Time
and circumstance permit me a very little of the former to share something
with you in the middle of the week. However, you're in luck. Over the years and with the help
of some pretty damn smart people that I've been lucky enough to know, I
have slowly been gaining a bit of knowledge. Such knowledge, when acquired
at all, is usually done by reading the words of much smarter people than me (a list almost as long as that of the National Register). The best of that knowledge was acquired
by reading original source material.
Thanks to their advice, I
am able to say that I am becoming a good deal closer to the thinking of such giants as Thomas
Sowell, Walter E Williams, Henry Hazlitt, and Milton Friedman (among others) whose
books I have read. Many of these scholars and pundits have in turn
referenced a writer from the 19th Century, Frederic
Bastiat, in tying their efforts to those of the past. More specifically they reference an essay of his first
published in 1850, “The Law”.
With these limitations in mind, I am would like to share some brief part of that which I am currently reading. I hope that
you appreciate it in the same way that I have, and promise to
come up with something more original for the weekend.
“Since
everybody traffics in law for his own profit, we should like to do
the same. We should like to make it produce the right to assistance,
which is the poor man's plunder. To effect this, we ought to be
electors and legislators, that we may organize, on a large scale,
alms for our own class, as you have organized, on a large scale,
protection for yours.”
“Yes,
as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true
mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it,
everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend
himself against plunder, or to organize it for his own profit.”
“This
plunder may be only an exceptional blemish in the legislation of a
people, and in this case, the best thing that can be done is, without
so many speeches and lamentations, to do away with it as soon as
possible, notwithstanding the clamors of interested parties. But how
is it to be distinguished? Very easily. See whether the law takes
from some persons that which belongs to them, to give to others what
does not belong to them. See whether the law performs for the profit
of one citizen, and, to the injury of others, an act that this
citizen cannot perform without committing a crime.”
“And
this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich
all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder
under the pretense of organizing it. Now, legal plunder may be
exercised in an infinite multitude of plans for organization;
tariffs, protection, perquisites, gratuities, encouragements,
progressive taxation, free public education, right to work, right to
profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to instruments of
labor, gratuity of credit, etc., etc. And it is all these plans,
taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal plunder, that
takes the name of socialism.”
1 comment:
Speaking of "The Law" got me awondering.
Question: How did we ever start using the phrase in-law when speaking of mishpucha by marriage, such as mother-in-law, sister-in-law, etc.???
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