|
Plunder Violates Ownership
I do not, as is often done,
use the word in any vague, uncertain, approximate, or metaphorical
sense. I use it in its scientific acceptance—as expressing the idea
opposite to that of property [wages, land, money, or whatever]. When a
portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it—without
his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud—
to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated;
that an act of plunder is committed.
I say that this act is
exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and
everywhere. When the law itself
commits this act that it is supposed to suppress, I
say that plunder is still committed,
and I add that from the point of
view of society and welfare, this aggression against rights is even
worse.
|
|
How to Identify Legal Plunder
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.
- Frederic Bastiat
|
Obviously, any law that
commits legal plunder is a law that nullifies its raison
d'être. Thus, Mr. Bastiat gives us one more facet to
use in the Litmus Test of Law.
"See if the
law
benefits one citizen at the expense of
another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing
a crime."
|