Frederic Bastiat on Government (Illustrated)

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Frederic Bastiat was a French political economist, statesman, classical liberal theorist, and the French Assembly. He coined the important economic concept of opportunity cost. His ideas have become the foundation for libertarian and the Austrian schools of thought.

Most of Bastiat’s political writings were done during the years just before and immediately after the Revolution of February 1848 when France was rapidly turning to complete socialism. As a Deputy to the Legislative Assembly, Bastiat explained each socialist fallacy as it appeared and how socialism must inevitably degenerate into communism that it must fail.

In this essay, Government, Mr. Bastiat introduced the important concept of individual social responsibility to a social system by saying “there is no chimerical creation, no abstraction, from which the citizens may demand everything. They expect nothing except from themselves and their own energy." His reasoning remains as relevant today as it was then.  

The Essay is already read more than a hundred years and it will still be read for another century due to its truths.