Re: TECH: TANSTAAFL

[Iain Alexander <I.Alexander.bra0125@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK>]

la lojbab. cusku di'e
> I owuld say "free" is "no jdini", which does not mention money units.
> If the normal place value is a money unit, though, using "li" is working at
> a different abstraction level, and seems inconsistent semantically.

> The price is not the quantity "0" because we don't mat for goods with
> quantities, but rather with quantities OF something.

Hang on - I've just realised what you suggested.

My point was that

    noda jdima ko'a

doesn't mean the price is zero, it means there is no such price.

    no jdini cu jdima ko'a

merely restricts that to a monetary price - there is no amount of money
which is the price (although there might be some other kind of price).
Similarly

    re jdini cu jdima ko'a

or

    reda jdima ko'a

would mean there are two (presumably different) prices.

What we need is one of the "measure" gismu, which have a place for
a _number_.  Perhaps the simplest is {klani}.

    noda se jdima be lo se klani be li no je mijdorsai

(using the

klani         lai  quantity
x1 (quantifier) is a quantity/amount of x2 (measured
property/object count) on scale x3 (si'o)   3b  31    (count)

definition of {klani} - not sure if it's changed now).

co'o mi'e .i,n.