TANSTAAFL Meme

Well, BabsRN tagged me for this one a while back, and to be honest, I've been trying to come up with something suitable for a while. What with the move and all I've had other things on my mind, so it didn't get done in a timely fashion.

My sincere apologies to Babs for falling down on the job.

So, here it is.

The immortal Robert Anson Heinlein wrote in his book The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Says the character Manuel Garcia O'Kelly: "Otherwise, these drinks would cost half as much."

Too true, Manny, too true.

Fr'instance, what the hell do you think all those free samples are? Free samples of Oil of Olay skin conditioning whale sperm, or whatever it is, look at the price on the full size bottle, and its outrageous. The bottle looks like something that would come in a my little homemaker set, and its close to ten dollars, while the ingredients listed are almost exactly the same as the giganto bottle next to it, which is off brand, the same price, and four times the amount.

I will admit to being somewhat of a brand nazi on certain things, mostly food, but FFS people, when you can get something that's exactly the same as the fancy brand, no noticeable difference in effectiveness or aesthetics other than the lack of spiffy graphics on the bottle, why in the world are you paying out the nose for the brand name?

All those extra dollars go into giving out those free samples, and slapping those spiffy graphics on the packaging.

And people fall for the "free" crap.

A friend of mine is deeply in lust with the Victoria's Secret line of perfumes. She loves them, but can rarely afford a full bottle. However, she does buy their underwear, and whatever the heck else they sell in that store. One time they gave her an itty bitty bottle of their newest perfume as a "free gift."

I thought the girl was gonna wet herself.

"OhmygodI'vebeenwantingabottleofthisformonthsohmygod!"

"Yeah how much you figure it set you back?"

"Oh no, it was free."

"You just paid twenty dollars for a set of underwear that makes three bandaids and some fishing line look like a Mormon's second skin. I could make that crap for less than they paid starving Indonesian children to sew it. You did not get that perfume for free."

Folks, free is never free, be it favors, goods, or services. We live in a society of commerce, and the fact that people have been convinced that a "free gift" is really free saddens me.

Hell, even that broken down nastily stained couch that you found on a corner, that you strongly suspect might have been used in a murder or to stash the body, judging by the smell, costs you the time and effort to get it back to the hovel you call a house/apartment/dorm room.

As for tagging...well, I'm not much of a tagger, so I'll let this thread die with me. Maybe someday when I have more contacts in the world of blogging, I'll tag people, but for now, I'm afraid if I try they'll hurt me for touching them. I just don't know folks that well!

*Disclaimer: I don't know that Victoria's Secret uses starving Indonesian children to sew their skimpy underwear. They probably don't. But thats the conversation pretty much as it happened. Oh, and yes, I have seen the "Murder Couch." I was asked to help move the Murder Couch, but declined gracefully, on the basis that I'd already had my yearly exposure to blood borne diseases and decomposing bodily fluids.