I feel that's only really true in the way it is of a JS bitcoin miner. Locally appears to make something free (if ignoring time/energy) that wasn't before, but is overall a detriment to average affordability because it's a net loss of resources (mostly just a zero-sum game, with some small side benefits).

I don't disagree with that at all, and by 'free' I suppose I didn't even mean 'as in free beer', I just meant there was no financial transaction taking place.

Maybe at some point we're really gonna see an upfront-micropayment structure as some people have mused about.