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Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving

Frederic Bastiat

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Frederic Bastiat
Age: 49 †
Born: 1801
Born: June 30
Died: 1850
Died: December 24
Economist
Essayist
Magistrate
Philosopher
Politician
Baiona
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
Four
Five
Giving
Returning
Taking

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The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.
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It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
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Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men to remain just in vain would it try to force them to be self-sacrificing.
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When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
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Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
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Nothing is more senseless than to base so many expectations on the state, that is, to assume the existence of collective wisdom and foresight after taking for granted the existence of individual imbecility and improvidence.
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The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.
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When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
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If goods don't cross borders, armies will.
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It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
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It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.
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Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
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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 pretense of organizing it.
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Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.
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The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
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What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
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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.
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Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.
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