Just like ACs, fridges, washing machines, internet and a bunch of other things are "made-up preferences" too. In the end, does it really matter why or how the preference appears? If people are willing to have a personal assistant for 100/month, rather than 400/month, what difference does it make to you? Because you didn't get it at 400/month, you shouldn't want to get it at any price, because you don't really need it?

Surely a personal assistant costs more than $400/month?

That’s 20 remote work hours at $20/hr for a person sitting comfortably in another country, booking vacations for you, ordering you food via Uber Eats, and reminding you to wash your AC filters every quarter. I think it’s reasonable, even on a higher end for lower-income countries.

Yah it doesn't exist, since personal assistants do not exist.

The US labor force is at 4.5% unemployment. That's nowhere near enough for everyone to have personal assistants.

A single personal assistant can remind to change AC filters and order food to dozens of people. Also, you can have a personal assistant from another country, since we’re talking about tasks like “order food”, “book vacation”, and “remind”

And the cost of finding an agent outweighs the savings of hiring one.

If that were true, wouldn’t there be major agencies/marketplaces, where it would be easy to find vetted assistants? These things tried to happen, they went nowhere, because it turned out that almost nobody wants an assistant.

I think, if someone is not organized enough to create a recurring reminder for themselves, they are probably also not organized enough to instruct someone else to remind about it, and to follow up upon the reminder.