Jacob Smith
“Everyone is more or less for favor of profiting by the labor of others”. (pg 99)
I really agree with this statement that Bastiat makes in his writing, as I have always felt that people are inherently selfish. No single person wants to do work for someone else without some sort of compensation, and when given the chance or opportunity, I believe they would choose to take more than what’s deemed “equal payment” for what they have done. The same goes for someone who can get away with compensating less than what is deemed “equal payment” for a job. Sure it’s easy to preach that an equal trade in value between goods is the goal, but that does not mean that’s the goal of both participating parties. I believe that more often than not, people are quick to profit off of others as much as they can while giving them the false narrative that everything is fair and equal. I like to think of neighbors, for example, who carry out small favors for each other. One neighbor could mow the other’s lawn for free, so the other returns the favor the next day with some baked cookies. At face value some could argue this is a fair an equal exchange, but whose to say the neighbor who baked the cookies didn’t want to mow the other’s lawn so they chose a dessert instead? It can be seen as a nice gesture, but deep down it's easy to let that inherent desire to profit off of someone’s labor take control. The only equal exchange would have been to mow their lawn back, but under this false narrative that cookies is an equal gesture, the neighbor who baked them gets away with making a profit. So what happens when this uneven trade gets amplified to a larger scale?
“to increase their wealth and influence. Government is not slow to perceive the advantages
it may derive from the part that is entrusted to it by the public” (pg 100)- the government will more than likely take advantage of the people it’s serving for it’s own benefits.
The government serves as a great example of an entity that wants to profit off of others, especially the very thing that it serves. We see examples of this in congressmen and women who make great promises to their followers, guaranteeing changes that will not come because they are busy passing laws that favor companies they are invested in, filling their greedy pockets with money at the expense of those who voted for them. They paint this false narrative to present to their followers in an effort to take advantage of their trust, all while behind the scenes these politicians have no real interest in solving the issues that got them the votes in the first place. And to some it may seem harmless that politicians choose to bet on their own policies once passed, but this hurts the American people even more. “Because a government does not create value or generate wealth, it can never restore more to the public than it has taken” If wealth is consistently being stripped from the hands of the people and put into the pockets of the people that are supposed to represent them, we have a problem. This problem is amplified when you take bastiat’s next statement into consideration.
“Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual, for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individual or of classes” (pg 2) -the law
Here bastiat makes a claim that if it is unlawful to force another person to do something that infringes on their natural rights, it is also unlawful for a government to force another person or class, as that very government is just made up of a bunch of people all following the same natural rights. While I agree with this dynamic, it’s easy to see how its execution is not always on par with the ethics. An example I like to think of is a very recent occurrence, where a college basketball player was suspended for betting on himself, winning money overtime. Like the example I brought up earlier, if politicians are allowed to invest in companies whose value can increase from a simple policy change, why can’t a basketball player bet on himself. It’s pretty much the same thing.
