The day is coming when everything will be free.  This is not a utopian pipe dream, but the inevitable result of ever increasing manufacturing efficiency and innovation.  As efficiency rises exponentially, costs will plummet.  Eventually, prices will become so low as to be negligible.   Before we celebrate, we should remind ourselves of the adage that the one thing that is never free is freedom itself.  The free goods and services of the future economy will cost us not only everything we have, but everything we are. If one doubts that goods and services will be free, one need only look at food production for the past hundred seventy years.  In 1850, about 64 percent of Americans lived on farms.  By 1920, that figure had dropped to about 30 percent.  Today it is about two percent. The drastic reduction in farm population in America has mostly been due to innovation and efficiency, two dominant factors at play in almost every major...(Read Full Post)