There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. 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 and seems to have coined its acronym, TANSTAAFL. More recently, it has become a favorite saying of economists, buoyed by Milton Friedman’s frequent use of the phrase.

Just some fun facts that are useful in business…