So we need to persuade the NSA to finance our new search engine? Or should we turn to Putin or Xi? The European surveillance services would not be able to

You still have to pay the NSA, in the form of taxes.

This is kind of disingenuous when the grandparent comment is complaining exactly about the particular way this country is free in.

Not at all. If someone wants to fund a charity search engine, they can do it.

No matter how you structure it, somebody is going to have to pay for it.

Another way of saying it is there's no such thing as a free lunch. In any society, any where, any time.

You might as well wish for an antigravity machine :-)

I agree with your sentiment, however its not exactly true.

According to his son, Milton Friedman used to say this but stopped because he realized that trade itself is free lunch- because its a win on both sides- consumer and producer surplus. He replaced it with "always look a gift horse in the mouth".

Depending on who pays, the incentives are different. In a socialist society, where some things are funded by the government, those things are generally much more aligned with the interest of the public than in capitalism, where most money wins.

Man, those Cambodians really loved the killing fields. You should have seen how excited they were

> In a socialist society, where some things are funded by the government, those things are generally much more aligned with the interest of the public than in capitalism

Just for fun, compare the Soviet built Lada cars with cars built by capitalists. Or the contents of supermarkets. Or the quality of health care.

Oh, and the advice given to American tourists visiting the Soviet Union - pack a couple pairs of blue jeans, as they are great for trading for stuff!

I'll make it easy - name any consumer product made by the Soviet Union that was preferable to one built by greedy capitalists. Did you wonder why the US did not import Soviet made consumer products?

I meant more like Germany, countries with strong social safety nets and regulation, rather than full-blown communism.

Socialism results in less productivity. Even in Germany.

This is like a fish saying "living on land results in breathing less water". Yes, that's the point, but the fish almost can't imagine how that might be a good thing.