New Working paper: Frédéric Bastiat on Self-Interest
Working paper: "Frédéric Bastiat on Self-Interest" by G. Stolyarov II
Bastiat saw the self-interest motive as central to human nature but capable of leading to diametrically opposite consequences depending on whether this motive was employed in peaceful production and voluntary exchange or in the plundering of others through crime or through the enshrinement of plunder in the law. This paper examines Bastiat’s view of self-interest’s dual tendencies and the societies each of them leads to. In free markets where property is secure, self-interest results in prosperity, peace, harmony, and morality. In a redistributive state, however, man is pitted against man in perpetually recurring “legal plunder,” which is reinforced by the self-interest of politicians, special interest groups (rent-seekers), and the plundered classes who wish to enter government and remake the law to make themselves the plunderers. In a state of legalized plunder, the law and morality are at opposites, and the law, with the aid of self-interest, engenders immorality.
