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"plaintext": "I recently wrote an article about how food should be free. "
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"plaintext": "Food's a good place to start when we think about things that should be free. We are constantly buying food, cooking food, eating food, talking about food and watching videos of food. It's a huge part of a lot of people's daily lives and so it's a great place to start the conversation about things in life that should be free. But that's all it is, a start."
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"plaintext": "Utilities should be free"
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"plaintext": "Water, gas, electricity. Heck, let's throw internet in there too this is 2026 after all. These are basic necessities of existing in our modern society and people should not have to pay simply to exist. People should have free access to water for drinking and hygiene, and of course that water should be clean but that's the subject of another post. People should be able to power their lights and appliances, heat and cool their homes, and generally go about their daily lives without racking up some gigantic bill to the utility company. "
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"plaintext": "But Angry Science Guy, you may ask, how do you reconcile this point of view with walking around the neighborhood and knocking on people's doors when their sprinklers are broken. If you care so much about water wastage, isn't free water just going to contribute to more wasted water? The answer is undoubtedly that yes, unmetered free water would, which means making utilities free is going to require some tiny modicum of finesse. Water needs to be free, up to some reasonable point."
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"plaintext": "On the one end of the usage spectrum we have people that use water for drinking and hygiene and not much else. The word \"hygiene\" is doing a lot of work here as I'm using it to include bathing, flushing of toilets, cleaning around the house, washing clothes, etc. Then on the other end of the spectrum we have the ultra-rich with their mega-landscaping, gigantic lawns, crazy fountains, and massive pools. So somewhere along that spectrum the price for water needs to swing all the way from free to really fucking expensive. "
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"plaintext": "My water district has 3 tiers of usage. The most expensive tier is only 1.4X as expensive as the cheapest tier. A lousy 40% increase. You think these rich-ass bajillionaires are blinking an eye at a 40% increase. Make that first tier free and that third tier 10X as expensive as it is now and we have this problem solved. I really didn't want to get into the implementation details of my \"things should be free\" series yet, but this one is so damn easy I couldn't resist. Normal people should get normal amounts of water for free. Excessive users should pay through the nose."
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"plaintext": "Healthcare should be free"
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"plaintext": "Do I even need to explain this one? And yes healthcare includes teeth and eyes and mental health too."
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"plaintext": "Housing should be free"
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"plaintext": "I have a suspicion that of everything on the list, this one is the most controversial. But I'm going to go back to what I said above about utilities:"
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"plaintext": "people should not have to pay simply to exist"
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"plaintext": "If you exist, you need housing. Thus housing should be free, it's really as simple as that. How are we going to make housing free? That's an implementation detail, and I already said I didn't want to talk about those. It does however make me wonder if I believe in a UBI."
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"plaintext": "Libraries should (continue to) be free"
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"plaintext": "Look I know that libraries are already free, but libraries are also awesome so I just kind of wanted to give them a shout out. Somebody recently said that if libraries didn't already exist there is no way that politicians would approve them now. It's so true that it makes me really sad."
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"textContent": "I recently wrote an article about how food should be free. \nFood's a good place to start when we think about things that should be free. We are constantly buying food, cooking food, eating food, talking about food and watching videos of food. It's a huge part of a lot of people's daily lives and so it's a great place to start the conversation about things in life that should be free. But that's all it is, a start.\nUtilities should be free\nWater, gas, electricity. Heck, let's throw internet in there too this is 2026 after all. These are basic necessities of existing in our modern society and people should not have to pay simply to exist. People should have free access to water for drinking and hygiene, and of course that water should be clean but that's the subject of another post. People should be able to power their lights and appliances, heat and cool their homes, and generally go about their daily lives without racking up some gigantic bill to the utility company. \nBut Angry Science Guy, you may ask, how do you reconcile this point of view with walking around the neighborhood and knocking on people's doors when their sprinklers are broken. If you care so much about water wastage, isn't free water just going to contribute to more wasted water? The answer is undoubtedly that yes, unmetered free water would, which means making utilities free is going to require some tiny modicum of finesse. Water needs to be free, up to some reasonable point.\nOn the one end of the usage spectrum we have people that use water for drinking and hygiene and not much else. The word \"hygiene\" is doing a lot of work here as I'm using it to include bathing, flushing of toilets, cleaning around the house, washing clothes, etc. Then on the other end of the spectrum we have the ultra-rich with their mega-landscaping, gigantic lawns, crazy fountains, and massive pools. So somewhere along that spectrum the price for water needs to swing all the way from free to really fucking expensive. \nMy water district has 3 tiers of usage. The most expensive tier is only 1.4X as expensive as the cheapest tier. A lousy 40% increase. You think these rich-ass bajillionaires are blinking an eye at a 40% increase. Make that first tier free and that third tier 10X as expensive as it is now and we have this problem solved. I really didn't want to get into the implementation details of my \"things should be free\" series yet, but this one is so damn easy I couldn't resist. Normal people should get normal amounts of water for free. Excessive users should pay through the nose.\nHealthcare should be free\nDo I even need to explain this one? And yes healthcare includes teeth and eyes and mental health too.\nHousing should be free\nI have a suspicion that of everything on the list, this one is the most controversial. But I'm going to go back to what I said above about utilities:\nš” people should not have to pay simply to exist\nIf you exist, you need housing. Thus housing should be free, it's really as simple as that. How are we going to make housing free? That's an implementation detail, and I already said I didn't want to talk about those. It does however make me wonder if I believe in a UBI.\nLibraries should (continue to) be free\nLook I know that libraries are already free, but libraries are also awesome so I just kind of wanted to give them a shout out. Somebody recently said that if libraries didn't already exist there is no way that politicians would approve them now. It's so true that it makes me really sad.",
"title": "Food Isn't the Only Thing that Should be Free"
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