Free Lunch

Why are we even bothering to define the term “free lunch?” We all know there ain’t no such thing. At least, that’s how the saying goes.

And as it turns out, the saying is right: free lunches really don’t exist. A “free lunch” is a good or service that is produced and consumed at exactly zero cost to everyone involved. Go ahead, try and think of an example of something that is produced with absolutely zero short-or-long-term costs, and then is also consumed at absolutely zero short-or-long-term cost. Go on; we’ll wait.

Okay, we can’t wait that long. The truth is that everything is produced and consumed at some cost, whether that cost is monetary, environmental, social, biological, political—you name it. And just because a cost isn’t necessarily negative, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Public education is a good example here: it costs money to run schools, but we tend to be okay paying taxes to fund them. That lunch—er, education—ain’t free to provide, but the cost is seen as worth it.

When someone looks at a good or service and says, “there’s no such thing as a fee lunch,” they’re usually saying that, even if something appears free on its face (like public education), the cost to provide it has been or will be paid by someone (taxpayers) at some point (usually when they pay property taxes).

Some say everyone has a price…economic analysts say everything has a cost.