• Stuart Jeffries
• The Guardian,
• Tuesday May 6 2008
• Article history

Christian Michel, a French libertarian who runs a philosophical discussion group at London’s Institut Français and has written about the ethics of freedom, argues that such hard lessons are good, since they teach us humility. “The fact that we need to work in order to narrow the distance between our desires and realising them means that nothing in this world comes for free. The myth of a free lunch, whether it takes the form of ‘free health care’ or ‘free education’, is the ultimate dream of the consumer society, to take and consume everything without having to give anything back. The obligation to pay is the restraint that economics puts on human greed. Yes, we can have everything we want, but we must accept that there is a price to pay.”

But why? “To produce something is to destroy human energy and nature’s resources,” argues Michel. “This is a serious act, and one which has consequences in the whole universe. By paying for what we have destroyed, we restore cosmic balance.”