What is meant by free? One definition is “without cost or payment.” This is what people in this country generally think the word means. For example, I spotted a post(read advertisement) on my FaceBook feed about Oregon offering ‘free’ tuition for community college. So, what does free mean here? Does it mean this tuition costs nothing? Certainly, the colleges offering the degrees are not offering them for free. As well, the professors are not teaching the classes for free. Are the textbooks free? So, what do they mean by free?
They mean that the already overburdened Oregon taxpayers(one of the highest income tax averages in the country) will be paying even more in the future. How many millions of dollars will this program cost? Are the students obligated to do anything in return for their education? If they don’t actually pay for it, will it mean anything at all to them?
Another ‘free’ offering in this country is the cellphones with a certain number of minutes offered to individuals receiving certain types of financial assistance. Are these free? Of course not, all of the paying cell phone customers pay a small fee every month that helps fund this. So, it is not free after all.
Is free any good? You know the old saying, ‘you get what you pay for.’ Are goods or services offered for free even appreciated? Are they worth getting? Should people just settle for the ‘free’ item because it’s free and never aspire to have more? If someone had to do absolutely no work in return for an object, where is the sense of accomplishment usually derived after getting something you have worked hard for? Does that count for anything?
The bigger question perhaps is this–should we be giving things away for ‘free?’ Does that not devalue what it is you are giving away? If diamonds were free, would anybody want them? There seems to be a growing trend that many things should be free for everyone who says they don’t have enough money to pay for that thing. Why? Why don’t we encourage people to look at what they want, find out what it will cost, not only in dollars but in time and effort. Then ask themselves if it is worth the money, time and effort required. If the answer is yes, then they should work towards it. At the end, when they finally get that thing they worked so hard for, it is also an accomplishment. In addition to having possession of the thing, they also have the pride in knowing what they had to do to get it. The pride is important. If everything is given away, then nothing is special. There are no accomplishments. Just holding your hand out and having something plopped into it and the person next to you and the person next to them gives absolutely no sense of accomplishment. It is basically worthless in many senses of that word….and I guess worthless is sort of a synonym of free when you get right down to it.