Additionally, part two of my theory states: People will enjoy paying for free items even more if those items are priced higher than comparable non-free items. That might be a lot to swallow if you haven't had your morning caffeine yet, so let’s look at an example.

Water. A bottle of Dansai, made by Coca Cola Enterprises, uses the very same water used in their other well-known beverage, Coke. Why not? Economies of scale mean that it's cheaper to use the same high quality water for all their products than to build separate facilities just to produce "worse" water.

So basically, a bottle of Dansai and a bottle of Coke are the exact same product minus the ingredients added to Coke to make it a Coke. Of course, adding those ingredients costs money and so you'd expect the Coke to be more expensive, but you'd be wrong.

You pay the same amount or more for the product that was cheaper and easier to produce. For a mind trip, think of what a litre of bottled water costs at a gas station, then think of what a litre of gas costs. Yup, the stuff that comes free out of the taps costs you more than the stuff they have to drill, refine and ship from Saudi Arabia. Free costs more.

Now let’s get to tech. Do you watch Citytv? I'll bet you pay a cable company to receive it rather than getting it free off the air. We in Toronto have among the largest number of channels in the world beamed to our homes free of charge courtesy of the CN Tower (the world's tallest building according to the Guinness Book of Records) and we choose to pay for cable.

Here we are on the border of the US with a whole wealth of other channels we can also get free off the air, and yet we choose to pay for cable. In the time it takes for the cable guy to come by and install the hose that permanently siphons money from your pocket and charges you for this privilege with an installation fee, you could have called the antenna guy and only get ripped off for the installation. After that it's all free.

We take this for granted but in England, they charge a monthly fee for every TV hooked up to an antenna and send vans around catching people that don't pay up. And what do we do with such an amazing and free resource?

We say, "Oh no thank you, this money that could have gone to charity? We'd rather pay it to a large corporation. Thanks for asking."

And when we are told we have free upgrades - we lucky and unappreciative Torontonians now have one of the largest selections of digital HDTV channels available free off the air - we choose to pay for digital cable and satellite.

I, for one, am eagerly awaiting my "HDTV Wonder" video card (made locally by ATI) to install on my PC and start watching free HDTV. Hooking the PC up to an ordinary projector will give you full HDTV resolution by means of this card (US$136 on ebay).

But wait, there's more. Some people like the superior sound of digital satellite radio. But you can get free DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) off the air with an antenna right now. Little screens on the radios even tell you what song you're listening to - just like with an MP3 Player, all with no monthly fees.

But do you know anyone that takes advantage of it? Didn't think so.