> When I pay to have something repaired, that's a job I couldn't do myself, or at least it would inefficient for me to learn.
I don't think that works as an explanation. I have no compunction about buying hot food even though I can cook myself, and I'm sure I could easily have learned to repair a couple of things I paid to have repaired for me.
Well I don't think the food comparison is entirely fair (it would take me a long time to learn to cook all the kinds of food I want to eat), but my point is more about perceptions.
In most service industries, you have people serving many different customers at once in a way that's usually more efficient than every individual doing the work. But if I pay for a cleaner, I'm paying someone to spend time doing almost exactly what I would do otherwise. They're probably slightly faster than I would be, but otherwise there are no economies of scale obscuring the inequality, and that's what makes a lot of people uncomfortable with it.
I don't think that works as an explanation. I have no compunction about buying hot food even though I can cook myself, and I'm sure I could easily have learned to repair a couple of things I paid to have repaired for me.