A closer look
Placing a disproportionately high value on products you partially created yourself is a consumer bias brilliantly dubbed the IKEA effect. You will spend six agonizing hours violently crying while trying to assemble a cheap particle-board bookshelf with a tiny wrench, and afterward, you will proudly display it like it is a priceless mahogany antique. We blindly confuse the sheer, agonizing effort we poured into a task with the actual objective quality of the final result, blinding us to the fact that our creation is structurally unsound and visibly leaning to the left. Corporations completely understand this, which is why they gladly charge you premium prices for the privilege of doing their manual manufacturing labor entirely for free
