Everything costs something

Is there's an observer on the socio-political scene with more useful insights than Theodore Dalrymple? In this brief column he dissects the problem with socialism/communism/fascism with a real life experience he had some 20 years ago while visiting North Korea.  It's inconceivable to us in the West that the kind of existence Dalrymple describes can be the case and yet we know it is throughout the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East.  And yet one senses that a version of this existence is where the Obama forces would eventually take us.  Freedom is a slippery slope and giving it up via Obamacare here, Cap and Trade there inevitably leads to dominance of the state and the enslavement of its populace who then become subjects.  Something, anything for nothing has a compelling appeal to many who would do well to remember that there really are no free lunches and that everything costs something even if its free.