 When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will. 
Claude Frederic Bastiat
The plans differ; the planners are all alike…
Claude Frederic Bastiat
The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder. With this in mind, examine the protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works. You will find that they are always based on legal plunder, organized injustice.
Claude Frederic Bastiat
The Law
What are we to think of a people who never seem to suspect that reciprocal plunder is no less plunder because it is reciprocal; that it is no less criminal because it is executed legally and with order?
Claude Frederic Bastiat
Government
For ourselves, we consider that Government is and ought to be nothing but the united power of the people, organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens, but, on the contrary, to secure to every one his own, and to cause justice and security to reign.
Claude Frederic Bastiat
Government
Thus the public has two hopes, and Government makes two promises--many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises, which, being contradictory, can never be realized. The contradiction is forever starting up before it; if it would be philanthropic, it must attend to its exchequer; if it neglects its exchequer, it must abstain from being philanthropic.
Claude Frederic Bastiat
Government
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