TANSTAAFL

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TANSTAAFL is an abbreviation for the English phrase "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" , which was used by the science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein in his novel Revolte auf Luna ( The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress ) made popular by 1966. The novel deals with the problems that arise from the unreflective acceptance of a one-sided economic policy. The idiom and book are very popular in libertarian circles and the phrase is often quoted in economics textbooks . In order to avoid the double negative , the abbreviation TINSTAAFL is sometimes used, which is resolved as "there is no such thing as a free lunch" .

The sentence can be translated as “nothing is free” and is intended to illustrate the concept of opportunity costs . Greg Mankiw describes the concept as follows: “In order to get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions means weighing goals against each other. "

Origin and use

The phrase refers to the formerly widespread tradition of saloons in the United States , guests a "Free Lunch", that a " free " lunch offer, the guests were obligated to buy at least one drink. Rudyard Kipling describes how he was in 1891

“Came into a bar room full of bad saloon pictures, in which men with hats on the back of their heads were gulping down food from a counter. It was the free lunch institution that I had come across. You paid for a drink and got as much to eat as you wanted. For a little less than a rupee a day, a man in San Francisco can eat his fill even though he's broke. Remember if you're ever stuck there. "

- Rudyard Kipling : American Notes

TANSTAAFL means that something can never really be free for a person or society. Even when something appears to be free, there is always a cost to the person or society as a whole, even though those costs may be hidden or distributed. For example, if you can get free food in a bar during happy hour , the owner has to pay for it and will try to compensate for it in other ways. Some goods, such as wild-picked fruit, may be practically free, but usually there are always costs - in this case for the labor of the picking or the loss of food for the animals in the area.

The notion that there is nothing for free on a societal level only applies when all resources are used fully and appropriately. If an individual or a group gets something for free, someone else has to pay for it. When there doesn't seem to be a direct cost to an individual, there is a social cost instead. Likewise, someone can benefit from an external effect or a public good “for free” , but that always means that someone else has to bear the cost of generating that benefit.

In financial mathematics , the term is also used as an informal synonym for the principle of non-arbitrage , which states that a combination of collateral that yields the same profit as another collateral must also have the same net cost.

TANSTAAFL is sometimes used as a counter-argument to the benefits claimed for free software . Proponents of free software counter that the term “free” in this context primarily stands for the absence of restrictions (“freedom”) and not for the absence of costs (“free”). Richard Stallman described this as “free as in free opinion, not as in free beer”.

The prefix "TANSTAA-" is also used in various other contexts to describe an immutable property of a system. The acronym TANSTAANFS is used in English-speaking electrical engineering , which stands for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Noise Free System".

To the scientist, TANSTAAFL means that a system is completely closed - there is no magical source of matter, energy or light that cannot be used up in the end. In this respect, the TANSTAAFL argumentation can also be applied to physical processes. (See also: Thermodynamics .)

References

  • As early as 1950, a columnist for the New York Times attributed the sentence to the economist and Army General Leonard P. Ayres of the Cleveland Trust Company. “It appears that shortly before the general's death [1946] a group of reporters approached the general with a request that he perhaps convey to them one of the unchanging truisms that he had gathered over the long years of his economic studies. 'It is an inevitable economic fact,' said the general, 'that there is no such thing as a free lunch.' ' “
  • The 1971 book TANSTAAFL, the economic strategy for environmental crisis by Edwin G. Dolan is likely to contain the first use of the term in economic literature.
  • The title of Spider Robinson's 2001 novel The Free Lunch refers to the TANSTAAFL concept.
  • One of several responses from the Ordnance Survey responsible for topographic maps of Great Britain to the Free Our Data campaign launched by The Guardian in 2006 for free and free access to its partially publicly funded data: “There is no such thing as free data . "
  • TANSTAAFL is the name of a snack bar in the Pierce dormitory of the University of Chicago . The name refers to the fact that the phrase was popularized by Milton Friedman , a former University of Chicago professor and Nobel Prize winner.
  • The cafe of the IIM Ahmedabad is called Cafe TANSTAAFL.
  • TANSTAGI is the abbreviation for “There Ain't No Such Thing As Government Interference” in the series of novels Schrödinger's cat by Robert Anton Wilson , the motto of the Invisible Hand Society .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Safire: On Language; Words Left Out in the Cold . In: The New York Times , February 14, 1993
  2. ^ Robert A. Heinlein: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966).
  3. ↑ "To get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another. " N. Gregory Mankiw: Principles of Economics (4th edition), p. 4. (German basics of economics , ISBN 3-7910-2163-X )
  4. ^ Rudyard Kipling: American Notes . Standard Book Company, 1930. (published in book form in 1930, based on essays which appeared in periodicals in 1891)
    American Notes by Rudyard Kipling in Project Gutenberg ( currently not available to users from Germany as a rule )
  5. ↑ S. Leon Felkins: Dr. Friedman was wrong ... at spectacle.org
  6. ↑ "Free as in speech not as in beer."
  7. ↑ "It seems that shortly before the General's death [in 1946] ... a group of reporters approached the general with the request that perhaps he might give them one of several immutable economic truisms which he had gathered from his long years of economic study ..." It is an immutable economic fact, 'said the general,' that there is no such thing as a free lunch. '”Robert H. Fetridge: Along the Highways and Byways of Finance . In: The New York Times , November 12, 1950, p. 135
  8. ^ Edwin G. Dolan: TANSTAAFL, the economic strategy for environmental crisis . Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, ISBN 0-03-086315-5
  9. ↑ Free Our Data: Articles: the Ordnance Survey official response. The Guardian, accessed January 8, 2010 .
  10. ↑ Milton Friedman: There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch . Open Court Pub, 1975, ISBN 0-87548-310-0