{"id":20872,"date":"2016-06-04T08:59:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T13:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20872"},"modified":"2016-06-04T08:59:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T13:59:16","slug":"claude-frederic-bastiat-the-father-of-libertarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20872","title":{"rendered":"Claude Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat \u2013 The Father of Libertarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Claude Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat \u2013 The Father of Libertarianism\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Bastiat<\/a><\/p>\n

Claude Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat (b. 1801-1850) was a French, classical liberal theorist, political economist, Freemason, and member of the French National Assembly whose fundamental ideas have provided a foundation for libertarianism. In economics, Bastiat is remembered for his\u00a0concept of opportunity cost and for introducing the parable of the broken window or the \u201cglazier\u2019s fallacy.\u201d Essentially, a boy breaks a pane of glass in a shopkeeper\u2019s store. The owner gets angry for it will cost him six francs. The argument is that this is good for the economy, for now the glazier profits by installing a new pane of glass, thereby increasing the flow of money within the system. Thus, the linear conclusion is to go around and break all the windows in town to stimulate the economy. But what if the glazier paid the boy to go break windows in town? Then it becomes fraud.<\/p>\n

\"Hiroshima,<\/a><\/p>\n

Bastiat argued that there was an opportunity cost that was\u00a0not being viewed. The six francs the shopkeeper must spend on the pane of glass may have been spent in a completely different sector to stimulate that part of the economy. Some have taken the\u00a0\u201cglazier\u2019s fallacy\u201d and applied it to war. Granted, war is seen as good for the economy for it reduces unemployment (and population) and compels defense spending.<\/p>\n

The Invisible Hand entered and compelled developments in weaponry, such as the creation of nuclear weapons. True, nuclear blasts ended the war in the Pacific. However, it is also true that further development led to nuclear energy for power. The opportunity cost cannot be determined so easily because the question of nuclear energy could have taken perhaps 10 to 20 more years to develop, yet it would have been possible to do so without war.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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Claude Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat \u2013 The Father of Libertarianism\u00a0 Claude Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat (b. 1801-1850) was a French, classical liberal theorist, political economist, Freemason, and member of the French National Assembly whose fundamental ideas have provided a foundation for libertarianism. In economics, Bastiat is remembered for his\u00a0concept of opportunity cost and for introducing the parable of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5496,13976,13977,5479],"class_list":["post-20872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-armstrong-economics","tag-claude-frederic-bastiat","tag-libertariansim","tag-martin-armstrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20873,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20872\/revisions\/20873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}