Date Written: 10/5/2022
Assignment: 500 words on this topic, “Describe Bastiat’s concept of the politics of plunder.”
Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist who is famous for coming up with the idea of the politics of plunder. He said that plunder comes from the universal desire to live at another’s expense. He defined plunder as the involuntary transfer of wealth or theft. People are afraid to commit plunder privately because the victim will probably fight back. Therefore, civil government was created so that oppressive people could get them to plunder on their behalf.
I am going to provide an example. Let’s say someone is walking down the street and a thug comes up and takes their money. This thug then takes the money and gives it to someone else. We can all agree that even though the thug didn’t keep the money this theft is still wrong. Now Let’s think of this in terms of the civil government. Someone is just relaxing at their home when they receive a letter from an elected politician. The letter states that a portion of their money has been taken in the form of taxes. The politician then then goes and gives this money to the people that elected him. For some reason most people think this is fine. Since the politician is a politician does this somehow make it right for him to steal? If you think about it there really is no difference between the two scenarios. Today we have the situation where everyone plunders everyone. Replace the individuals in the example above with groups of people and you will get the idea. Bastiat provided a definition of government on page 5 of his essay “Government.” He stated “Government is that great fiction, through which everybody
endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” This quote sums up how the government works today.
The Politics of Plunder Today
The politics of plunder have gone on for a long time. This has caused people to see the state as a beneficent being that provides food for the hungry, jobs for the unemployed, capital for anyone who wants to start a project, and credit to all who want it. However the state can not provide these things for free. It is not capable of creating wealth. It can only steal wealth and redistribute it like in the example above.
Bastiat asks once plunder begins, where will it cease? It will not cease unless the civil government is limited to only being able to apply negative sanctions. What I mean is that the government should only be able to punish people that harm others. If government keeps the ability to give positive sanctions, then they will continue to steal from people to finance these actions. The belief that the state can provide for people by magically obtaining resources is unjust. People do not understand that the resources are stolen from other people. Today we are experiencing the politics of plunder. The best way to see it is to critically watch what goes on in our world.
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