The Law
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- ISBN13: 9789562913638
- Condition: USED – VERY GOOD
- Notes:
Product Description
Frederic Bastiat’s opinion against socialism are as valid today as when first published in 1850. 2 cassettes.
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In fleeting, Bastiat wrote this to combat the rise of socialism and communism. He complains that the re-distribution of wealth requires that money be stolen from persons who have to be agreed to persons who have not. He calls this officially authorized plunder. Ironicly, Bastiat himself advocates officially authorized plunder, just as a replacement for of the government taking it, Bastiat and persons who reflect like him will take it. All of it if agreed a chance. Communism arose because of the officially authorized plunder and abuse of the wealthy elite. Yet because of the greed of the leaders of the communist revolution, it became the very thing it fought. Bastiat is no different. If you follow his logic, he’s merely a mafia boss complaining that another syndicate (the communist/socialist) took over his racket. Does it really matter what your political affiliation is? A greedy communist and a greedy libertarian are both inflicted with the same disease, greed. Take off the party hat, and you have the same individual. Bastiat is what he is fighting. Such irony.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
A collection of philosophical essays rife with circular logic and narrative fallacies.
Let’s start with a simple demonstration. Did men make laws to support or suppress life, liberty, and property? At first glance, since we like persons three glittering generalities, we’d say support. But if we change the generalities and keep the “logic” the same:
“Death, enslavement, and indigence do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that death, enslavement, and indigence existed before that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
Now we’d say suppress. The fact is, this ringing statement can be interpreted to praise or damn law supporting or suppressing any generality.
If you read further into “The Law”, he presumes natural rights from god, a simple fallacy of reification (pretending an thought is a real thing.) But the real source of rights is might. Individuals don’t have rights to protect their lives, liberty and property: they have minuscule powers to attempt to make such rights. Law is an attempt to benefit persons within society by making rights through conventions that lower in-society conflict and utilize combined powers efficiently. Bastiat has the tail wagging the dog: collective rights being justified by individual rights, when in actual society individual rights are produced by collective might.
Bastiat does well by warning of the dangers of fleeting-sighted thinking (linear cause and effect) inevitably leading to unintended consequences (2nd order effects). He then proceeds to unwittingly undermine his opinion through sequential tale-telling, summarizations, and simplifications to lower the dimension of matters. In additional words, he argues against oversimplified linear opinion with oversimplified linear opinion, and ignores their own unintended consequences. Take for example the media’s propensity to clarify movements in the financial markets. The same weak economic data can be used by the media to clarify either a rally or a selloff. If the market rallies on the terrible economic numbers the media will attribute the rally to an increase in the likelihood that the Federal Set aside will cut excise or an increase in the chance of the government passing a stimulus package. If the market sells off, then the media will attribute the selloff to the same weak economic numbers and the lower corporate earnings that will ensue.
It’s hard to swallow philosophy as tautologically flawed as this.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
An erudite and well versed essay on the proper use and form of The Law. A classic study and should be read by anyone studying law or criminal science.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
The critical issue of this book is whether “property is our natural right.” If it is, then most of what Bastiat said are right; otherwise, he is incorrect.
In the primitive society, all goods are traded directly. If a person who is so powerful that he possesses all the properties in the world and enslaved all others, is it his “right” to possess all the properties in the world? Clearly not — because properties on planet are limited and should not be controlled by one person. In the same token, it should not be controlled by the rich people that are in the minority.
The same logic applies to civilized society that uses money to represent wealth. If property is a “natural right,” what is the mechanism to prevent African warlords to take all the wealth as their natural “properties” and starves millions of people to death?
Life and liberty are not zero sum entities, but property is. There is a limit of how much food that the planet can produce, and how much goods the society can afford. Thus even though in all-purpose property rights are protected by modern society, there must be a limit on how much one can possess. And rather than waiting for the wealth distribution to become excessively uneven (and triggers revolution), the rebalance of wealth should be done gradually. Thus the thought of accumulative tax is right.
To persons who do not judge that excessive uneven wealth distribution can trigger revolution, check the world history, in particular, the history of France, Russia, and China. While the rich aver excessive wealth as their “natural rights,” the poor aver excessive force theirs.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
The edition by BN Publishing is cheaper and half the fee. I bought both, because I wanted to give out free copies. Buy the one by BN Publishing – it is just as excellent.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5