lordofduct wrote:Living your life isn't free, nor raising a child is free... which someone else brought up. But for ME, did I have to pay to receive life? I paid afterward to maintain life, but I gave nothing to receive life.
the statement was called cheesy, but it's a point I'd like to make as I'm tired of the dogmatic "nothing is free" statement thrown around by everyone. What constitutes free to cost? Your telling me nothing is free because somebody somewhere had to lose something so you could gain it. Then what the hell is the sense of having the term free.
oh wait... I know why. Because the word "free" has nothing to do with cost. The term free actually means "released of some bounds" at its root... from which it has been adopted into 100s of different meanings closely related to this base definition. Free will (not restricted will), free market (open for all to partake in), etc.
the word was then adopted to that of cost with a very loose corrolation of "was relinquished with out cost", not very close... but it is slang, what do you expect when today we make words like "bling", and turn words like "sick" into "good".
SO it has taken on the informal definition of "with out cost", yet another VERY ambiguous word that has many definitions to it as well. Cost of health, cost of money, cost of mental stability, cost of words, etc. Cost is only given its monitary value by that which is the word it is slid beside. On its own it really has no value at all... nevermind the fact that it is an informal word. Considering the validity of its statement is like considering if something is actually "sick" or "bad". You may call that joke one sick joke, but what the hell do you mean? Sick as in disgusting or sick as in hilarious?
at a cost? What cost and to whom?
soo... divurging massively here, I will return back to the cliche statement that 1st year economic students scream:
"nothing is free"
This is a statement referring only to economics itself. How economy functions is the transferring of goods and labor via funds/work/products (amongst other more developed things like how the stock market works). The action of giving something free has put a cost on the economy itself as something had to be done for that transaction at no cost to occur. The economy loses a little something for it as no transfer was made!
Hence why "nothing is free", because it cost someone something else. That does NOT mean you can not receive it for free; there is a reason in the english language we can have possessive statements. In that part everyone gets stuff for free everyday. It may cost someone something, but you received at 0 cost and thusly you received it for free.
Either way though, I'm at delirium hour and found it funny that several people posted "nothing is free".
So to finish this all up... using the word free should be translated to the context of the statement. And in the context of one normal joe talking to another, they are not referring to the dogmatic cry of free in economics class.
for free