What is "free"?

[Extensa5420]

Personal property, commercial property, intellectual property, you name it. It seems that everything you see is either bought or sold with currency. Want a pencil? You have to pay for it. Want an education? You have to pay for it? Want clean air? You have to pay for it. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? ARE THERE ANYTHING THE WORLD THAT IS TRULY 100% FREE? What I mean is, nobody has to pay for it. Stuff that belongs in the public domain seems to be free. Donations seem to be free too. But someone must pay for them in the first place. If a person donates a teddy bear to charity, then that person must have purchased a teddy bear. If not, then that person may have inherited the teddy bear from someone who purchased it.

I am starting to think that the only things that are free in the world are you and your ideas. At least nobody "buys" people legally nowadays (not counting slavery and human trafficking issues). And you can always sell your ideas or ditch them to the public domain.

[whiterider]

If you can sell your ideas, though, they're not free; any more than pencils are free, even though it doesn't cost you anything to nick a twig from a public domain tree and carve it down (though it did cost you something to pay the taxes which were used to maintain the forest and block attempts to turn it into a battery farm).

On a more serious note, yeah, you just defined capitalism. For something to be truly "free" it has to get from the point of production to the point of consumption without incurring any costs. Try - bearing in mind the bigger picture, that e.g. a tomato you grew yourself to eat is "free" in a sense, but the seed that produced it probably wasn't, and the pot, etc etc - to come up with any examples of such a process. Capitalism relies on the compulsion to market anything and everything, and that's just what happens.

[Extensa5420]

Capitalism relies on the compulsion to market anything and everything, and that's just what happens.

Hmmm... you have brought up an interesting point, which makes me wonder...

Why can't you buy?

Hypothesis #1: You can't buy true, unconditional love. Love cannot be purchased with money.

Hypothesis #2: You can't buy sincerity. If you tell a lie, then you are not being sincere. There is no money involved.

Now, you may be a wisecrack and say, "Yeah, but you have to earn those things." True, but at least you don't have to pay any money for them! :lol:

[SimsLover50]

if you pick up a leaf in the forest owned by no one it is free and advice is also free. =-)

freedom is the ultimate goal for a good society, but also comes at a cost to someone somewhere. So perhaps the idea that freedom costs nothing is probably the real issue.

As far as no one buying people, this still happens, even outside human trafficking. People who buy child brides are 'buying' and abusing someone who can't legally give consent. And people in countries where women have no rights are sometimes bought as a family asset to work and slave away.

[Oaktree]

Even discarding a capitalistic viewpoint, nothing is free. Everything requires labor, whether it is physical or mental, and so comes at some cost to the person who produces it. Even if you receive something for free, someone somewhere labored to produce it. Monetary exchange merely facilitates an exchange of products/services, particularly in cases where two people do not have mutually fulfilled needs/wants.

[Mistermook]

As far as no one buying people, this still happens, even outside human trafficking. People who buy child brides are 'buying' and abusing someone who can't legally give consent. And people in countries where women have no rights are sometimes bought as a family asset to work and slave away.
More importantly, everyone who has a job is selling themselves at least on a temporary basis as labor. Just because there's no exclusive ownership involved doesn't mean you aren't trading exclusive allotments of your time, creativity, and/or effort in exchange for something that represents the notion of the time and efforts of someone else.

In fact, one of the reasons why Rand is almost right is because once you start attributing these metaphors of value to things and people and time, it's fairly clear that people "get paid" as in receive value from nearly every social interaction. I'm not getting money from posting here, but I'm getting some sort of value out of it. Just because I'm choosing the allotment of time and placing gradations of value on this activity doesn't mean it's valueless, because we can clearly assign priorities of value. I do this because I value it more than watching Kim Kardashian in a reality television show but less than having sex with a beautiful woman. Sometimes I even value this activity more than paying work, which means there's an intangible here that's occasionally worth more than my regular income.

People spend so much time performing social tasks because they have value to them, and even tasks perceived as non-social have social intercepts - I make money so I can have friends because I probably don't value the friendships of homeless people as much as I do my current crowd.

In that context, even free itself has an assignable, relative value, and it's usually not a zero value. The air I breath, for instance, is usually considered free, but if it were polluted and I was sick from it I'd have to consider that an associated cost. And I'm from Florida, land of nearly sea level, when I travel to the mountains I can see that I value air much more than "zero." There are other "free" things that have a non-zero time investment, but as I've stated previously, time itself has value. So that's not free either. There are philosophical variations of free, as in "freedom," that people even die for. That's rather excessive under any circumstances, since you can think of that expenditure as "all the value you expect to receive in the future."

Like I said, Rand got the whole "mankind is essentially selfish" bit down pat, but she screwed up in correctly interpreting her own biases against communism and came out the other end with her irrational version of rational self-interest, making the same mistake that economists across the ages have ever made in assuming people were always rationale. Because sometimes people exchange freedom very cheaply, and sometimes they willingly give their lives very cheaply, or they get involved and stay involved in relationships that they don't value, or they assign values irrationally principles like skin color or Beanie Babies.

It's important to note that most people are completely fucked up. Hell, I'm nearly forty and I don't even know what I'm looking for in valuing another person in the way that most people settle down and stuff. But if people socialize enough, and rely on each other, then that still doesn't mean you get perfect rational behavior, but for a lot of stuff it means there's someone around to ask people "You're getting an awful lot of cats. Does this mean you intend to never have sex in the future?" which is, after all, a statement asking for interpretations of relative value, with implicit overtones of what the larger group sees as a relative value. And that's how the world works and why it works, because people irrationally assign high values to gold and generally hikes up the costs of cutting up your children, tries to find values that are affordable for rates of exchange for feeding people and mostly agrees that no one's going to make you pay a breathing tax to coax you to do it less. Nothing is free, but that's not a bad thing. It's just the way the world is, because that's the sort of creatures we are, the kind that hold all of these billions of pieces of modern life as bits of relative value without even thinking about it properly.

Nothing is free, and that's why people are amazing.

[maxon]

You have to pay for clean air? It's generally pretty free over here though you usually have to travel out of town for it.

[haricots]

Our body? At least, we pay for get out from our momma's body, not for having our body.

[Oaktree]

Your body is made up of atoms you have extracted from the environment, and maintenance of your body requires that you continue to take in more atoms. It also requires that you work to stay healthy, or else you'll end up dying prematurely. So your body isn't really free.

[Mistermook]

Our body? At least, we pay for get out from our momma's body, not for having our body.
You value it. It's not free. Presumably you weigh value when doing things with it:

"I'd never jump out of an airplane for a million dollars," versus the implicit destruction of "I'll have two of those Big Macs with large fries." Again, it's not rational, but it's value seeking behavior. People place a high cost on terror, disregard enormous incremental costs if they come with delicious bacon.

[Mistermook]

You have to pay for clean air? It's generally pretty free over here though you usually have to travel out of town for it.
Value is more than payment. Cost is more than literal payment.

Clean air has relative value. You could, if you cared to, start trying to assign a literal value to it, but part of the problem with such value seeking behavior on a large scale is the scarcity issue and ownership issues. If someone can't hold it apart from another person that doesn't mean it doesn't have value, but it's unlikely to be a salable good. I can't put the love you have for your mother on the shelf, but we could, if we cared to, establish weights to the love: would you give her a dollar to keep that love? Ten? Ten million? Would you buy her a car? Kill another person?

It's all about costs and values, not as literal expressions as money, but as relative value. Sponge Bob Square Pants isn't worth my time. It costs me value in the value I place on not being aggravated. I place a negative value on Sponge Bob Square Pants, while I seek out and trade value for other things. Actual money is a metaphor of value too, it's just that we've made it explicit so we can assign more tangible values to it because having that utility is valuable (and because we seek that utility we promote and sometimes seek out governments that promote currency value.) It's not like the paper is worth anything. It's not like gold really had an intrinsic value when were on the gold standard. Currency is all about relative value too.

[lazzybum]

FREE KITTEHS. You'd have to pay to keep it well and healthy, but that comes after.

[simsample]

Personal property, commercial property, intellectual property, you name it. It seems that everything you see is either bought or sold with currency.
That's a GOOD thing- it means that no-one can just walk into my house and take my nice things without repercussions. Would you rather that no-one owned anything, and someone who liked your outfit could just take it from you as you walk down the street? :heyhey:

[Mistermook]

That would make high school fairly awkward.

EDIT: More awkward.

[kristie91]

So we are talking free as in buying things with actual money versus not paying with money? or are we talking about free as in I pay some type of price rather its money or not... After all I could argue nothing is free for you pay for things with money and by other means.. like time, state of mind, etc.

[vhanster]

You have to pay for clean air? It's generally pretty free over here though you usually have to travel out of town for it.

Does truly 'clean' air still exist to begin with, though? With all those pollutions and stuffs, I seriously doubt it :wtf:

[Oaktree]

Even "back in the olden days" there was air pollution. People have been burning things for fuel for thousands of years, and burning fuels release pollution. Even wood fires release smoke and soot. The types of air pollution are somewhat different now, but we actually have less air pollution than we did, say, during the Industrial Revolution.

[ChappyTamTam]

Well think of it this way, if there was no such thing as currency/money, nobody would do anything (i.e. grow food, make clothes) since you wouldn't gain anything from it. Even trading would count as part of the buying/selling process.

[Oaktree]

What would be more likely is that people would trade on a barter system. Barter systems work decently well in small, self-sufficient communities, but not so well in large, highly-specialized societies, such as our own.

In our society, a person might be trained specifically to do a certain type of paperwork, for example. But not everyone will benefit directly from that paperwork, so there would be very few people who would give the person doing paperwork anything in return for his/her services. Further, those who do need the person who does paperwork might not directly be involved in producing the necessities of life, either. A farmer might not need someone to do this specific type of paperwork, but might instead be looking for someone who can sell him seeds, fix broken machinery, etc. Long story short, currency allows people to trade for their mutual benefit, even when one party does not possess any concrete product/skill that the other needs.

[vhanster]

Well think of it this way, if there was no such thing as currency/money, nobody would do anything (i.e. grow food, make clothes) since you wouldn't gain anything from it. Even trading would count as part of the buying/selling process.

If there are no currency/money, people will trade goods and services instead, and I don't think that really defines "free". Now if you manage to obtain a certain good/service without having to spend anyone's time, energy, or resources (including money and other valuable goods), that is free.

[5M0K3]

Maybe in a world where people actually help people for the sake of helping people, whether they get something out of it or not.

[SuicidiaParasidia]

What would be more likely is that people would trade on a barter system. Barter systems work decently well in small, self-sufficient communities, but not so well in large, highly-specialized societies, such as our own.

or, because they'd actually know their neighbors way more than we know our neighbors (and thus care about them) in big cities, they would be more inclined to perform services for no payment or trade. youre much more likely to have compassion for a person you grew up with whose home burns down (and help them rebuild it) than some schmo you only sat next to in middle school for half the semester.

[Robodl95]

Well think of it this way, if there was no such thing as currency/money, nobody would do anything (i.e. grow food, make clothes) since you wouldn't gain anything from it. Even trading would count as part of the buying/selling process.
I would benefit from growing food and making clothes for myself, how do you think people survived before currency?

[Oaktree]

or, because they'd actually know their neighbors way more than we know our neighbors (and thus care about them) in big cities, they would be more inclined to perform services for no payment or trade. youre much more likely to have compassion for a person you grew up with whose home burns down (and help them rebuild it) than some schmo you only sat next to in middle school for half the semester.

Yes, but when a person hasn't just experienced a tragedy, people aren't going to want to simply give that person everything they require, with no expectation of returns. People perform random acts of kindness, but they are less inclined to fully support their neighbors when their neighbors are perfectly capable of supporting themselves. I don't see anything wrong with this. When everyone supports him/herself, people are more productive. Productivity in the right areas - science, infrastructure, etc. - helps everyone.

[Pixelhate]

At least this story is free : :lol:

One day, the old man who has always lived in the countryside met his son in the big city. They where walking on the noisy streets. Suddenly the old man stops.
"Did yo hear ?" he asked. The son's face was full of interrogation.
The father pointed the direction.
On the side walk, protected by a wall crack, a scrawny blade of grass sheltered a cricket.

"How the heck did you hear that, in this racket ?" exclaim the son.

The old man remained silent, took a tiny coin out of his pocket and drop it on the floor.

Instantaneously, half a dozen well suited and briefcased men froze and looked in the coin sound direction.

"You pay attention only to what's dear to you" says the old man.

[5M0K3]

You know what else is free?

Babies. It costs money to raise them successfully, sure, but to conceive them? Doesn't cost ya a dime. You can have as many babies as you want for free. Oooooooorgy! (sorry I couldn't resist.)

[vhanster]

Babies. It costs money to raise them successfully, sure, but to conceive them? Doesn't cost ya a dime. You can have as many babies as you want for free. Oooooooorgy! (sorry I couldn't resist.)

Not if you have to go to the hospital/doctors/midwives to help you give birth to it. Actually, I heard it's very expensive to get professional help in conceiving your child.

[AngryBunny.]

I guess the argument could go both ways, but if you want to get all deep and philosophical, technically nothing is free. Every gain comes from some kind of trade, contribution or exchange.

[Dordracio]

How is clean air cost money?

[pico22]

Stupidity is free. Don't panic if you haven't got any; lots of it lying around.

[KKiryu007Joker]

Nothing is free. Everything took energy to make, from personalities to emotions, and everything costs money to use.