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How does no one pay for it, though?

I don't know the ins and outs of the UK education system, but I have to assume the facilities and employees are still paid for.

> Does food and water? Shelter?

If everyone had access to it for free? Absolutely! I wouldn't work as a farmer or build houses if no one had to pay for those products. Value, or price in this context, is only really feasible for scarce assets. If something is seemingly unlimited and freely available it will have no (financial) value.




It's publicly funded, not built and staffed by slaves.


Sure, but then the answer to my original question of who pays for it is the taxpayer. It isn't free, the cost is just subsidized by the public rather than paid by the student.

I'm not even saying that's a bad thing, if most people want it that way I don't see the problem. But it isn't free.


Sorry, but you're just being a bit pedantic about this and it's not helping any conversation.


I'm not sure how, it seems really important to distinguish between free and not free. To me it seems disingenuous to call something free when its publicly funded.


But everyone knows that "free" in this context means publicly funded. Free as in beer never meant that the entire production of the beer somehow was accomplished without financial or material input.


That doesn't hold up even just in this comment thread. Higher up when I asked who pays for it the reply I got was "Not anyone". The person really didn't seem to get that " free" == publicly funded == taxpayers pay for it.


No, they said that not just anyone can get in for free; there's an admission test.


Tax. The missing link is those educated people pay it back with their tax. And/or contributions to the economy.

Also part of this is making education better bang for buck.

You can say who's gonna pay for it for everything. Defense and meddling in world affairs is a big cost too.


Right, but if our answer is taxes then someone pays for it and it is not free. There's nothing wrong with that, we just can't call it free.

> You can say who's gonna pay for it for everything. Defense and meddling in world affairs is a big cost too.

For sure, no disagreement here. My personal opinion is that defense is only necessary in times of war and meddling in world affairs is never necessary.


You think defense is only necessary in times of war? I think you should re-think that position. If you mean that, it is just a fundamental misunderstanding of ... everything.




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