In Argentina, many people that what the state gives can really be free. Just talk with people from Argentina, ask in forums, if you know people from the country ask them, ask in reddit. It's not a strawman, there are many cases. You may be fortunate and not see them, but in poorer countries with worse education it happens.
Who thinks that except maybe some very small, very ignorant and insignificant minority of people? I don't understand why people feel the need to point this out - everyone already knows this.
I will raise an exception to the use of '«know»', which is not really defined in terms of "actually discriminate" vs "being able to discriminate". Meaning:
It is not that "people know that money does not come from cornucopiae": it is more that they are supposed not to hold the idea. Or: it should be implicit knowledge, not explicit. Or: you do not need to think about it to avoid dreaming that "streets are maintained by volunteers" (for lack of more absurd insanities at hand). Or: it's mental hygiene not to be delirious and work through a "yes/no" system - you are supposed to have plentiful buffers that avoid you holding weak ideas...
Edit: or, if really that is something you find in society, you have a big elephant in the room (education) with priority over trains and everything.
Can you provide an example where you would “actually discriminate” that something is free? It seems to me that the same obnoxious technicality that opposed ordinary uses of the word “free” can be applied to literally any usage of the word “free.”
(I am not sure we have fully understood each other, but.)
You know that (the software application) Audacity is free (in some sense of "free"), because in your exploration you found the notion.
You do not need to know explicitly that Audacity was produced our of an effort that cost resources to the developers and other facilitators, because the proper mental process involves much more that you do not develop the opposite idea.
There may be again a link with the words of the late Prof. Patrick Winston: "Intelligence is that you do not need to run around holding a bucket full of gravel to reliably imagine what would happen" (not literal quote).
> Who thinks that except maybe some very small, very ignorant and insignificant minority of people? I don't understand why people feel the need to point this out - everyone already knows this.
The same could apply to what you just said. If everyone knows it, presumably everyone knows what you said, as well.
Is that true? You appear to be making a point about government spending, which, sure, go for it. But I wouldn't resort to straw men like "people think a free train service costs nothing".
In my country, Romania, most people believe the state has their own money that are used to pay for stuff. Even if they pay taxes, people still believe there is no strict correlation. Is it an education problem? Yes. Is it an important distinction that needs to be made every single time until they understand? YES. And I saw that in most of the countries around (former Eastern European Communist countries). This is because nobody tells kids and young adults in school how the basic government financing works, not even in most universities.
A couple of million of these Romanians live in Spain. Guess what they think about "free trains".
And where is the rest coming from? Borrowing money? I have an extreme experience and knowledge about the finances of my country, I can tell you are wrong at least for this country.
Income from government-owned assets, borrowing money, and printing money are the principal other sources of government spending. For Romania you can also add disbursements from the EU.
