[cbacba]

theres nothing free about solar panels. Whether a panel will last long enough to actually pay for the initial cost is questionable. Then there is the ongoing opportunity cost of lost revenue from leaving the money in the bank and drawing interest. In fact, it's questionable if the interest rate on that money could actually cover the electric costs by itself. Even if the panel lasts for 20 years, there is still costs for maintaining it. Who washes off the bird poop and dust? There's labor invovled and perhaps chemicals like soaps and maybe environmental costs perhaps for disposing of the chemicals. There's also replacement costs and repair costs for the circuitry. While it may make sense in remote areas with no power mains as an alternative, it is not at present time a viable alternative even with massive tax incentives or credits - which are money taken from others who might have had a better use for it anyway.

Your fruit tree example is another one. These require maintenance, fertilizer, and water. Fruit requires picking which involves labor. It might require pest controls and chemicals as well. Fruit flies may have to be controlled and exterminated.

You should know that there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. This applies to economics as well. Rest assured if the gov. is involved, actual costs are astronomically higher in the long run too. They have no incentive to conserve nor forces to make them conserve. Waste, fraud and abuse is the norm, not the exception.

Sunlight and wind are essentially free. But these do not provide useful energy without conversion. Man's tools, capital equipment, and labor are required to manipulate these into a form that is useful. Hence, it's no longer free and cannot be given away because there are costs involved which means there is a cost to individuals and to society. Those costs will be paid in some way by some one and if it's not by the user, there's no incentive to conserve and properly utilize the resource.

Imagine free cars that cost society a man year each to produce that contains 10 valuable screws worth 1$ each or contains $20 worth of aluminum and copper. One merely has to start getting free cars and extract that to become rich. All that labor is wasted as well as the other materials. Perhaps one has to buy those cars to scrap from others because they are rationed. Net result, utopias don't exist and cannot exist in this form. Then again, perhaps the western capitalist systems are utopian for those in the socialist workers paradise where cost doesn't matter because you starve to death in total poverty.