Who Said TANSTAAFL First?

David BoazIn the early, scruffy days of the modern libertarian movement, the late 1960s and early 1970s, a  popular libertarian slogan was TANSTAAFL — “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” See the buttons at the right. It meant that government can’t hand out free stuff indefinitely — benefits have to be paid for. Or more generally,to economists, it refers toopportunity costs. But who said it first?In my recent study ofthe citations inBartlett ’s Familiar Quotations, I  saw that the editors listed the slightly more grammatical version, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” as “attributed” to Milton Friedman. They could have cited his1975 book by that title. And Friedman didmake the point frequently. As didJohan Norberg inthis discussion of Friedman and the “no free lunch” idea.But Friedman wasn ’t first. Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein had popularized the phrase and the abbreviation in his 1966 Hugo Award‐​winning novelThe Moon Is a  Harsh Mistress. He even posited a  new country with TANSTAAFL on its flag. That’s likely where early libertarians came across it. Including a young economist named Edwin Dolan, who published a book in 1971 titledTANSTAAFL: A  Libertarian Perspective on Environmental Policy. So was Heinlein the first?The website Quote Investigatordug deeper, and found a  1938 newspaper article titled “Economics in Eight Words.” It was a fable of a king who demanded that his economic advisers gi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs