There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the moral ambiguity of legalizing theft or plunder, suggesting that legislation doesn't rectify the wrongness of such actions.
Frederic Bastiatβs quote critiques the notion that legality equates to morality, pointing out the danger in a society where unethical behavior is permissible under the law. He expresses concern over the ethical implications of legalizing plunder, indicating that true morality should not be dictated by legal frameworks but rather by inherent ethical standards. This reflects a broader philosophical discussion about the nature of justice and the role of law in society.
In practice
During a debate on ethical policies in government, this quote could serve to emphasize the importance of moral responsibility beyond legal obligations.
The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.
No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.
The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.
They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
The consistent thinker, the consistently moral man, is either a walking mummy or else, if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality, a fanatical monomaniac.
A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
No one knows what is going to happen in the next few minutes, and yet people still go forward, because they have trust, because they have faith.
For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal-this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life.
Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.
Our challenge is to give what account we can of what becomes of life in the solar system, this corner of the universe that is our home; and, most of all, what becomes of men-all men, of all nations, colors, and creeds. This has become one world, a world for all men. It is only such a world that can now offer us life, and the chance to go on.
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