The taste of a free lunch is always much richer. The smell is more aromatic. The taste is more flavorful. Most of all, the belly leaves the table more contented.
But a free lunch is never really free. We thought we ate one once. Back when we were green, and the world was still our oyster, a superior took us out for lunch and generously picked up the tab. It’s no coincidence we worked the next three weekends.
“It is an immutable economic fact,” said WWI Brigadier General Leonard P. Ayres many years ago, “that there is no such thing as a free lunch.” Indeed, Ayres was on to something. In fact, with that brief statement he crystalized one of the world’s essential axioms. Like gravity or the golden rule, you can’t refute it.
Fred Brooks, the man who changed the IBM 360 series from a 6-bit to an 8-bit byte, thus allowing the use of lowercase letters, elaborated the idea when he said, “You can only get something for nothing if you have previously gotten nothing for something.” Continue reading
