Trego's Mountain Ear

Bastiat was a French Economist – Joseph Schumpeter (who I only discovered when a student based her dissertation on his work) considered him the greatest economist who ever lived.  Here are a few more of his thoughts:

“The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.”

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”

“Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim – when he defends himself – as a criminal.”

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all . . . . It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

“The real cost of the State is the prosperity we do not see, the jobs that don’t exist, the technologies to which we do not have access, the businesses that do not come into existence, and the bright future that is stolen from us. The State has looted us just as surely as a robber who enters our home at night and steals all that we love.”

“The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.”

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.”

“It’s always tempting to do good at someone else’s expense.”

“The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.”

“If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.”

If you want more of Bastiat’s thoughts, clicking this link may get you there: Bastiat’s Legacy in Economics | Mises Institute