Stephen Hawking

Why Bastiat Is As Relevant As Ever on His 216th Birthday

Here’s Bastiat’s famous quote on legal plunder (now frequently referred to as “crony capitalism”  "political corruption"):

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.

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.