Human action is usually driven by the desire to obtain more for less, and, ideally something
for nothing. This has sometimes been called the economic principle. The wish to “get free
stuff” pervades all times and places, all sectors of the economy, all ages, and all social
backgrounds. The very selfishness for which the market economy is often chided is, at
bottom, a universal quest to obtain goods for free. Jörg Guido Hülsmann sets out to explore
the boundaries of this endeavor. He investigates the nature, forms, causes, and consequences
of gratuitous goods and concludes that they thrive within a free economy. But generosity and
gratuitous abundance tend to be undermined and reversed by central banking and the welfare
state.
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