Talk:TANSTAAFL

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[edit] Confusing attribution

This article credits both Heinlein and Friedman. Is Friedman the originator of the adage, and Heinlein the originator of the acronym? If so, that should be made more clear. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 18:32, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

If LaGuardia used the phrase in 1934, it clearly predates both Heinlein and Friedman...though if the mayor first used it in Latin, we might wonder who the first user/translator of the English version was. In any event, could someone produce the original Latin version? It doesn't seem to be easily locatable on the Internet. Thanks immensely! 207.114.141.12 21:31, 15 May 2005 (UTC) (Dpr)
From searching, it appears that the Latin phrase should be "Nullum Gratuitum Prandium". But I have no way of knowing if that is the version used by Fiorello LaGuardia. It would be helpful if someone could find and provide the context and references for this claim. --Academician 08:20, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
That Latin phrase does say the same thing, but there are any number of ways to translate it into English and TANSTAAFL is a particularly effective way of expressing the idea. I think the first person to use that English version deserves just as much credit as the person who coined the Latin one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Simon Slavin (talk • contribs) 04:16, 3 February 2006 UTC

[edit] Some cites

  • "Rick Hauptmann located on this Yale website an article about quotations that includes this comment: 'Mr. Shapiro's research unearthed a 1952 mention in the journal Ethics, which referred to Professor Alvin Hansen's "famous TINSTAAFL formula - `There is no such thing as a free lunch.'"' Jeff Prucher located this cite and submitted it. We would like to know if the phrase can be further antedated in Hansen's own writings.
Jerry Pournelle has said that he and his father[Edward Pournelle?] both used the phrase as early as the 1930's. His father was a radio personality and made up a number of slogans and jingles, but Pournelle does not know whether his father made up the phrase or not." [1]
  • "TANSTAAFL was my father's, transmitted from me to Robert Heinlein and used by him, as acknowledged in letters both to me and to reviewers." [2]
  • "Despite the claims of rabid science fiction fans, this bit of folk wisdom has been with us since the late 1940s. And the term free lunch is even older. The term free lunch first appeared in print on 23 November 1854, in Wide West published in San Francisco. It is a reference to the practice of saloons giving free meals to attract clientele. Of course the savings is illusory as the price of the drinks subsidizes the food. The exact phrase, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, is also first used in the city by the bay in the 1 June 1949 edition of the San Francisco News (although this is claimed to be a reprint of a 1938 editorial so it may be even older, but the original has not been found). The science fiction fans come into the picture in 1966 with the publication of Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. He did much to popularize the phrase, but as we have seen did not coin it. Some claim that he coined the acronym TANSTAAFL. But alas for those science fiction fans, even this is not true. TANSTAAFL is found as far back as October 1949, only a few months after the earliest appearance of the phrase."
Shapiro, a linguistic cyber-sleuth, historical lexicographer, lecturer in legal research at Yale University, and editor of the forthcoming Yale Dictionary of Quotations figured out that a 1952 article in the journal Ethics about nationalizing industries, attributes the saying to "Professor Alvin Hansen in his famous TINSTAAFL formula - 'There is no such thing as a free lunch.'" (Professor Hansen was a prominent economist and professor at Harvard University.)" [3]

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Wwoods (talk • contribs) 18:59, 20 July 2005 UTC

  • My understanding of the orgin of the statement There is no free lunch is as follows. Before emmigrating to the US in the 1800's, europeans heard stories of how wine flowed freely in the streets, there was free lunch for everyone, and so on. After landing in the states and being here for a while, a kindly old man was asked what he thought of America - the reply came back: There is no free lunch. This was published, and the rest is history. PS. I was born in 1949 and probably heard the story related on TV sometime in the 1950's. I'm astonished that this explanation isn't present here. j.miller.

[edit] Life itself is a free lunch

There is a free lunch from the point of view of babies at their mother's breast. There are free lunches from the point of view of the poor attending a soup kitchen. There is a free lunch for the inheritor of wealth. There is a free lunch with every oxygen filled breath. Life itself is a free lunch. The only truth in the saying is that things have causes and consequences; and you can always find an excuse to not help someone less well off. 4.250.177.52 13:10, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

None of those things you mention are truly free - they all have costs and consequences. Mothers expect devotion and obedience from their children in exchange for their upbringing. The poor in soup kitchens bear the consequences of their actions as well - in the form of a dependency on generosity, and outcast from society. Inheritors of wealth usually must stay in the good graces of those from whom they have inherited - and keeping wealth takes work as well. Oxygen is ultimately not free - it comes from plants, and if we were to destroy all plantlife we would discover just how precious oxygen was.
Life is not free, either - it takes constant maintenance, as you mention, through breathing, through eating, through work on the part of one's self and on the part of everyone else. You simply do not understand the phrase - its purpose is to point out that one should never expect to receive anything gratis, there will always be a price, even if it is not monetary. It is a refutation of the childish expectation to have life served on a silver platter, to have things that have COSTS provided to one just because one is there. Nothing in life is ultimately free - everything is paid for in some way. --Academician 01:40, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes and no, Academician. While "no free lunches" can refer to the idea of accounting costs, its purpose really lies in explaining why there are always opportunity costs. Engaging in one action prevents you from engaging in another. When the baby consumes milk from the breast, it can't consume something else using the resources it just used (like time and energy). Economists care about scarcity and when there is scarcity, there are always opportunity costs.--Atlastawake 06:30, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
How does TANSTAAFL apply to Heinlein providing financial aid to struggling writers? -- LamontCranston 07:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conflicting statements on the same page

I removed the second paragraph because it looks at the issue from microeconomics level instead of macroeconomics level. This is supported by the use of the word "outside" on the said paragraph. It also conflict with the paragraph above it.

This may be controversial, but if anyone insist on putting it back, give an example of how removing "outside forces" may lead to macroeconomics efficiency (Who will obsorb negative externalities etc). That would be the only fair way to accept it. There is an example to government involvement theorem, why not offer a counter example of free market that can withstand critical analysis.

Though it is possible for an individual to get a "free lunch" (as when a company cuts its costs and gains competitive advantage by polluting the air), someone ends up paying the cost of the "lunch." Even though there is no individual or private cost, there is a social cost. Similarly, someone can benefit for free from a beneficial externality or from a public good. But someone has to pay the cost of producing these benefits.

Advocates of the TANSTAAFL principle believe markets are efficient unless due to interference by the government or other "outside" forces. The free market is seen as the solution to issues such as pollution.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Wk muriithi (talk • contribs) 15:26, 29 December 2005 UTC

[edit] libertarian utopia?

Um, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was not about a libertarian utopia, unless I completely mis-read that book. It was about a former penal colony on the verge of collapse. Perhaps that statement should be removed from the article, as it is rather a matter of opinion (and somewhat irrelevant to the article anyway).--Paul 18:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Change made as you suggest 20060203. Remove this section whenever you want. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Simon Slavin (talk • contribs) 04:16, 3 February 2006 UTC

[edit] Pronunciation

How is the acronym tanstaafl pronounced when it stands as a lowercase word, like in the citations mentioned on the page? Letter by letter, or like a separate word? I guess it's the former, but I'm not sure. Sorry for the question; I'm not a native English speaker. If you deem it worthy, you could include it in the article. Adam78 22:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I've always pronounced the whole word - it sounds pretty much like ordinary English or maybe Dutch, and the spelling looks Dutch to us ignorant Americans. tan as in suntan, st as in stanford, awful as in my explanation: tan-st-awful —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smallbones (talk • contribs) 08:35, 17 February 2006 UTC
Thank you, I've long been wondering that myself! -TMorrisey
I've always pronounced it 'tanstaffle' myself (rhyming with "baffle", rather than with "waffle").
—wwoods 19:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
This is how I've always heard it. RobertAustin 15:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I've always pronounced it (and heard it pronounced by people from all over the US) as "tahn'-stahf-l", i.e., both as as in "yawn", and the f as part of the second syllable, not the third. I'm actually surprised to see that people pronounce it differently. Learn something every day, I guess :-) —Ryan McDaniel 20:34, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree with George Wilson, in my humble opinion the best American male audiobook narrator ever, in his renditions of Heinlein's novels The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. He pronounces it like Ryan says above, but with accents evenly on the first two syllables: "tahn'-stahf'-l" (maybe even favoring the second a bit). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Actual Free Lunches

Wasn't there a tradition of bars literally offering free-lunches as a means to get people to drink more (I believe the Beef on Wyck in Buffalo started out this way)? Isn't that really the origin of the concept? The article seems to vaguely reference the idea that bars offered free food, but if it was the tradition of free lunches that inspired the phrase TANSTAAFL (and really, I've never heard it mentioned as an acronymn, but I guess enough people have) then I think it should be more clearly stated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.196.116.2 (talk • contribs) 18:49, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, the most common spelling in Buffalo is "weck," though some are said to pronounce it "wick" or (I suppose) "wyck." Wikipedia seems to prefer "weck" (Kummelweck).

I can neither confirm nor deny whether the sandwich was ever served for free in Buffalo as a marketing scheme.

--Martin X. Moleski, SJ 00:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Is the Universe a free lunch?

[edit] Foreign legislation

I live in Sweden. Here it is aginst the law to use the word free ("gratis") for marketing purposes. Unless, of course, what you offer really is free and without obligation of any kind. Therefore we see the phrase included ("på köpet", lit: on the buy) a lot in ads. 194.17.32.1 09:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mother and child analogy

I have edited the second paragraph of the details, which previously said:

"...some may argue that mothers often provide their children with lunch at no cost. But that food still had to be produced by someone somewhere, so even though the cost is not paid by the children themselves, it is still paid by someone. Indeed, it might be argued that the mother's body pays the cost of the child's meal."

This could easily be interpreted to suggest that the mothers are prostitutes! To rectify this, I corrected the paragraph to talk about breast-feeding as a "free lunch".

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 19:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tinstaafl, etc.

I'm astounded at the bad taste of people who use "tinstaafl", and the [citation needed] was well called for. But looking it up on Google gave 10,600 hits (none of whom I'd want to introduce my sister to). The citations tag on the first section is also proper and it seems that there are many definitions of this or that people just use it in many ways. A few citations on these would be good. Perhaps this might even result in better organization. Smallbones 17:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for sourcing this. Given that "ain't" has been in Merriam-Webster since the nineteen-sixties and had a quite respectable usage history before that, people who object to it, particularly in an informal or jocular context, are being deliberately pedantic. Actually I remember in the sixties serious discussion of what could be used as a short form for "am not" given that "ain't" was banned. "Amn't" was suggested but, obviously, never caught on. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I encountered "TINSTAAFL" in a 9th-grade Economics book. Pissed me off. I told the students (I'm a teacher) the true acronym, gave several examples, and lambasted the textbook publisher for their spinelessness. RobertAustin 15:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TANJ

For the linguists reading the article, I'm including TANJ in the See Also section. It's another acronym popularised by science fiction authors, meaning "There Ain't No Justice". Fortunately, no one's tried to introduce TINJ. It doesn't particularly relate to the concept of the term, but I would consider it etymologically enough related. The TANJ article also links to TANSTAAFL. samwaltz 20:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incomplete sentence?

I can't parse this clause which ends the first paragraph: "someone else has to or the bar will go out of business and demand." Is "demand" an object of the preposition "of"? What would it mean for a bar to "go out of ... demand"? Or is demand a predicate in parallel with "go out of business"? In that case, what is it that the bar would be demanding?

--Martin X. Moleski, SJ 00:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It was a run on sentence, and a simplistic illustration of how the costs are recouped. Saying the bar would go out of business if customers didnt purchase items doesnt account for other ways of distributing the costs, such as entry fees, pool competition entry fees, higher prices after the end of happy hour, increased tips to waiters, etc. I think the point is driven home more appropriate with a blunt ending: the bar-owner must recover that expense somehow. John Vandenberg 01:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed merge proposal

On the Free lunch talk page everybody was against it.

Smallbones (talk) 18:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Agree, but should be removed!

I can't bring myself to do it. The following should be removed as pure editorial comment, even though it is correct! Smallbones (talk) 13:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

"On the other hand, human beings are by nature irrationally altruistic. For example, they improve Wikipedia despite experiencing little or no personal gain. The end result is a free lunch for Wikipedia readers."
Removed unnecessary and non-encyclopedic commentary. -- Rydra Wong (talk) 16:23, 18 May 2008 (UTC)