If you use a lot of time to learn a skill, that time:
Now, I know many of you will protest that the statement belittles the amount of time spent acquiring skills, because someone said, "Time is money."
Yeah, whatever.
If you bill for time, then what? Time is literally life itself. If my life is valued at 100USD an hour, what does it mean? Does it mean every hour I am not working is wasted? If so, what does wasting time mean? Am I a thing or a machine that has been bought that has to recoup the capital spent on it?
Maybe you argue that paying for my time equals to booking me or my services exclusively for a given amount of time, which makes sense.
If I bill you 250USD or 400USD or even a G for an hour of my time, yet my skill and/or expertise for whose access you are paying cost me 70,000USD to acquire and I made that back in the first, let's say, 5 years of my practice, am I stealing from you? What if I was an apprentice and actually got paid to learn, aren't I a robber? Should I not be cheaper because, under the auspices of capitalism, an investment should cost less over time, right?
So, when you tell me that your skill took time to acquire and should therefore not be cheap, are you not lying to me and/or belittling your value and/or the value of other things including your intellect, skills, tools, ethos and ethics, creativity and the blood, sweat and tears it takes to acquire the skills?
Should also the risk you shoulder, the responsibility you bear and the burden of precision that comes with your profession also be factored in?
At the end of the day, if you bill me more for skill that took time to acquire, I should pay you less because at the end of the day, as a loyal capitalist, I need to view you as an object of production that should cost less to use as time wears on.
Time is the most valuable thing we have; we cannot buy it, yet we pay for it - often dearly - when we waste it. This is one of the biggest sources of regret for older persons.