No such thing as a free lunch
"No such thing as a free lunch" is a popular adage communicating the idea that it is impossible to get something for nothing. The acronyms ', ', and are also used. The phrase was in use by the 1930s, but its first appearance is unknown. The "free lunch" in the saying refers to the formerly common practice in American bars of offering a "free lunch" in order to entice drinking customers.
The phrase and the acronym are central to Robert A. Heinlein's 1966 science-fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which helped popularize it. The free-market economist Milton Friedman also increased its exposure and use by paraphrasing it as the title of a 1975 book; it is used in economics literature to describe opportunity cost. Campbell McConnell writes that the idea is "at the core of economics".
History and usage
"Free lunch"
The "free lunch" refers to the once-common tradition of saloons in the United States providing a "free" lunch to patrons who had purchased at least one drink. Many foods on offer were high in salt, so those who ate them ended up buying a lot of beer. Rudyard Kipling, writing in 1891, noted how he...came upon a bar-room full of bad Salon pictures, in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.
Some quotes exist from the time, arguing that these free lunches were not really free, such as in the Columbia Daily Phoenix of 1873: "One of the most expensive things in this city—Free lunch.", L. A. W. Bulletin 1897: "If no one ever paid for drinks, there would be no 'free lunch', and the man who confines his attention to the free lunch, alone, is getting what he knows others pay for." and the Washington Herald 1909: "as a matter of fact, there is no such thing as free lunch. Somebody has to pay for it." When Chicago attempted to ban free lunches in 1917, Michael Montague, a saloon owner, made the case that "There is no such thing as free lunch. First of all, you have to buy something from the saloonkeeper before you can partake of the lunch. Lunch is the greatest tempering influence in the saloon. If a man takes a two-ounce drink of whisky and then takes a bite of lunch, he probably does not take a second drink. Whisky taken alone creates an appetite. If you want to create the use of whisky, pass this ordinance."
TANSTAAFL, on the other hand, applies this more generally, and indicates an acknowledgement that in reality a person or a society cannot get "something for nothing". Even if something appears to be free, there is always a cost to the person or to society as a whole, although that may be a hidden cost or an externality. For example, as Heinlein has one of his characters point out, a bar offering a free lunch will likely charge more for its drinks.
Early uses
The earliest known use of the phrase in its current sense is as the punchline of the article "Economics in Eight Words" by Walter Morrow, published in the El Paso Herald-Post of June 27, 1938. The article is a fable about a king who seeks advice from his economic advisors. He asks for ever-simplified advice following their original "eighty-seven volumes of six hundred pages", executing half the economists each time. The last surviving economist distills all the advice to eight words: "There ain't no such thing as free lunch."In 1942, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" appeared in Public Utilities Fortnightly, and the Columbia Law Review in 1945. A shortened version of the phrase, "there is no free lunch" appeared in a 1942 article in the Oelwein Daily Register and in a 1947 column by economist Merryle S. Rukeyser.
In 1949, the phrase appeared in Pierre Dos Utt's monograph TANSTAAFL: A Plan for a New Economic World Order, which describes an oligarchic political system based on his conclusions from "no free lunch" principles.
In 1950, a New York Times columnist ascribed the phrase to economist Leonard P. Ayres of the Cleveland Trust Company: "It seems that shortly before the General's death ... a group of reporters approached the general with the request that perhaps he might give them one of several immutable economic truisms that he had gathered from his long years of economic study... 'It is an immutable economic fact,' said the general, 'that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
The September 8, 1961, issue of LIFE magazine has an editorial on page 4, TANSTAFL', It's the Truth", that closes with an anecdotal farmer explaining this slight variant of TANSTAAFL.
By the late 1960s, the phrase had also been given the name "Crane's law", for example in an article by Henry D. Harral in the Pennsylvanian.
Popularization
In 1966, author Robert A. Heinlein published his novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, in which TANSTAAFL was a central, libertarian theme, mentioned by name and explained. This increased its use in the mainstream.Edwin G. Dolan used the phrase as the title of his 1971 book TANSTAAFL – A Libertarian Perspective on Environmental Policy.
Meanings
Science
In the sciences, no free lunch means that the universe as a whole is ultimately a closed system. There is no source of matter, energy, or light that draws resources from something else which will not eventually be exhausted. Therefore, the no free lunch argument may also be applied to natural physical processes in a closed system. The bio-ecologist Barry Commoner used this concept as the last of his famous "Four Laws of Ecology".According to American theoretical physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth "the universe is the ultimate free lunch", given that in the early stage of its expansion the total amount of energy available to make particles was very large.