Too cheap to meter describes a concept in which a commodity is so inexpensive that it is more cost-effective and less bureaucratic to simply provide it for a flat fee or even free and make a profit from associated services.
Although sometimes attributed to Walter Marshall, a pioneer of nuclear power in the United Kingdom,[1] the phrase was coined by Lewis Strauss, then Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, who in a speech to to the National Association of Science Writers said:
"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age." [2]
However, in practice nuclear power "proved costly and far from risk-free".[3]
References
- ^ Nuclear doubts gnaw deeper - BBC News, Thursday, 15 June, 2000
- ^ Too Cheap to Meter? [1]
- ^ Book Review: In Mortal Hands, The Economist, May 2, 2009, p. 82.