I found it difficult to find common ground with Bastiat in his essay, ‘The Law.’ His radical ideas about small government and avoidance of plunder seem hypocritical, self-centered, and utopian. Where I do agree with him is that the government by nature acts solely through force and people are not inert. Because of these foundational similarities, I can see the merits to his arguments against what he defines as socialism. I do not agree with the idea of legislators imposing their will upon the people because they see themselves as superior. However, this is where my agreement with Bastiat seems to end. While I agree the alternative extreme is a bad solution, that, to me, does not make Bastiat’s extreme any less of a bad solution. The three beliefs I hold which directly contradict Bastiat's 'The Law' are: individuals are incentivized to act for their own benefit even at the detriment of others, the rights of humans include personality, liberty, property, and the mobility to ensure these rights for themselves, and some amount of legal plunder is inherently necessary to protect individuals from illegal plunder.
Individuals are Incentivized to Act for their Own Benefit, Even to the Detriment of Others
Individuals are not incentivized to act for the collective good. Parts of what Bastiat says in his essay make me believe that he agrees with this, but his argument rests on the idea that individuals on their own without the intervention of government will create a collective good because they are not inert. I think humans will, on their own, work to create a personal good, but I believe that this often comes at the expense of the personal good of others. If you ask any one human if they would like to be above the law, they likely would. If you instead ask them if everyone should be above the law (in other words if there should be no law) they would likely say no. If they can get away with it, humans are incentivized to take action that helps them while hurting others. This could be a corporate executive choosing to pay tiny wages to his staff so he can keep more money for himself, a teenager stealing a candy bar from a gas station, or a child lying to their parent about whether they were asleep by their bedtime. Not every action someone can take to hurt another and benefit themselves should be outlawed, but there should be some protection of people. While Bastiat believes this extends only to protecting his limited definition of liberty, I believe it extends a bit further by providing people with the means to protect their own liberty through social, financial, and physical mobility created by a society and maintained by the society’s government.
The Rights of Humans Include Personality, Liberty, Property, and Mobility
Bastiat asserts that the rights to which humans are entitled are personality, liberty, and property, as these are the rights which exist without government. I agree that these three rights exist, but I also believe people have a right to mobility through which a person can keep these three rights secure from others and from the government itself is required. Government at its core is a contract enacted by the people and body moved by the people. Government checks society and society checks government. There needs to be a system in place through which large numbers of people can move and shape the government without the need for a violent revolution. This system, I believe, comes from mobility. Similarly, if there is too much of a power vacuum caused by a weak government, people (usually in the form of leaders of corporations with lots of money) will fill that vacuum and begin to assert their own will. This power would naturally be unchecked, and a more powerful government is the lesser of these two evils as long as there are systems in place that allow for society to check the power of the government and ensure that it is moving in a way that benefits the people. Additionally, I disagree with Bastiat on the breadth of personality, liberty, and property. The clearest example of this is in the form of property. While Bastiat argues that the right to property is the ability to maintain the property you own, I ask what I feel is a natural question: how much property does each person have a right to? A short list of some rights I believe fall under personality, liberty, and property with which Bastiat would likely disagree is the right to be able to feed yourself, the right to shelter, the right to health care, and the right to education, as in my opinion an educated population is the only way to ensure liberty. Another argument which Bastiat makes about the nature of these rights is that these rights existed prior to government, and if government took on what he believes to be its sole role of protecting people from plunder, these rights would naturally return to humans. The missing link in this argument, to me, is that historic governments have legally deprived people of personality, liberty, and property that they otherwise would have been able to accumulate and maintain. I believe the government may need to play a role in correcting their past misdeeds in this regard.
Some Legal Plunder is Necessary to Protect Individuals from Illegal Plunder
Where I believe Bastiat’s argument completely falls apart is at his stance that there should be absolutely no plunder. In the same way that individuals give up some liberty to the government to have their liberty protected on whole, individuals must allow themselves to be plundered by the government to ensure that they are not plundered by other individuals. In more concrete terms, without taxation, there can be no police force, judicial system, legislators, or other necessary members of a government, even a minimal one. These people are paid by taxes, and therefore plunder by the government is necessary for even this small government. Therefore, while Bastiat argues that there should be no plunder, the true question is at what point does plunder by the government cross a line and become not worth the benefit? The answer to this is different to every individual, and that is why a government must step in to represent the collective thoughts of a large populus. The government in its ideal form, guided and checked by the people, would represent the average wishes of its non-inert, educated population to act in the best interest of the society. As Bastiat spends much of his essay condemning the superiority complexes of various individuals who believe they know better than the people, I’m sure he would agree that the purpose and extent of the government should not be determined by him alone, but by the society as a whole, and that in order to maintain that purpose the people should be given a degree of power over the government.
Bastiat, F., & Russell, D. (1996). The law. 2nd ed. Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., Foundation for Economic Education.