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The first section of “The Law”, by Fredric Bastiat, discusses to great extent the ideas of plunder and legal plunder. The general concept of plunder is someone taking that which belongs to someone else, and the concept of legal plunder is when plunder is facilitated or integrated into a legal system, as in welfare systems paid by taxes. This way of discussing these matters fascinated me. A governing system set in place to protect the rights and property of its citizens plunders them by trying to help them. As harsh as it sounds, and as much good as these programs may sometimes do, they are accurately referred to by Bastiat as plunder, as they are taking the belongings of one group and distributing them to another. This type of practice, to my understanding, diminishes the economic value of every facet of the economy the more it is practiced. The reason for this is that the more goods will be plundered and the more an individual will receive through this plunder, the less the individual’s labor makes a difference in their own life. Assuming we take this type of system to the extreme, where every individual receives the same income regardless of if they work or not, very few will still be motivated to work, as their society and way of life no longer depend on it. These individuals know that they will be trapped in the same economic standing whether they try or not, so there is no longer any motivation to compete. Without the competition provided by an actual economy, supply and demand of both labor and goods no longer have any regulating force and are likely to swing way out of balance. With everyone receiving the same income, the time of a car wash attendant would now be just as valuable as the time of a medical doctor. Such a system would have widespread impacts, including the fact that unless the college tuition system was dramatically altered, no one would be able to attend college any longer, and there would be no more doctors, engineers, and the like. Without these, the supply and demand of labor would quickly reach unsustainable levels of imbalance. Such a situation as this is not likely, but legal plunder does have similar effects on society.
Later on in the passage, Bastiat discusses a conversation with a colleague debating whether or not the government should promote fraternity, or the taking care of of its citizens. Bastiat claims that to legally enforce such care, a government would have to do away with freedom, since the government would be mandating its citizens to take care of each other. I feel that without such systems, many would starve, which I personally believe to be a negative effect. However, the removal of such programs would make the economy much more active, since to remove such programs would remove the taxes that are currently in place to fund these programs. With less taxation per transaction, trading, especially in fluctuating value systems like the stock market, where the more transactions there are, the more profit is made, would rapidly increase, as it becomes a much more lucrative and viable option.