There
Ain't No Such Thing
As A Free Lunch
-
the TANSTAAFL Principle
As
first discussed by Robert Heinlein in his
book, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
... And later by Edwin G. Dolan in TANSTAAFL,
The Economic Strategy for Environmental Crisis
"The
fundamental principle on which this strategy
is built may be expressed in a simple slogan—There
Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, the "TANSTAAFL
principle," for short. The TANSTAAFL
principle is closely related to the fundamental
theorem of ecological economics, that everything
depends on everything else. Everything worthwhile
has a cost. Whenever you think you are getting
something for nothing, look again—someone,
somewhere, somehow is paying for it. Behind
every free lunch there is a hidden cost to
be accounted for.
The
task of ecological economics is to figure
out how to restructure the economic system
so that these hidden costs will be brought
out into the open, with the ultimate aim that
no one who benefits from the use of the environment
will be able to escape without paying in full.
The rest of this book is devoted to working
out specific applications of this general
strategy in order to deal with specific problems."
- Edwin G. Dolan, TANSTAAFL, 1969
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