Bastiat

This past week for Koch Scholars I had the pleasure of reading Claude Frédéric Bastiat’s Essays on Political Economy. Bastiat lived from 1801 to 1850 and was a member of the French assembly. Bastiat developed intellectual interests in several areas including philosophy, history, politics, religion, and political economy. His public career in economics didn’t begin until 1844 and was cut short six years later by tuberculosis. In all honesty, I wasn’t particularly eager to read the thoughts of a nineteenth century French economist, but I thoroughly enjoyed his essays. His sarcasm and wit is hilarious! Here are a few treasures, both witty and profound: ☺

“Political economy, justice, good sense, are all the same thing.”

“Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference – the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee… Hence it follows that the bad economists pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economists pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.”

“Hatred is fostered among parties who never mix.”

“Your arguments are fashionable enough, but they are too absurd to be justified by anything like reason.”

“Were mankind reduced to the necessity of choosing between two parties, one of whom injures his interest, and the other his conscious, we should have nothing to hope from the future. Happily, this is not the case…”

“To be ignorant of political economy is to allow ourselves to be dazzled by the immediate effect of a phenomenon.”

“I wish some one would offer a prize – not of a hundred francs, but of a million, with crown, medals and ribbons – for a good, simple, and intelligible definition of the word ‘government’… The government…is the most solicited, the most tormented, the most overwhelmed, the most admired, the most accused, the most invoked, and the most provoked, of any personage in the world.”

“I have lost my character for ever! I am looked upon as a man without heart and without feeling – a dry philosopher, an individualist, a plebeian – in a word, an economist…”

“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

“Thus, the public has two hopes, and government makes two promises – many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises – which, being contradictory, can never be realised.”

“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.”

“It is not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic.”

“…legislation will be – what it now is – the battle-field for everybody’s dreams and everybody’s covetousness.”