But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other perso… - Frédéric Bastiat

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Engraved portrait of Frédéric Bastiat, facing left

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

English
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About Frédéric Bastiat

Frédéric Bastiat (30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was an early free-market economist and classical liberal French author.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, Émile Desmaisons. Lithograph by Auguste-Hilaire Léveillé. (Public domain / CC0)

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Claude Frédéric Bastiat Frederic Bastiat

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Additional quotes by Frédéric Bastiat

His mind turns to organizations, combinations, and arrangements — legal or apparently legal. He attempts to remedy the evil by increasing and perpetuating the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.

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.

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In the first place, it would efface from everybody’s
conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a cer-
tain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is
to make them respectable. When law and morality are in
contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in
the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of
losing his respect for the law — two evils of equal magni-
tude, between which it would be difficult to choose.

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