[MarkPNeyer]

Also related:

We don't charge people for the air we breath.

Why not? There's a cost to keeping it clean. There's a finite amount. Some people consume more than others.

Answer: because keeping track of those costs and assigning them to individual persons would be way more expensive than just keeping the air clean and letting people consume as much as they want.

Food should be the same way - now that we produce so much of it, it's kind of insane to expect to keep diligent tabs on how much people are consuming.

This is why i think a basic income makes perfect economic sense. People already have the ability to consume society's resources without paying (medical care or prison care still cost money) - so we might as well just give everyone a small amount 'voice' in the system and then dismantle the barriers to entry that are ostensibly in place to protect poor folks.