What are we missing to be the happiest nation in the world? A little bit of common sense.
Category: Constructivism
LETTERS TO MR. DOMENGER – 11
The stupid impudence of ********* is beyond belief…… These people entertain themselves by riding roughshod over all rules of representative government, be it the constitution, the laws or the decrees;
LETTERS TO MR. DOMENGER – 1
Everything that, directly or indirectly, harms property, undermines confidence or is detrimental to safety, is an obstacle to capital formation and falls down on the shoulders of the working class.
LETTERS TO MR. HORACE SAY – 7
When there is good to be done or evil to fight, relying on law enforcement first appears as the shortest, most economical and most efficient way to do.
LETTERS TO MR. HORACE SAY – 3
How will industry be able to resume, when it is accepted in principle that the scope of decrees is unlimited?
LETTERS TO MR. HORACE SAY – 2
Our country truly needs to receive teaching in economics.
THE THREE ADVICES
Things would work marvellously if everybody would think as I do. This can be summed up as follows: if we agreed, we would have an agreement.
UNTITLED
Is it not misguided to search for the solution in a fake unity, contrived, intolerant, persecuting, socialist, which is indeed unable to present its titles for domination and its proof of truth?
LETTER TO A CLERIC
I am not trying, and shall never try, to impose my systems. I expound them, I explain them, and for their implementation, I wait until public opinion tell their mind.
BARATARIA
He, who dares to embark on instituting a people needs to feel capable of twisting, so to speak, human nature, and change each individual.
INDIVIDUALISM AND FRATERNITY
Now, we need to know if the self-interest, permanent and well-understood, of a man, of a class or of a nation is radically in opposition to the interest of another man, another class or another nation.
REPORT TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE LANDES IN 1849 PERTAINING TO THE QUESTION OF COLLECTIVE PROPERTY
It is dangerous to believe that this right should be removed in the face of the legislator’s wishes.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE
Laissez-faire is hereby applicable to honest behaviour because the State has been instituted to hinder dishonesty.
UNDER THE REPUBLIC – XVI – RESTRICTIONS AND TAXES
There, each experience, each effort aimed at doing good through State intervention ends up as a disappointment.
UNDER THE REPUBLIC – XIII – PETITION OF AN ECONOMIST
Who prevents the inhabitants of a commune to freely and voluntarily set up a socialist experiment on themselves, at their own cost?
SECOND LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL DES DEBATS
Our current tariffs are calculated to cater for an order of things that will of course cease to be.
SOME MORE QUESTIONS ASKED TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENTS FOR AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES AND TRADE
Once the State will be the owner of everything, what will matter will be to become the owner of the State.
COBDEN AND THE LEAGUE
What I would like to sink in the minds of our opponents, the opponents of freedom in industry, is that their system is fighting against nature itself and against the laws that govern the universe.
COBDEN AND THE LEAGUE
We are free men. Why would we not have free-trade?
COBDEN AND THE LEAGUE
Spain has adopted the prohibition and protection system and here she is, drowning in ignorance and desolation.
FIFTH SPEECH
Sophisms are not false reasonings, they are incomplete reasonings.
RESPONSE TO L’ATELIER NEWSPAPER
Since political economy restricts its field of investigations, it is supposed that it despises anything that does not enter its sphere of interest.
ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OF THE PROTECTIONIST REGIME ON THE SITUATION OF AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE
Is artificial direction transmitted to capital and labour better than natural direction?
ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
The action principle, the desire for improvement is not embedded in the science but in humanity.
LETTER FROM AN ECONOMIST TO MR. DE LAMARTINE
We are not aware of any possible labour organisation in a free country other than that of freedom, compensating itself through competition, ability and morality.
LETTERS TO RICHARD COBDEN
Communism is fought with communist arguments.
LETTERS TO RICHARD COBDEN
Begone the laws that precede the progress of opinion!
LETTERS TO RICHARD COBDEN
Let progress come from dusk or dawn, what counts is that it comes.
LETTERS TO RICHARD COBDEN
By the way, I have not lost sight of what you told me one day, that the movement, which occurred in a bottom-up process in England, needs to be top-down in France.
LETTERS TO MR. FELIX COUDROY
Unfortunately, the ideas of the day are being taken to a frightening extreme in the opposite direction: Introducing the State to everything.
RELATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY WITH ETHICS, POLITICS, LEGISLATION AND RELIGION
Any given phenomenon is always found set between two other phenomena. One of these is its efficient cause, and the other its final cause;
EVIL
I have never doubted that the socialists have led astray many generous hearts and sincere minds.
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF SOCIETY
It is true that self-interest is the cause of all the evils, as well as all the benefits, that can fall to the lot of man.
RESPONSIBILITY
Free will implies the possibility of error, and error in turn implies pain and suffering as its inevitable consequences.
RESPONSIBILITY
Now, progress toward perfection always implies some degree of imperfection in the future as well as in the past.
DISTURBING FACTORS
There is hardly any effect that does not, in its turn, become a cause.
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SERVICES
How can individuals delegate rights that they do not possess?
POPULATION
Let me note that for this term, the means of subsistence, once universally accepted, J. B. Say has substituted another term that is much more accurate: the means of existence.
POPULATION
There is a fundamental difference between the physiological capacity for reproduction and actual reproduction.
THE TWO MOTTOES
Individualism, then, accomplishes the task that the sentimentalists of our day would entrust to brotherhood, to self-sacrifice, or to some other motive opposed to self-love.
COMPETITION.
The accusation that competition tends toward inequality is far from true. On the contrary, all artificial inequality is due to the absence of competition;
ON VALUE.
We cannot feel another persons’ wants; we cannot feel another person’s satisfactions; but we can render services to one another.
WANTS, EFFORTS, SATISFACTIONS.
And besides, am I betraying my trust when I reflect on the causes of the storm and strive to act accordingly?
NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL SOCIAL ORDER
It is a far cry from a social order founded on the general laws of humanity to an artificial, contrived, and invented order that does not take these laws into account or denies them or scorns them—an order, in a word, such as some of our modern schools of thought would, it seems, impose upon us.
PEACE AND FREEDOM
In the same way, the value of an industry is based only on the wealth of its customers.
FREE CREDIT
If there were no more thieves among us, we would all be upright and happy! This is socialism’s statement of principles!
FREE CREDIT
In a word, Mr. Bastiat is devoted body and soul to the Republic, to freedom, to equality, and to progress; he has proved this on many occasions brilliantly through the way he has voted in the National Assembly.