There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Weird acronym, huh? I first came across it in an Economics class in an American High School, and it's the only thing I still remember from that entire course. It's easy to understand: there is (nearly) nothing for free in this world. Everything you use or consume (other than fresh air) has to be produced or at least brought to you by someone. And that "someone" usually doesn't do that gratuitously.

The first example is the "Free Lunch" sign in Robert A Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (RAH may very well have introduced TANSTAAFL that way in the first place), which here only signifies that the drinks cost twice as much as in other places.

Getting a little more sinister, we have all kinds of government handouts. For instance, college education in Germany is "free" (I'll write a page on that subject soon) - which means that the taxpayer pays for it. And it's the same with every single benevolence the State decides to lavish on us - none of it is free, it all gets paid for, usually involuntarily, by the taxpayers.

"You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it, too," said Francisco d'Anconia

On a deeper level, TANSTAAFL is a remainder that A is A, that you can't escape reality, that you can't just wish yourself a free lunch out of thin air. Sounds rather boring, doesn't it? Well, think about it the next time you declare your "right to a job" (there are no jobs growing on bushes - who exactly do you want to force to provide you one?) or that you bewail the mess politicians cause (how do you think they get on top in a democracy? by doing well for their country? or rather by being able to get a lot of votes - which is not the same thing?).

And this is exactly the meaning of TANSTAAFL that should be utterly obvious to every thinking being but that on the other hand is disappearing from this world. Humanity seems to get conditioned in a way that the first reaction to a problem is something like "it ought to be fixed." (Not "I'll fix it", mind you!) Who ought to fix it? "Someone." "The Authorities." "The Government." How do you propose to have it fixed? "Somehow." What do you think is the cause of the problem? "Dont't know." "Don't care." "Don't want to spend the effort of thinking about it." "I'm not interested in abstract speculation, I'm interested in solutions!" (The last one, in particular, embodies the mother of all campaign promises...)

Let's wake up. Let's realize that we live in a world that is governed be the laws of causality, without three free meals per day for everyone. Let's assume the responsibility of thinking and of facing reality instead of whining that life is unfair and that we are "entitled" to a living. No free lunch.