"There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch" (etc.): Back to Basics #15 

Book 3 of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966) is titled "TANSTAAFL!", and Robert A. Heinlein's novel was my introduction to the term. "The 'free lunch' referred to in the acronym" — pronounced 'tan-staff-al' — "relates back to the once-common tradition of saloons in the United States providing a 'free' lunch to patrons who had purchased at least one drink. All the foods on offer were high in salt […] so those who ate them ended up buying a lot of beer"; and, as is pointed out in the novel, the drinks would be cheaper if the price didn't include lunch.

            But "free lunch" was a pretty obscure term even in 1966; let's update the acronym to TANSTAFPD: pronounced any way you please and standing for There Ain't No Such Thing as Free Pizza Delivery.

            And there ain't: delivery is included in the price of the food.

            The TANSTAAFL principle is much beloved by American Right-wing economists, but it's also used on the Left in discussions of tax policy and the environment; and it's a "Basic" that soon gets us into important complexities.

            So let's consider two related concepts, the old one of Cui bono?, which I'll translate here, "Who profits (and who pays)?" — and SEP: "Somebody else's problem."

            In the third book, of his HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE series, Douglas Adams introduces the idea of rendering things invisible through the "SEP field," which "relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain." 

            Consider the situation I faced on Student Affairs Council at Miami University in Ohio when The Jock Powers That Were first wanted to get us into semi-pro hockey, which meant building a hockey arena for a varsity team.

            No way! We weren't going to endorse a major capital expense for a frill we really couldn't afford. So the Jock Establishment pitched an ice rink for "the whole community: town and gown," which would be excellent public relations and would make a profit (and would be available for the Hockey Club: a very promising, surprisingly Canadian, but totally amateur, club).

            Uh-huh: Free Lunch / Free Delivery.

            We skeptics couldn't figure out the angle until the arena was built and the bills came in. The rink did make a profit: if, but only if, you didn't count the power costs, which the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics et al. didn't have to count because those considerable costs were not a line-item on their budget, hence SEP.

            There are no free lunches, but there are ways to get other people to pay for your lunch and lunches a whole lot fancier than delivered pizza.

            That, indeed, is the game of much of politics, broadly considered: getting others to pay while you or your group profits.

            Obviously, individuals can cheat on Workers' Compensation claims, welfare, Medicare, and such. Which can and does add up — but is still relatively small stuff.

            More neutrally, but involving a lot more money — If the taxpayers pay for roads and airports and cops and air-traffic controllers (etc.), then it's "free lunch" so far as you can hold down your fees for using those roads or airports, e.g., with your profit-making trucks and aircraft.

            Really perniciously, if you just dump your trash or industrial waste into the local environment, then the cost for cleanup and/or environmental damage are SEP and invisible on your spreadsheet.

            There are no free lunches, no free pizza delivery, but there is always the question of who will pay.