This is an adage that toes the line between a deepity (something that sounds profound but is entirely trivial) and genuinely profound truth. In many cases it's

This is an adage that toes the line between a deepity (something that sounds profound but is entirely trivial) and genuinely profound truth. In many cases it's worth remembering TANSTAAFL because agents under capitalism will try to advertise something as "free" when it has hidden costs (either financial, or by using your data/input for profit). On the other hand, outside capitalism it's often a trivial retelling of thermodynamics: there's no free energy, everything has to come from somewhere. Interestingly, although TANSTAAFL can be summarized as "everything is a zero-sum game", the core tenet of modern economy is that the economy is not a zero-sum game and eternal growth is possible. So as much as TANSTAAFL has been characterized as "libertarian", it's also a refutation of libertarian narratives like "trickle-down economics" and perpetual economic growth.