Really, France is creating hindrances and restrictions for the pleasure of having to bear the cost of it.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 405 to 406 (in French)
December 25th, 1849

In this letter, Frédéric Bastiat reports on his actions towards the administrative maze, apparently at the request of Bernard Domenger. It would pertain on the one hand to obtain an authorisation concerning a real estate transaction between the Mugron collectivity and a private person (“the business of the hospice”) and on the other hand about a 1000 francs subsidy (about 300 grams of gold at the time, so around 30000 euros today but in an economy that was much poorer) that Bastiat believes he can obtain but for a smaller amount.

He is clearly not satisfied with either approaches. He finds it ridiculous that autorisations need to be granted in Paris in order to conduct local transactions (the decision process is clearly misplaced) and, if he does not mention what he thinks about subsidies (which he had done several times in the past), he thinks that the one they are trying to obtain (300000 francs to be distributed all over the country – 100kg of gold) is really costly in comparison to the expected benefits. This is the point of today’s quote acknowledging the damages created by regulation in general – that will keep on increasing during the following 175 years.