If this is a free country, why do things cost money?

Under capitalism people are free, but services aren’t. Under communism, this is reversed.

This above statement is crude, but there's some truth to it. Of course, not all services in the US are privatized. The usage of roads, reception of basic television or radio, public education, etc. are without direct cost, And, whether people are completely free in the US is another, long discussion, since the high cost of living, specific travel bans, and a long list of laws restrict freedom to some extent. However, in the US there is a MUCH greater atmosphere of freedom than in any of the communist countries, past and present. Anyone who has ever been to both spheres knows this deeply. In the US, freedom is an ideological concept, kept alive by the faiths and actions of many sectors of society.

Services under communism arent't really free, but paid for by collective labor, and there isn't much choice in one's contribution to this labor. On top of that there are direct, though subsidized, costs for services and necessities such as rent, food, transportation. The people pay rent, pay for goods, but very little. Meanwhile, in China, which has converted to the weirdest and worst hybrid of capitalism and communism, there are many types of services, such as education, that require private payment.

These aren't the only two choices, as far as systems are concerned. Fortunately, the cynical Europeans have adopted social democracy, also termed market socialism. This system has refereed, fairly well, a conflict between hyper-capitalism and its consequences. In this system, services are nearly free, and people are so as well. There is also the space for complaint, which means that this system, which functions better than all others ever invented, is openly very insecure about itself.