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The Law, by Bastiat
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"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.

"Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."

--- Thomas Paine


Lesson 59 - Fundamentals of Morality Part III Print E-mail

 

Likewise, an individual may have worked hard to bring in a crop of what in the hope of obtaining a very high price for the wheat in the market.

Other individuals however, also wanting a high price for their wheat, have produced crops too.

And so it happens that so much wheat is produced, that the price for wheat is lower than any one of the producers of wheat had anticipated, and none is fully satisfied in his desires for a high price for his wheat.

This market situation is not immoral.  If it is right and proper for the first individual to put in a crop hoping for a high price, it is equally right and proper for any other individual, or everyone, to do the same thin in the same hope.  The fact that their actions are competitive is not immoral.

But now in another case a man puts in a crop of wheat and his neighbor, in an effort to limit the supply of wheat and thus obtain a better price for his own wheat, sets fire to the first man's crop.

This action is clearly and properly viewed as immoral.  In such a case, one individual trespassed the property boundary of another individual.  The other individual's loss was not an act of nature, but the deliberate act of an individual seeking to improve his own gain by committing a trespass upon and destroying the property of another.

 



 
 

Fundamentals of Liberty