The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. Frdric Bastiat (The Law) Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Finally…we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? … But is it possible? … Whence does draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary? that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth. 319Ĭontext: " that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody. Source: Justice and Fraternity (1848), p. Frederic Bastiat, 18011850, French economist, statesman and author When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference: the one takes account only of the visible effect the other takes account of both the effects which are seen and those which it is necessary to foresee. The others unfold in succession - they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Of these effects, the first only is immediate it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause - it is seen. #FREDERIC BASTIAT QUOTES SERIES#That which is seen and that which is not seen (Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas, 1850), the Introduction.Ĭontext: In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects.
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