TANSTAAFL
409 N. Bowen
Arlington, TX.
817.460.9506
TANSTAAFL is the acronym for the adage "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", 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 economics textbooks.
TANSTAAFL means that a person or a society cannot get something for nothing. Even if something appears to be free, there is always a catch. You may get free food at a bar during "happy hour", but the bar-owner may get you to pay indirectly through higher priced drinks, or he gets some other benefit (such as attracting new customers, who will return on other occasions and pay for their food).
TANSTAAFL may not always hold at the individual level, depending on the interpretation of the phrase. For example, some may argue that mothers often provide their children with lunch at no cost. Others respond that even mothers are looking for something in return for their generosity.
Nevertheless, it seems that if one individual is getting something at no cost, somebody else ends up paying for it. If there appears to be no direct cost to any single individual, there is a social cost. Similarly, someone can benefit for "free" from an externality or from a public good, but someone has to pay the cost of producing these benefits.
The idea that there is no free lunch at the societal level applies only when all resources are being used completely and appropriately, i.e., when economic efficiency prevails. But when inefficiency exists, one can get a "free lunch". For example, microeconomics argues that the production of pollution may be inefficient because the polluters are not forced to pay for the damage they cause. A tax or other program that forces the polluter to internalize this externality would improve efficiency, increasing social welfare. In practice, however, others who are benefiting from the inefficiency will use their political or social power to prevent this tax. That is, the polluter may use lobbying and campaign contributions to preserve his or her ability to freely pollute.
To a scientist, TANSTAAFL means that the system is ultimately closed — there's no magic source of matter, energy, light, or indeed lunch, that cannot be eventually exhausted. Therefore the TANSTAAFL argument may also be applied to natural physical processes.
TANSTAAFL is the name of the student-run snack bar in the Pierce residential student dorm of the University of Chicago. The name references the fact that the use of the term in economics was popularized by Milton Friedman, the Nobel-Prize-winning former University of Chicago professor.