{"id":31159,"date":"2018-02-18T13:35:10","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T18:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31159"},"modified":"2018-02-18T13:35:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T18:35:10","slug":"bastiat-knew-the-proper-limits-of-government-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31159","title":{"rendered":"Bastiat Knew the Proper Limits of Government Force"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bastiat Knew the Proper Limits of Government Force<\/a><\/h3>\n
If you don\u2019t violate the life, liberty, or property of someone else, you should not see the arm of the law.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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High school students in the United States are usually required to take a course in government. They learn about the structure of government but rarely discover the appropriate role of government or the justifiable limits for the use of force in our society. If they did, one of their required readings would be Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat\u2019s treatise\u00a0The Law<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> a seminal mid-Nineteenth-century work that describes eternal truths about life and how we pursue justice. These truths are just as valid today as they were then.<\/p>\n

Natural Rights and the Role of Government<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bastiat states that individuals are born with the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. From this notion, the only proper function of the use of force or the law is the collective organization of the natural right to self-defense of these rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery individual has the right to use force for lawful self-defense. It is for this reason that the collective force \u2014 which is only the organized combination of the individual forces \u2014 may lawfully be used for the same purpose; and it cannot be used legitimately for any other purpose.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then defines any illegitimate use of force or of the law as legal plunder<\/em>. This is an all-encompassing term which includes any unjustified violation of the life, liberty, or property of others. Many examples abound today with regulations on labor (e.g. minimum wage laws), products (e.g. subsidies and tariffs), health care, education, or even the use of marijuana or any other drugs.<\/p>\n

Legal plunder has two primary motivations:<\/p>\n

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  1. The first is stupid greed. For example, you would never think of robbing your neighbor, but are complacent if the government uses legal plunder to rob him on your behalf.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Bastiat Knew the Proper Limits of Government Force If you don\u2019t violate the life, liberty, or property of someone else, you should not see the arm of the law. High school students in the United States are usually required to take a course in government. They learn about the structure of government but rarely discover […]<\/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":[14991,18653,18648,379,18652,18650,18651,3638,3744,3174,18649],"class_list":["post-31159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-frank-hollenbeck","tag-frederic-bastiat","tag-government","tag-government-force","tag-legal-plunder","tag-natural-rights","tag-philosophy","tag-rights","tag-social-unrest","tag-the-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159","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=31159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31160,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159\/revisions\/31160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}