[pavel_lishin]

> There's no free lunch

In the United States of 2018, that's a matter of explicit political choice, rather than harsh base reality.

> or get rich easy schemes

Gig workers aren't asking to get rich, they're asking to literally not starve to death.

[Infernal]

>> There's no free lunch

>In the United States of 2018, that's a matter of explicit political choice, rather than harsh base reality.

The point of the saying "there's no free lunch" is that even if it's free to you, /someone/ is paying for it - lunches do not simply materialize without effort. This principle will hold up as long as the laws of thermodynamics do - even in the United States of 2018.

[sp332]

The point is that you can't give a lunch to one person without taking it away from someone else. But there are enough resources in America that we could reallocate them to give everyone "lunch" without anyone going hungry.

[brndnmtthws]

Resources are scarce, and until we live in Star Trek where we can magically replicate anything, there will be no free lunches.

[sp332]

You're thinking that someone will get paid proportionally to how much value they produce. But productivity is up +100% and wages are flat. The "economy" is doing fine so there's no reason people can't get paid a decent wage. Employers are keeping the value of their employees' work.

[jwlato]

Some resources are scarce, but food in the U.S. is not. We have allocation and distribution issues, with political choices as a major factor, not supply constraints.

[pavel_lishin]

We threw away a full platter of sushi at work last week, because we ordered too much and didn't feel like finishing it.

Food isn't fucking scarce.