Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850)

06/30/2011 Jeff Riggenbach

Forerunner of the Austrian School, Bastiat contributed high quality popularization of such legal and economic ideas as legalized plunder, everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else and the fable of the broken window in which what is not seen is as important or more than what is seen.

Ludwig von Mises opined in the 1920s that Bastiat’s “critique of all protectionist and related tendencies is even today unsurpassed. The protectionists and interventionists have not been able to advance a single word in pertinent and objective rejoinder.”

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