The word "freeloader" is usually used to punch down against those who are seen as lesser or lower class than the speaker. But fairly applied, the word punches in every direction, and can usefully refocus some of our perspectives on how we live together.
The classic freeloader is the main character in Edward Gorey’s little book The Doubtful Guest. This creature, a modestly-sized, very hairy seal, wearing what looks like a long Ivy League scarf and white sneakers, appears one day on top of an urn outside a Victorian home. When the family opens the door, the creature dashes inside and stands facing a wall, unable or unwilling to speak or listen. The well-appointed owners of the house provide for their guest with proper hospitality, but the creature says nothing. And it simply won’t leave. It eats the family’s food, rips up books, deposits precious items into a pond, and bathes in a soup tureen. Seventeen years later, the mysterious guest is still there, taking what it wants and doing nothing in return.
This seal creature is the ultimate freeloader — relying on others without lifting a finger. The family continues its life and tends the unwanted guest. As with most Gorey stories, it’s told with a bemused resignation but no judgment.
Many other stories speak of freeloaders, though they typically offer a moral lesson. One of the most popular of these is The Little Red Hen, who works hard to grow and harvest wheat and make bread all by herself because the other animals refuse to help her. The moral of the story is that hard work and initiative pay off — she teaches the would-be freeloaders a lesson by keeping her bread to herself. The only problem with the story is that it didn’t happen that way. The little red hen was actually so obsessed with her own efforts that she never noticed the help the other animals gave her. At each step along the way, those “lazy” animals pointed her in the right direction. They may not have obeyed her wishes and done what she wanted, but without their ideas and resources, she would have been too dumb to grow wheat and bake bread by herself. (If you read the True Adventures of the Little Red Hen, serialized here in three posts, you’ll get the real scoop!)
The presumption of freeloading has often been linked with laziness and applied to “the poor.” It is a common tactic of some political pundits and politicians to reframe welfare payments as charity handouts, as if the recipients are too lazy or ignorant to contribute to society. Only those who have no personal acquaintance with poverty can imagine that poor people are freeloaders. It’s easy to paint a group of people with a broad brush if none of them is within your circle of friends; this is how bigotry works.
Ironically, low-paid workers are usually incredibly busy juggling family, health, food, safety, shelter, and holding down multiple jobs or spending free time pounding the pavement looking for work. Even more ironic, those who best fit the description of “freeloader” — in other words, those who feel most entitled to rely on others while contributing little in return — are usually much farther up the food chain.
Let’s dispense with the notions of laziness when it comes to freeloading behavior. Even the unwelcome guest in Edward Gorey’s story did some work — it took the trouble of bathing in the family’s soup tureen, and no doubt worked hard to rip up books, or to comb through family belongings to find the most important things to dump in a pond! But if freeloaders work hard, it’s exclusively for their own gain.
A more straightforward definition of freeloading, then, is simply to take without giving.
Here are some examples of freeloading behavior we have to deal with regularly:
One time we stood in a long line at an ice cream shop which had two windows. A man strolled up and decided there should be two lines, so he walked past everyone and made himself first in line for one of the windows, all the while commenting loudly on how stupid everyone else was. Perhaps there should have been two lines, but were people in line stupid? Were they mindless sheep? Or were they respecting the choices of others, and the notion of seeing to it that everyone, including themselves, was treated fairly?
In America, maverick behavior is often celebrated as clever, much the way the 2016 presidential candidate Trump pronounced tax evaders “smart.” Those who avoid paying taxes are freeloading on others to pay enough so the government can function. In a similar vein, those who oppose all vaccinations are relying on enough other people to be vaccinated that a herd immunity can protect everyone. But they view themselves as independent and as “looking out for #1.” They are proud of this libertarian view, and yet it so often seems that libertarians depend on the infrastructure of the institutions they deride, including government services and financial and personal rights (hard to forget the guy who shouted out “take your government hands off my Medicare!”). I once heard libertarians compared to housecats — they regard themselves as independent but are totally dependent on a system they barely understand (a little like some teenagers!). Again, people relying on others while taking for themselves.
The fabric of society has been constructed and maintained by countless people and institutions. It is built on the basic need of all societies to live together peaceably and get along economically and socially. When I ran a business, I learned from my bank how much our economy is based on trust, even though some freeloaders take advantage of that to commit credit card fraud by ordering something and claiming they didn’t (the bank’s nightmare). This widespread trust is no different from the way we trust daily that drivers will stop at red lights.
Those who pick at and unravel our social fabric usually assume that it is strong enough to withstand the damage they’re causing. They are essentially freeloading on the hard work of all who came before and wove together the threads of tradition and infrastructure into a structure we often take for granted. Such freeloaders are chipping away at the rule of law whenever it benefits them, the rights of selected minorities that annoy or oppose them, and in general, the values of tolerance and trust that allow people to live and work together. They think they can suppress the voices of some and foster divisions among others, partially unravelling the fabric of democracy and society so as to gain for themselves.
They put off until later the problem of repairing the damage they are causing. Either they expect to make everything right when they have control, or figure that later on, once they’ve have what they want, knowledgeable people (i.e. “suckers”) who care enough and know enough will come along to fix the damage. It’s an attitude we know well from companies who have devoured resources while creating environmental disasters to be handled by later generations.
Political pundits, whether in office or on official and social media, are not the only ones willing to damage society for personal gain — to take without giving back. The mainstream of corporations have jumped whole hog into freeloading when they can get away with it, although some companies such as “B Corporations” have committed to valuing workers and communities in their bylaws and decisions. We could point to oil companies padding their bank accounts during a climate crisis, or we could look at small everyday infractions, like the 10% to 50% junk fees that concert ticket sellers tack onto your ticket prices without warning or explanation, just at the moment you’re about to pay for them. (They sometimes claim they need the money for theater improvement, etc., but that is clearly either a blatant alibi for extortion, or a confession that they don’t know how to run a business!)
Some of the freeloaders who most blatantly take without giving are even lionized in the daily media. An obvious example are the “wolves” of Wall Street. There are certainly financial workers who provide valuable services to lubricate the machinery of the economy, but many embrace a culture of making money without regard for their impact on anyone else. Regular media programs celebrate those who are immersed in playing with or running the national casino we call the stock market. Others waste good brain power creating financial “products” that distort reality and make money from money like a Ponzi scheme, or like the derivatives that crashed the economy in 2008. One prominent investment company invented a grain futures scheme totally disconnected from the reality of actual grain harvests. Their little gambling game shook up traditional grain markets and made themselves a lot of money, but also forced grain and bread prices to rise worldwide, hurting people everywhere, for their own profit.
In a society that tends to equate money with success — to such an extent that those who do nothing for anyone but make a lot of money for themselves are considered “successful” — it can be difficult to appreciate the values of other cultures. Take a look at the people of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, who in 1918 were offered steady incomes, factory work, company houses and stores, and overall a more comfortable life. They shocked William Lever, the soap baron, by saying No. He wanted to build an industry for himself there, and thought he could improve the people’s lot from what he viewed as poor housing, irregular employment, and meager earnings. But the people preferred their own homes, their seasonal schedule where they worked very hard sometimes and enjoyed time off and the natural beauty around them — in short, they had agency, control over their own lives. Some might call them poor but happy. They might just say they were busy and happy and lived in a beautiful place. Lever couldn’t understand it, and eventually moved on to other projects.
It is probably time to shift our understanding of exactly who is living off of whom, to rethink our presumptions about what freeloading behavior really is, and about who is engaging in it. Does governmental support — such as reasonable unemployment payments, emergency welfare or food assistance, even a universal income — create freeloaders? Or does it create engagement in society and more opportunity for people to give back? Do we call successful those who focus on money and power for themselves but have never engaged in public or community service? Or are some of them the real freeloaders? Which type do we want in government and public service, those who have given to the community, or those who have only taken for themselves?