A Free Lesson on TANSTAAFL

 A Free Lesson on TANSTAAFL

https://pjmedia.com/columns/sarah-hoyt/2020/10/14/a-free-lesson-on-tanstaafl-to-the-candidates-running-on-a-platform-of-ill-give-you-free-stuff-n1041973?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=6d02106d74d1b777cf2232e46da82a4a&recip=28417294

Excerpt: I was fourteen years old and a European when I first read Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and came across the concept of There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. It will amaze you – or maybe not – how much of an alien and strange concept this was to me. Why? Well, because it is in many ways an alien concept to Europe. It, and various other ideas—like the idea that people might object to paying taxes or that they might have rights that their governments couldn’t violate—were concepts as alien to the mindset I lived submerged in as the other side of the moon. [I love Sarah Hoyt. As usual, she hits the target dead center. This is a good one. Rand, Von Mises, and Hayek would love her, too. She's referring to an apocryphal story Heinlein told in the novel she mentions. Another was Heinlein's story of a man who worked for the government polishing a brass cannon who saved his money, bought his own canon, and went into business for himself.  Ron P.]