What is the Cost of Something ‘Free’?

We all enjoy free things because we can simply accept the offer of the good and are able to enjoy the product for whatever worth it may bring to us without picking out a single dime from out pocket. However many free things there are, there is always a cost to something for existing as a consumable good.

You might think that air is something that is a free good, you can always get air from anywhere, but at some places in the world such as deep underground caves, oxygen is not present and to get oxygen down there, you need to pay up. Same way as simply pumping air into your tyres, you pay mechanics to pump air. So the air is not really that free under some circumstances. How about free apps? The apps are free for consumers who use them, but there may be a lot of advertisements integrated with it because it costs the producer resources such as labour and capital. In fact, those ads in the game cost you time from 5 seconds to 30 seconds for using the app that in fact will weigh out the utility because you could’ve used that time from watching ads to be productive.

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The term ‘free’ as economists would say is only one-sided. Slavery, for example, is free labour that firms can use, but to achieve that free labour, all freedom from the one providing the labour is the cost of such services. Free antivirus apps are free to users, but it costed the provider of the antivirus their time and capital to make it. Free movie tickets are free to consumers to choose to take, but once they step in and decide to watch a two-hour long movie, there is an opportunity cost of two hours of any other entertainment or productivity time.

Now after that being said, is there really a free good or service? Yes, but there is a cost for producing that free good or service, where there is someone sacrificing the cost to make it free for others to consume.

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