Economics | TANSTAAFL

[Trey of Diamonds]

How do you feel about TANSTAAFL in regards to economics?

From the wiki TANSTAAFL - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TANSTAAFL is an acronym for the adage "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" originating in the 1940s and later popularized by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which discusses the problems caused by not considering the eventual outcome of an unbalanced economy. This phrase and book are popular with libertarians and is often seen in economics textbooks.

The "free lunch" referred to in the acronym 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. Rudyard Kipling, writing in 1891, noted how he

came upon a barroom 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.

TANSTAAFL, on the other hand, indicates an acknowledgment 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 even though that cost may be hidden or distributed. For example, you may get complimentary food at a bar during "happy hour", but the bar owner bears the expense of your meal and will attempt to recover that expense somehow. Some goods may be nearly free, such as fruit picked in the wilderness, but usually some cost such as labor or the loss of food for local wildlife is incurred.

[YmirGF]

I can agree with this. The notion that anything is free is quite ridiculous. Personally, I love the ads that say something is FREE but that a small shipping charge applies. Oddly, its not exactly free as you still have to pay something to get it.

Likewise there is a building supply store here that is running an ad that says approximately 1 in 20 shoppers will get their purchases free (up to $1000.00 value) but I highly suspect that the other 19 are more than making up the difference. For example, when I worked for a large electronics retailer the week prior to the biggest sale of the year all regular priced items were marked up by 10-20%. Granted, if you bought only the "lost leaders" you could get some deals, but if you bought even a CD it was going to cost you more than it did normally.

[Trey of Diamonds]

How does Socialism relate to TANSTAAFL?

[YmirGF]

Originally Posted by Trey of Diamonds

How does Socialism relate to TANSTAAFL?

How does socialism relate to anything?

[Trey of Diamonds]

Originally Posted by YmirGF

How does socialism relate to anything?

Good point.

[Trey of Diamonds]

In response to the monograph TANSTAAFL: A plan for a new economic world order, by Pierre Dos Utt in 1949. It is the only reference I could find that had actual quotes from the monograph itself.



3 October 1949, The Bradford Era (Bradford, PA), column by George Sokolosky, pg. 6, col. 4:

These Days
“Tanstaafl" Contains Masterly Plan of Author

Pierre Dos Utt is a learned man whose name appears in no “Who’s Who” and whose scholarly works are listed in no bbibliographies. In fact, Pierre Dos Utt is a planner who has devoted himself in the remaking of society and he is not the first who tried it. The blessing is that most planners only talk or write about it and get lost in a maze of words, although Karl Marx has become the ikon of myriads of the breed whp quarrel so violently that the hope of society is that they may devour each other.

At any rate, Pierre Dos Utt has at long last produced a book which contains his masterly plan. He calls it “Tanstaafl.” The author says that it is from the Babylonian, but philologists will insist that it is sanskrit, corrupted by Low German. It might even be a jargon fouled up by Lower Slobbovian, than which nothing is lower as everybody knows. However, it has meaning which I shall secretly give you at the end of this monograph on Tanstaafl which I write with the approval of ASGS, which is whatever you think it is and I hope you keep it clean.

* * * *
THE ORIGINAL “Tanstaafl” is p[ublished by Cairo Publications which may or may not exist for any other purpose and which gives its address as 302 5th Street, S. E., Canton, Ohio. The S. E. is undoubtedly imitation of Washington, D. C., Dos Utt thereby paying his respects to the fountain of all knowledge, the seat of perfection, the apogee of conglomeration, even as Brahms did in his
First to Beethoven’s Ninth.

Now, to get to the heart of the matter. Dos Utt finds the human race in a very sad state and has a solution for the problem, he following in a long line of solvers which includes Hammurabi, Wang Anshih, Akbar, Karl Marx and Henry Wallace, to say nothing of Aristotle, Plato, Henry George, and Leon (Col. 6—ed.) Keyserling. He states the problem succinctly:

“And correlated with this inherent urge to gain at the expense of others is the deep-seated desire to show off our superioirity. For this reason, we buy flashy automobiles, elaborate houses, extravagant clothes and sparkling jewels.

“As money is the medium through which we are able to reflect our affluence, it at once becomes the final goal of our objective. Hence money is the ultimate symbol of our inherent disposition to kill.”

Now, if you understand that, you can understand anything and ought to reach the preoper conclusion which is to drop dead, as Milton Berle would say in lingua Bronx, but Dos Utt puts it more cogently in the following forensic:

****
“THE BASIC human urge to kill for self-aggrandisement is very strong and it is also very dangerous if it is not controlled. Our recommendation is to stimulate personal ambition, but to have it strictly regulated by a Supreme State authority. Then the pattern of human advancement can be evenly regulated for the benefit of all the deserving.”

(Col. 7—ed.)
The volume is amply supplied with charts and graphs but omits photographs as beneath scientific contempt. Also photographic exactitude defies the artistic skill of the chart drawer who divines what figures mean by making them obscure. It is thus ruled by the Society of Statistical Arts. It also is adequately statistical and footnoted and proves its point by algebra but omits astrophysics.

However, I should fail my readers were I not to point to one essential lapse in this otherwise colossal labor. On page 18, Dos Utt provides a chart to prove that horses, cattle, fowl and hogs have made great progress but that man has stood still. He has not, most surprisingly, noted that a wingless fowl has been produced thus increasing the breast of this biped. This omission is serious because of its implications, for were we, by our higher intelligence, to produce an armless man, we should forever save the human race from kleptomania which is a short term for such creatures as pick-pockets, tac-collectors and subsidy hunters.