My 2 cents:
If you define free as not costing money, work, time, or effort, then that severely limits what can be considered free. As far as "The best things in life are free" is concerned, I've always assumed that free was meant as only cost free. Because anything worth having requires some work or effort. So if you restrict it to mean not having to pay for it, I think you'll be able to write a better paper. Although that depends on the assumption that your position would be that the best things in life are indeed free. Because obviously since you have to put in effort for anything in life, everything is going to cost effort, similarly with work. If you were to argue that the best things in life are not free, then you should definitely include work, time, and effort with money, as that would be very easy to prove.
I would say that the best things in life are free. If you think about our monetary system, it didn't always exist. Before it there was the trading of goods for other goods or services, technically you wouldn't be able to consider the goods as money. What I would consider to be some of the best things in life have existed for as long as we have. Others probably came into being at a later time. Some things to consider as being the best are: beauty, love, peace, music, sex, massages, and harmony (when things just work) to name a few.
You don't need money to enjoy any of these things. It doesn't cost a thing to look up at the sky, or to love, or to listen to music, or to have sex, or to get a massage, or to appreciate the occasional harmony of things. This doesn't stop you from also being able to obtain these things with money. But you don't have to spend money to get them, therefor, they are free. Money is only a short cut in many cases. You may need money to travel somewhere, but once you arrive at your destination, the beauty itself is free.
I guess it also depends on what you consider the best things in life to be. If you think cars, dvds, video games etc. are the best things in life, then for you, the best things in life would not be free. The statement could be rephrased to, "The best things in life are free, unless you're materialistic."
Edit: The validity of "The best things in life are free" depends on your personal values, so I would expect the answers to vary from person to person. Also, I'm sorry, but I am unable to back up any of what I have said with any philosophers. There may be some that agree, as well as those that disagree, but I have not really looked into the matter.
The realness of time (for those interested):
I would define time as the continuum of experience in which events pass from the future through the present to the past. Time serves as a way to order events, and is measured today by the natural resonance frequency of the cesium atom causing the atom to rise up and down through a microwave device with one trip up and down being one second. Time serves to measure the fourth dimensional distance between two events, and has many practical applications.
As events pass from the future, through the present, into the past, they also pass through what I would call reality. Only the present is real. Events in the future are yet to happen, so they do not exist (the future is always uncertain). Similarly, events in the past have already taken place, and all that remains of those events are memories or records of their existence, but those events themselves no longer exist. They already happened. Only those events which are taking place in the present can be said to exist, and therefor be real.
As time is the spacing in between events, it cannot be real. The only events that exist are in the present, and thus have no time in between them. The only way you can measure a time is when relating to the past or future, which I would say are not the present, and therefor not real. So if the thing you are measuring is not real, I would conclude that the measurement itself is not real. It is the separation between things that do not exist. But this does not take away from the usefulness of time at all. We use time in the same way we use imaginary numbers. We know imaginary numbers do not exist, yet that does not stop us from benefiting from their concept in many mathematical applications. Similarly, time does not exist, yet we benefit greatly through its use.
P.S. That was probably more like 3 cents, sorry for the lengthy post if you're short on time.
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