History Main / PayingForAir

* In the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode, "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonXFathersAndSuns Fathers and Suns]]", Lister quits his position at the Jupiter Mining Corporation. The ship's new computer, Pree, decides that he has now forfeited his "oxygen allowance" and removes all the air from his quarters to force him out of the ship.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'': In "Fathers and Sons", Lister quits his position at the Jupiter Mining Corporation. The ship's new computer, Pree, decides that he has now forfeited his "oxygen allowance" and removes all the air from his quarters to force him out of the ship.

However, in fiction, especially science fiction, someone may force you to pay for air, particularly if you live on the Moon or elsewhere off Earth, or are traveling to such a place through space. This can be done to show a really CorruptCorporateExecutive or that CapitalismIsBad. This can also happen if Earth (or its ecology) is ravaged in the future and there's no way to get oxygen from trees, resulting in it becoming scarce. This can apply to WaterIsAir settings as well. Air may come in bottles, be paid for through a mandatory tax, or cost money in some other way. Can't pay and you're screwed, likely resulting in suffocation within minutes, or at least accruing insurmountable debt.

* ''Film/TotalRecall1990'': This is how the BigBad Cohaagen stays in charge of the planet Mars. He owns all the oxygen in the colonies, which basically gives him absolute power (it's implied Earth won't stop him because he also controls a valuable mineral). His plot is to destroy a Martian machine that can generate air for the whole planet.

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* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' Episode "Oxygen", the unnamed corporation that controls the space station Chasm Forge has passed rules limiting the oxygen on board to employees personal spacesuits. When the TARDIS transports an excess of oxygen to the station, Chasm Forge's A.I. complains that the spare oxygen wasn't authorised by corporate and vents it into space to "keep prices competitive".
* ''Series/RedDwarf'': In "Fathers and Sons", Lister quits his position at the Jupiter Mining Corporation. The ship's new computer, Pree, decides that he has now forfeited his "oxygen allowance" and removes all the air from his quarters to force him out of the ship.

* ''Film/TotalRecall'': This is how the BigBad Cohaagen stays in charge of the planet Mars. He owns all the oxygen in the colonies, which basically gives him absolute power (it's implied Earth won't stop him because he also controls a valuable mineral). His plot is to destroy a Martian machine that can generate air for the whole planet.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLorax'': In the city of Thneedville, inhabitants have to buy air in bottles due to the lack of trees, until they come back and Aloysius O'Hare is overthrown near the end.

* ''Compressed'' air and oxygen - used heavily for medical and research purposes, underwater work and recreation, high altitude activities, or deep mining operations - certainly isn't free, due to the expense of bottling, storing and shipping it. * The rapid consumption of bottled oxygen for ventilators due to the Coronavirus outbreak has raised concerns about a bottled-oxygen shortage and possible price increases [[note]] While price increases on in-demand goods lead to expressions of concern from commentators and politicians, who have passed anti-price gouging laws in many jurisdictions, Libertarians argue that the price increases help to allocate resources to those who value them the most and the higher prices boost suppliers' motivation to provide more to the market.
Price ceilings will encourage shortages, as suppliers don't get the profit they are seeking. [[/note]]

** The moon in 23rd century bills for air as it would for heat and electricity. One minor villain was killed because he could not pay his bill, and the air was simply turned off. Luna-1 residents even have a saying with regards to this: "A smart man can beat the law, but only a fool bucks the Oxygen Board."
** In another story, Mega-City-One issued a one-time "clean air tax" to cover the losses of altering some city-block numbers (and the stupidity that ensued).
** [[TheCaligula Judge Cal]] issues a fresh air tax during his reign as Chief Judge among his various other insane laws.

** One comic had Scrooge go to two neighboring worlds (each an opposite PlanetOfHats) with one devoted to wasteful ConspicuousConsumption (like taking a shopping trip, filling up the cart, and leaving the full cart behind), and the other where everyone was obsessed with saving and making money to the extent of having to pay for breathing. Naturally, Scrooge is happy on the second planet only up until he finds out he has to pay for just about everything he does.

* Implied in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'': the villainous President Skroob of Planet Spaceball has "squandered their precious atmosphere," making it difficult to breathe unassisted on the surface of planet Spaceball. Though he vigorous denies that there's an air shortage, President Skroob keeps a drawer of Perri-Air canned, sparkling, salt-free air in his desk for relief.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' Episode "Oxygen", the unnamed corporation that controls the space station Chasm Forge has passed rules limiting the oxygen on board to employee's personal spacesuits. When the TARDIS transports an excess of oxygen to the station, Chasm Forge's A.I. complains that the spare oxygen wasn't authorised by corporate and vents it into space to "keep prices competitive".

* In ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'', Loonies have to pay for the oxygen they breathe, since, on the Moon, it is produced by devoted entities. New incomers will be loaned money for paying for air but nothing else.

* In the ''Literature/GeronimoStilton'' book ''A Fabumouse Vacation for Geronimo'', Geronimo ends up in a very badly managed hotel that has absurdly high prices for everything. One of the extra stuff you have to pay for is the air you breathe while staying inside (30 euros per day, plus 10 more if you want the oxygen too).

* Variation: A duo of ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' strips depicts a contractor named Carl at the company, being told that their air is for their actual employees only and rather than use it, he needs to supply his own. Next thing, he has a mobile air tank hooked up to his mouth and can't say anything while Wally complains, "He's using our light!" The next strip continues this state of affairs, where (while he tries to argue from behind the air mask) the PointyHairedBoss says that he's still using their ''gravity'' and wonders if he could hover.

* In Creator/BenElton's ''Gasping'', a CEO tells his marketing people to come up with a product that effectively creates a new market. They hit on the idea of "designer air". Air from nice places, like high in the Alps, or from the heart of previously untouched rainforest, is bottled and shipped to consumers in Europe who plug them into machines that were originally medical devices to help asthmatics breathe. Pretty soon, supply and demand means that the [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal previously pristine places]] where the designer air is coming from, are now polluted hell holes where people suffocate without the aid of personal space suits or massive industrial air pumps.

* In Rapture of ''VideoGame/BioShock1'', run under Objectivism under its owner Andrew Ryan, even air has to be paid for. Ryan taunts the player by telling how he's a thief for not paying for the air he breathes while, beforehand, Julie Langford planned to invest into the air business, as Fontaine did.

* ''VideoGame/StarControl:'' The Druuge species run themselves as a gigantic {{Megacorp}} called the Crimson Corporation, with everything the Druuge own being company property... including the oxygen on their planets. As a result, getting fired from it inevitably ends in execution as the unfortunate in question ends up "stealing company property" by merely breathing. At least the retirement packages include (reduced) oxygen intakes.
* One of the new food items in ''VideoGame/NeoTheWorldEndsWithYou'' is a tin can full of high-quality air. It's one of the best ways to increase your Style stat but somehow it still contains calories like normal food.

* ''WebVideo/{{Jreg}}'': "Centricide 4.5: Ancapistan" has the Capitalists mention that in the episode's titular city, they pay 12 bucks each breath of air, but everyone's a billionaire (except for the cripplingly poor).

* An segment of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' (Fit For a King) has Garfield reading a fairy tale called ''The Royal Appetite'' where an obese king played by Jon is beloved by his subjects because another king gifts the king with his weight in gold (literally, King Jon is on one end of a scale while the gold is piled on the other end) so King Jon doesn't need to tax his subjects. One of his servants, the Duke of Blurp wants the throne and plans on taxing the citizens for everything including breathing air.

* In a downplayed example, some high-end hotels in high-altitude Peruvian cities like Cusco offer the option to have oxygen pumped into one's hotel room to ease the effects of altitude sickness. These enriched-oxygen rooms typically run an extra $50 a night. [[https://www.belmond.com/hotels/south-america/peru/cusco/belmond-hotel-monasterio/ Hotel Monasterio]] is one such example that advertises the service on their website.
* ''Compressed'' air and oxygen - used heavily for medical and research purposes, underwater work and recreation, high altitude activities, or deep mining operations - certainly isn't free, due to the expense of bottling, storing and shipping it. * The rapid consumption of bottled oxygen for ventilators due to the Coronavirus outbreak has raised concerns about a bottled-oxygen shortage and possible price increases [[note]] While price increases on in-demand goods leads to expressions of concern from commentators and politicians, who have passed anti-price gouging laws in many jurisdictions, Libertarians argue that the price increases help to allocate resources to those who value them the most and the higher prices boosts suppliers' motivation to provide more to the market.

In RealLife, you have to pay for many things that enable you to survive (assuming you're a normal human being), which include piped-in water, food, shelter, and more (again, this may depend on the person and country). That said, there's one thing nobody asks you to pay for: air. Because you breathe it automatically and there's no easy way to count how many breaths you've taken over a particular day. Plus trees take carbon dioxide out of your breaths and exchange it back for oxygen, creating the likely only renewable resource that uses humans.

However, in fiction, especially science fiction, someone may force you to pay for air, particularly if you live on the Moon or elsewhere off planet. This can be done to show a really CorruptCorporateExecutive or that CapitalismIsBad. This can also happen if the world (or its ecology) is ravaged in the future and there's no way to get oxygen from trees, resulting in it becoming a finite/fully dependent on manufactured air. An occasional cause may be space travel as well, if oxygen has to be generated. This can apply to WaterIsAir settings as well. It may come in bottles, as a tax, or in some other form. Can't pay and you're screwed, likely resulting in suffocation within minutes, or at least accruing insurmountable debt.

In more technical terms, this is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodification commodification]] of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics) public goods]] taken to the extreme.[[note]] Public goods are facilities, buildings, programs or services that most governments provide to all citizens without charge. Examples include lighthouses in coastal areas, national defense to keep you safe from invasion, and clean air provided by government anti-pollution laws. To count as a "public good", strictly speaking, a good has to be non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Non-rivalrous means that person A's use of the good/service
doesn't reduce person B's access. Non-excludable means no one can feasibily be excluded from using the good. For this reason, national highways are not a pure example of a public good, since if too many people use it, it takes away the space for others; as well, you can exclude non-payers if you wanted by making it a toll road. [[/note]]

In RealLife, you have to pay for many things that enable you to survive (assuming you're a normal human being), which include piped-in water, food, shelter, and more (again, this may depend on the person and country). That said, there's one thing no-one asks you to pay for: air. Because you breathe it automatically and there's no easy way to count how many breaths you've taken over a particular day. Plus trees take carbon dioxide out of your breaths and exchange it back for oxygen, creating the likely only renewable resource that uses humans.

[[caption-width-right:350:Breathing on the bill first and foremost [[note]]even though WaterIsAir here[[/note]].]]

In RealLife, you have to pay for many things that let you survive (assuming you're a normal human being), which include water, food, shelter, and more (again, may depend on the person). That said, there's one thing no-one asks you to pay for: air. Because you breathe it automatically and there's no easy way to count how many breaths you've taken over a particular day. Plus trees take carbon dioxide out of your breaths and exchange it back for oxygen, creating the likely only renewable resource that uses humans.

However, in science fiction, someone may force you to pay for air, particularly if you live on the Moon or elsewhere off planet. This can be done to show a really CorruptCorporateExecutive or that CapitalismIsBad. This can also happen if the world (or its ecology) is ravaged in the future and there's no way to get oxygen from trees, resulting in it becoming a finite/fully dependent on manufactured air. An occasional cause may be space travel as well, if oxygen has to be generated. This can apply to WaterIsAir settings as well. It may come in bottles, as a tax, or in some other form. Can't pay and you're screwed, likely resulting in suffocation within minutes, or at least accruing insurmountable debt.

In more technical terms, this is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodification commodification]] of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics) public goods]] taken to the extreme.

* ''Compressed'' air and oxygen - used heavily for medical and research purposes, underwater work and recreation, high altitude activities, or deep mining operations - certainly isn't free, due to the expense of bottling, storing and shipping it. The rapid consumption of oxygen for ventilators due to the coronavirus outbreak has raised concerns about a bottled-oxygen shortage and possible price gouging.
* Technically, anytime you buy manufactured goods you're doing this. Factories incorporate technologies to reduce their pollution output, such as scrubbers on the exhaust towers. All that equipment has to be paid for ''somehow'', which means the cost is factored into the price of the products. Unless of course your stuff is made somewhere that's less environmentally conscious, like China.

However, in fiction, someone may force you to pay for air. This can be done to show a really CorruptCorporateExecutive or that CapitalismIsBad. This can also happen if the world (or its ecology) is ravaged in the future and there's no way to get oxygen from trees, resulting in it becoming a finite/fully dependent on humans resource. An occasional cause may be space travel as well, if oxygen has to be generated. This can apply to WaterIsAir settings as well. It may come in bottles, as a tax, or in some other form. Can't pay and you're screwed, likely resulting in suffocation within minutes, or at least accruing insurmountable debt.

->''Was Earthside once and heard expression 'Free as air.' This air isn't free, you pay for every breath.''

* In the ''Literature/GeronimoStilton'' book ''A Fabumouse Vacation for Geronimo'', Geronimo ends up in a very badly managed hotel that has absurdly high prices for everything. One of the extra stuff you have to pay for is the air you breathe while staying inside (30 euros per day, plus 10 more [[UpToEleven if you want the oxygen too]]).

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' Episode "Oxygen", the unnamed corporation that controls the space station Chasm Forge has passed rules limiting the oxygen on-board to employee's personal spacesuits. When the TARDIS transports an excess of oxygen to the station, Chasm Forge's A.I. complains that the spare oxygen wasn't authorised by corporate and vents it into space to "keep prices competitive".

* In the ''Literature/GeronimoStilton'' book ''A Fabumouse Vacation for Geronimo'', Geronimo ends up in a very badly managed hotel that haves absurdly high prices for everything. One of the extra stuff you have to pay for is the air you breathe while staying inside (30 euros per day, plus 10 more [[UpToEleven if you want the oxygen too]]).

* TruthInTelevision in polluted China, as [[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/world/asia/china-air-restaurant-clean-charge.html a restaurant gives an additional 15 cent fee for fresh air]] and [[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2050086/chinas-smog-hit-residents-willing-pay-over-us30-bottled-fresh-air Chinese people are willing to pay up to 30$ for bottled fresh air]].

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