The tyranny of free.

There's a lot of free shit in the world.

And the operative word in the sentence above is shit.

We get Facebook for free. But somehow, our personal data is worth about $100 per person to Facebook.

So what we're getting isn't free.

Though we're fooled into thinking it is.

The same holds true for other phony frees like Google mail.

It's free. Except your mail is scanned and you get targeted ads.

That's your life as profit center.

The worst costly free, in my opinion, is Wikipedia.

I'll be blunt.

The quality of information you get on Wikipedia sucks.

Most often, it seems to me, the information you get is press releases.

They've been approved by the people and companies about whom they are writing.

It's not information we get.

It's misinformation.

But of course, being "free" Wikipedia has forced legitimate sources out of business.

I miss the information I used to be able to get from a real encyclopedia.

If you grew up like I did, you grew up hearing adages like
"You get what you pay for."

We've forgotten simple declarations and wisdom.

We think we're getting free.

We've forgotten that free is costly.