694. Who Was Frédéric Bastiat? The Law, Liberty, and the Proper Role of Government

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today, I want to talk about one of my favorite people.

He was a French economist, and I'm obsessed with the French for some reason. I've spoken in French for a long time, just don't ask me to speak it because if you've ever heard me try to pronounce French words, you'll know that I can read it, I can write it, but my pronunciation is just, the French get mad every time I try to speak it. Anyway, all this to say, we're going to talk about Frederic Bastiat.

His name looks like Bastiat because of French, that's the one word I can say correctly. If you want to impress or annoy your friends, be like, Frederic Bastiat. You can say it all French, and they'll think you're either weird or pretty cool or pretty knowledgeable, but let's talk about him.

All right, so Frederic Bastiat, he wrote this incredible book called The Law, and he didn't write this one. This is obviously a Tuttle Twins book, but this was inspired by Frederic Bastiat's book, The Law. The Law was one of those books that really just did it for me.

It really got me into this individualistic, the liberty principles because Bastiat was such a great writer. He's just like, he's got these zingers, he's got these one-liners that are just like, oh, so good, where he calls the government miserable creatures, which I always thought was lovely. He's just cut away with words that is so great.

He wrote this book. I want to talk about this book and what it really means. The whole premise of the book, The Law, the whole question that we are setting out to answer when we read it is, what is the law really supposed to do? I want you to think about that.

What is the law supposed to do? It's a big question, and it really sets the stage for what the role of government is because it's defining the scope. What I mean by scope is, if we give limits to what the law is supposed to do, if we set those parameters, and we're saying government can only make law within this parameter, that is the scope, how broad it can be. Once we have that scope, that really defines the role the government can play.

It's a very important question. Let's start with the basics. First of all, who in the heck is Bastiat? Bastiat lived in France in the 1800s.

He's seeing America really come to fruition, really come to be, and he's loving it. He's really impressed by what he's seeing. He had this gift that not many people have, and that's he could take really complicated ideas about government, economics, justice, and he could explain them so clearly that anybody could understand them.

He did them through storytelling. He's got this one essay called Petition of the Candlestick Makers that is so great. We'll get into that another time.

He just had this way with words that sometimes you get these really smart politicians, or well, smart politicians seems like an oxymoron, but you get these smart philosophers. You get these smart attorneys, but their writing is so blah, or their communication skills are so blah that you can't really understand what they're saying, which actually that's what I do as somebody who works in communications is I strive to be like Bastiat, to take these really complex ideas and make them digestible to everybody. That was Bastiat's whole thing.

He wasn't a king. He wasn't a general. He wasn't a fancy politician.

No. He's a farmer, actually. He's a writer, and he's someone who really cared deeply about whether people were treated fairly, and he noticed something, all right? He noticed that sometimes governments protect people, but sometimes governments hurt people, probably more often than not, even while they claim they're helping, and so Bastiat wrote this book, The Law, and it answers the very simple but powerful question, and that's what should the law be allowed to do, and what should it never do, and coming from a Frenchman, this is really interesting because at this time, France is very politically unstable.

You have to understand they are going through, when we think of the French Revolution, it's not one revolution. It was a couple or a few, so you've got the French Revolution, then you've got Napoleon, the Napoleonic Wars. You've got all this turmoil, and oddly enough, France is actually doing this.

They're having all this political instability because they're inspired by America and this American democracy, but they don't really know how to do it right. They're inspired by us, but they missed the memo. They didn't get the whole thing, so it's a tumultuous time, and it turns into more of a have and a have not, so instead of people wanting to be good to each other and wanting to really enact the personal responsibility that comes with living in a place like America where we're individualists and there's ... Democracy is kind of a catch-all word.

We've talked about that before, but more or less, a democracy, just for lack of a better term right now, we'll say that. France is seeing this, and instead, they're turning it into like, let's force everybody to be good. All right, here's a socialist uprising, so they're not doing great, but Bastia is seeing all this, and he's liking what he's seeing, and I think he actually gets it.

He gets what, in America, what we're all about. I say we, again, not that old. Okay, I'm old, but I'm not that old, but I would have looked good in one of those trifold hats.

I don't know. Could have been okay back then. All these years later, the law is so powerful that, again, Tuttle Twins has a book about the book because it's that important, and to me, it's one of the foundations that everyone needs to read if you want to understand, again, what the law is supposed to do and what it isn't supposed to do, what the scope and the role of government should be.

Let's talk about ... I've talked about John Locke before. I'm a law girl. I need to get a John Locke t-shirt made because he's my favorite.

According to Bastia, he's really following this Lockean natural law theory, which is that the government exists mainly to protect three things. What do we think those are? Life, liberty, and property, or Constitution, or not Constitution, Declaration took it to say pursuit of happiness, but as we've talked about, it's kind of a catch-all, also means property. Okay, life.

You get one life. It's yours. Nobody has the right to harm you.

We call this, sometimes I say, don't hurt people, right? Don't hurt people. Pretty simple. Then we have liberty.

You have the freedom to make choices, what to believe, what to say, what to learn, where to go. All right? So, again, pretty straightforward. Then we have property.

You create, or you earn, or you build something, and it belongs to you, okay? These rights don't come from government. They don't come from voting. They don't come from laws, all right? They come from being human, of being born.

That's all you have to do. Pretty sweet deal, guys. All you have to do is be born, and mada bing, you got these natural rights.

Incredible. So, they just come from being born. And you know, in the Tuttle Twins book, Fred, we love Fred, teaches Ethan and Emily the same idea, that your rights don't just disappear because someone wears a badge, right, or works for the government, and that's a really important thing to touch on, because again, that's going to tell us what the law can and cannot do, or should or should not do.

Let's talk about what it's supposed to do. The law should protect your life, right? It's got to protect those natural rights. So, it's got to protect life, liberty, and property.

And nothing more and nothing less, to be honest. Pretty straightforward. That's it.

The law isn't supposed to run your life. It's not supposed to control every decision you make. It's not supposed to take from one person to give to another.

In fact, that is what we call legal plunder, is when, and Bastia talks about this, is when you, it's like this taxationist theft, right? When the government takes from you to give to your neighbor and pretends it's not theft, which is exactly what it is. So again, don't hurt people. Don't take their stuff.

It's like, literally, that's what the government is there to protect. It's supposed to make sure that that happens. So the law is supposed to be a shield, not a sword.

And that's important, right? It's supposed to shield you, not, ugh, this is me trying to stab you with a sword that kind of looks more like a knife. I don't know. I have thought about getting into fencing and learning how to sword fight.

Maybe I should, so that I don't think that this is how you use a sword. And for those listening in audio and not watching the video, you're probably wondering what I'm talking about. You're just going to have to watch the video to find out, I guess, huh? So, I really like the shield and the sword analogy.

I think that's a perfect way to talk about it. And you know, that's what the book, The Law, the Tuttle Twins book really introduces the readers to. So what happens when the law does something it shouldn't do? Well, that's really the heart of Bastia's warning, right? He said that if the law starts doing things that would be wrong for an ordinary person to do, like we talked about with, with a plunder, with theft, then the law becomes twisted, right? If you took your neighbor's bike, that would be stealing.

So what if the government takes something from a person and gives to another, again, still stealing, still stealing, that's kind of hard to say, but whatever. So if it's wrong for me to do, then it's wrong for the government to do. And try telling a government official that they do not want to hear that because they think that they have some sort of power by being a member of government.

And that's part of why power is so scary and can be such an intoxicating thing, right? So the misuse of the law, you know, has a name and that's what Bastia was famous for. I just kind of teased you with it. I said it was called plunder.

He calls it legal plunder. So what is plunder? Think of like pirates, pirates, plunder and pillage and plunder is stealing. Okay, so it's, it's, but it's when the government does it and thinks it's not stealing because their government and somehow words are different for them.

So when the law starts taking sides and rewarding some people and then punishing others unfairly, society stops working the way that it should, right? And people get angry, justifiably so. People stop working hard if they know they're going to get other people's tax dollars, right? And then people fight over who gets what. This is the problem with socialism.

This is something that, believe me, Bastia as a Frenchman knows full well. So little by little, freedom shrinks, right? It's that we talked about regulatory creep with snowballs. It's just like that.

And these, you know, themes we learn about in, in the Tuttle Twins law, the law book. So really important, really great stuff. So to test whether a law is living up to its true, uh, you know, bounds or what it's supposed to do.

Bastia gives us a little test and it's really simple and it's one of the most brilliant things I think ever written. And he says, you know, ask yourselves, does this law protect people and their property? If yes, okay. True law.

We got this. It's pretty good. All right.

All right. Stamp of approval. Okay.

So the next question, does the law take from some people to give to others or does it allow something individuals aren't allowed to do? Meaning if a person can't steal, why should the government be able to steal, right? If it does that, if yes, it's not a real law, okay? It's legal plunder. So you can, you can basically say that the government, they're kind of pirates, which I like to think of. They should all be made to wear eye patches.

I think it would help us identify them when they're legal plunder more accurately. Maybe say things like our matey every time they talk to Congress. That was a cheesy joke.

I can't believe I said it, but here we are. So you know, everybody understands this. In fact, I think kids, I think you guys understand it even better than most.

I remember as a kid, what I would see like teachers tell us not to do something and then they would do it. And here was the big thing. This got me.

There's so many silly rules in public schools. I remember if you were caught eating in class, you would get in trouble, okay? But I remember seeing my teacher eat at her desk and it was okay for her and not me. And I wanted to know why, right? Why does this law exist? Who are we protecting? It's just to keep us in line and teach us that you're the boss.

And that really bothered me. So that was, that's an example of how I think kids really, you guys pick up on this stuff more I think than anybody else. But Bastia talks about something else.

So if bad laws exist, which we know they do, what can we do, right? What can we do as people? And he has an answer. We fight bad ideas with better ideas, right? Our swords are our better ideas. We don't fight with fists.

We don't fight with anger, though we probably feel it. And we don't fight by shouting, even though the founders did. They argued over everything.

But we fight with ideas, right? And when we teach others, when we show them what the proper role of government should be and the proper role of the law, people start recognizing when something is unfair. And they also know through stories. We've talked about that.

If we have real world examples or even stories of this happening, right? If I read a story about a family who's been unjustly targeted by a silly government law that doesn't fit the true law, doesn't pass that test, I think people really resonate to that. So we got to have these stories to show them. And when we learn these principles early, like you kids are ahead of the game, right? Because you haven't been jaded by the world yet.

You're seeing these examples from what we talk about in these episodes or maybe your teacher eating in class when you can't eat. Still pretty bad about that. Still pretty mad about that.

So you're seeing this. And when you see these early, you're going to grow up and you're going to be able to put this into practice and honestly keep our government accountable and make it better. You know, make sure that there's only these true laws that are going into place.

All right. So let's just kind of recap what we talked about before I wrap it up. And that's, you know, um, based on Boston and the law.

Let's break it down. One, you have rights because you were born because you were human. That's it.

That's all you have to do. Life, liberty, property. Those belong to you.

Congratulations. You are the winner. The law.

Second, the law's job is to protect those rights, not take them away. Remember shield, not sword. I really like that analogy.

Three, if something is wrong for a person to do, it is wrong for a government to do. If I can't come into your house and punch you in the face, the government can't do that either. Right? So that's seems like it's easy for everyone to understand, but you'd be surprised.

Four, true laws protect everyone equally. False laws take from some and give to another. That's this taxation idea, this plunder, right? And then five, we fix bad laws through good ideas.

That is the most powerful tool we have, and that is how freedom grows. So you guys, if you want to know more about this, I highly recommend picking up this book because I think Bastia, I have to like, let's declare, Bastia is one of the most important people in the entire liberty movement. I'm a John Locke girl first, and then I'm a Bastia girl second.

So I think, and honestly, they're so similar, but so I just, the writing with Bastia is so good and so accessible. So please, kids, parents, get your kids the Tuttle Twins book on Bastia and the law and parents read the law. It is so good and so short, so you're not going to be sitting there reading, you know, like I said, I love John Locke, but his books are thick, his essays are thick.

This is an easy read and so enjoyable. So pick it up. As always, guys, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast and until next time, I will talk to you later.