Bastiat states this has created a form of legal plunder, a group gets to take from another but it is baked into the law now. Believing man’s natural greed and selfishness as the driving force of this. As those same individual men make up the group with the right to enact and force laws to then partake in legal plunder.

When I read the following stated above, I cannot help but to think about two different scenarios. One where if this never took place and one where the position we are reading about. First and foremost, I personally just cannot see a thriving society without legal plunder. Now that is not to say that I agree completely, I just happen to believe it was necessary then and still possibly til this day. Why is that? Well in retrospect the world has always split society into three categories, those being upper class, middle class, bottom class. If these courses of actions don’t take place, the world we know today does not go round and round. I believe there is reasoning behind everything, and the reasoning behind this particular problem is without the wealthy acting upon these legal plunders, there is no money flow. Now I could be so wrong and I am okay with being so, however the shark is not going to starve. I cannot say that I agree with Frederic Bastiat and the writer. Nonetheless, I do see and understand their reasoning and viewing of the act of legal plunder. I feel that it is something to be looked at more in-depth and not taken too sharply at the first glance.

He mentions what the common man of the time would say is the government job to establish a general understanding of what will be critiqued and exposing their contradictory nature. Further describing the government as two hands; one soft, one hard. The idea being one that gives and one that takes as one takes/imposes labor from one to the other. Bastiat (2011) then mentions this creates a dilemma, if a government can but does not grant the requests made to it, it is accused of weakness, ill-will and incapacity (p. 102) while the reverse obligates it to tax. This causes a downward spiral into hopes and promises being placed to/from the government and never being fulfilled. Eventually leading to another revolution.

This portion I do enjoy the way the writing is going about, if you think about it the question of why do we have to follow these laws that are enforced on us? An open mind in my opinion is great here for all types of multiple scenarios across the board. Same goes for the said promises and accusations that a government can make, only for its people to not fully believe in it. Why is that? Could it be because the government actually takes more than it gives? It does seem like that more often than not unfortunately. However, as society lives on, then and now, I feel we fail to remember that in the same way the government controls their land or area, we can control our lives. Of course there are a lot of different factors that tie into this case, but what is the government without the people? Nothing. I love how Frederic Bastiat throws these opinions out there and it is so modest about them, because it is not something you really see all the time. I admire it and personally wish it was done more today. I mean when the writer described how these problems that Frederic Bastiat had with the government, are almost identical to the ones we are having nowadays. Maybe we need another Frederic Bastiat in our time.

Throughout the evaluation of the essay, I love how invested the reader is within the readings and how she goes in-depth on some of the topics. I can’t say that I saw eye to eye on everything but it definitely gave me more of a wide vision of certain things that I did not have before. The essay was beautifully written and I don’t think it could have been done any better.