirely on lies to people who don't know anything.

I don't think your existential proof is a good one. It's like proving Cigarettes are OK by noting that billions use and only millions die.