The Economics of Freedom: What Your Professors Won't Tell You, Selected Works of Frederic Bastiat Read online

effects would not be counterbalanced by any compensating bad effects. Unfortunately, the mysterious hundred sous did not come down from the moon, but rather from the pocket of a metalworker, a nailmaker, a cartwright, a blacksmith, a plowman, a builder, in a word, from James Goodfellow, who pays it out today without receiving a milligram of iron more than when he was paying ten francs. It at once becomes evident that this certainly changes the question, for, quite obviously, the profit of Mr. Protectionist is counterbalanced by the loss of James Goodfellow, and anything that Mr. Protectionist will be able to do with this five-franc piece for the encouragement of domestic industry, James Goodfellow could also have done. The stone is thrown in at one point in the lake only because it has been prohibited by law from being thrown in at another.

  Hence, what is not seen counterbalances what is seen; and the outcome of the whole operation is an injustice, all the more deplorable in having been perpetrated by the law.

  But this is not all. I have said that a third person was always left in the shadow. I must make him appear here, so that he can reveal to us a second loss of five francs. Then we shall have the results of the operation in its entirety.

  James Goodfellow has fifteen francs, the fruit of his labors. (We are back at the time when he is still free.) What does he do with his fifteen francs? He buys an article of millinery for ten francs, and it is with this article of millinery that he pays (or his middleman pays for him) for the hundred kilograms of Belgian iron. He still has five francs left. He does not throw them into the river, but (and this is what is not seen) he gives them to some manufacturer or other in exchange for some satisfaction—for example, to a publisher for a copy of the Discourse on Universal History by Bossuet.

  Thus, he has encouraged domestic industry to the amount of fifteen francs, to wit:

  10 francs to the Parisian milliner

  5 francs to the publisher

  And as for James Goodfellow, he gets for his fifteen francs two objects of satisfaction, to wit:

  1. A hundred kilograms of iron

  2. A book

  Comes the decree.

  What happens to James Goodfellow? What happens to domestic industry?

  James Goodfellow, in giving his fifteen francs to the last centime to Mr. Protectionist for a hundred kilograms of iron, has nothing now but the use of this iron. He loses the enjoyment of a book or of any other equivalent object. He loses five francs. You agree with this; you cannot fail to agree; you cannot fail to agree that when restraint of trade raises prices, the consumer loses the difference.

  But it is said that domestic industry gains the difference.

  No, it does not gain it; for, since the decree, it is encouraged only as much as it was before, to the amount of fifteen francs.

  Only, since the decree, the fifteen francs of James Goodfellow go to metallurgy, while before the decree they were divided between millinery and publishing.

  The force that Mr. Protectionist might exercise by himself at the frontier and that which he has the law exercise for him can be judged quite differently from the moral point of view. 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. However that may be, one thing is certain, and that is that the economic results are the same.

  You may look at the question from any point of view you like, but if you examine it dispassionately, you will see that no good can come from legal or illegal plunder. We do not deny that it may bring for Mr. Protectionist or his industry, or if you wish for domestic industry, a profit of five francs. But we affirm that it will also give rise to two losses: one for James Goodfellow, who pays fifteen francs for what he used to get for ten, the other for domestic industry, which no longer receives the difference. Make your own choice of which of these two losses compensates for the profit that we admit. The one you do not choose constitutes no less a dead loss.

  Moral: To use force is not to produce, but to destroy. Heavens! If to use force were to produce, France would be much richer than she is.

  8. Machines

  “A curse on machines! Every year their increasing power condemns to pauperism millions of workers, taking their jobs away from them, and with their jobs their wages, and with their wages their bread! A curse on machines!”

  That is the cry rising from ignorant prejudice, and whose echo resounds in the newspapers.

  But to curse machines is to curse the human mind!

  What puzzles me is that it is possible to find anyone at all who can be content with such a doctrine.

  For, in the last analysis, if it is true, what is its strictly logical consequence? It is that activity, well-being, wealth, and happiness are possible only for stupid nations, mentally static, to whom God has not given the disastrous gift of thinking, observing, contriving, inventing, obtaining the greatest results with the least trouble. On the contrary, rags, miserable huts, poverty, and stagnation are the inevitable portion of every nation that looks for and finds in iron, fire, wind, electricity, magnetism, the laws of chemistry and mechanics—in a word, in the forces of Nature—an addition to its own resources, and it is indeed appropriate to say with Rousseau: “Every man who thinks is a depraved animal.”

  But this is not all. If this doctrine is true, and as all men think and invent—as all, in fact, from first to last, and at every minute of their existence, seek to make the forces of Nature cooperate with them, to do more with less, to reduce their own manual labor or that of those whom they pay, to attain the greatest possible sum of satisfactions with the least possible amount of work—we must conclude that all mankind is on the way to decadence, precisely because of this intelligent aspiration toward progress that seems to torment every one of its members.

  Hence, it would have to be established statistically that the inhabitants of Lancaster, fleeing that machine-ridden country, go in search of employment to Ireland, where machines are unknown; and, historically, that the shadow of barbarism darkens the epochs of civilization, and that civilization flourishes in times of ignorance and barbarism.

  Evidently there is in this mass of contradictions something that shocks us and warns us that the problem conceals an element essential to its solution that has not been sufficiently brought to light.

  The whole mystery consists in this: Behind what is seen lies what is not seen. I am going to try to shed some light on it. My demonstration can be nothing but a repetition of the preceding one, for the problem is the same.

  Men have a natural inclination, if they are not prevented by force, to go for a bargain—that is, for something that, for an equivalent satisfaction, spares them labor—whether this bargain comes to them from a capable foreign producer or from a capable mechanical producer.

  The theoretical objection that is raised against this inclination is the same in both cases. In one as in the other, the reproach is made that it apparently makes for a scarcity of jobs. However, its actual effect is not to make jobs scarce, but to free men's labor for other jobs.

  And that is why, in practice, the same obstacle—force—is set up against it in both cases. The legislator prohibits foreign competition and forbids mechanical competition. For what other means can there be to stifle an inclination natural to all men than to take away their freedom?

  In many countries, it is true, the legislator strikes at only one of these types of competition and confines himself to grumbling about the other. This proves only that in these countries the legislator is inconsistent.

  That should not surprise us. On a false path there is always inconsistency; if this were not so, mankind would be destroyed. We have never seen and never shall see a false principle carried out completely. I have said elsewhere: Absurdity is the limit of inconsistency. I should like to add: It is also its proof.

  Let us go on with our demonstration; it will not be lengthy.

  James Goodfellow had two francs that he let two workers earn.
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br />   But now suppose that he devises an arrangement of ropes and weights that will shorten the work by half.

  Then he obtains the same satisfaction, saves a franc, and discharges a worker.

  He discharges a worker: that is what is seen.

  Seeing only this, people say: “See how misery follows civilization! See how freedom is fatal to equality! The human mind has made a conquest, and immediately another worker has forever fallen into the abyss of poverty. Perhaps James Goodfellow can still continue to have both men work for him, but he cannot give them more than ten sous each, for they will compete with one another and will offer their services at a lower rate. This is how the rich get richer and the poor become poorer. We must remake society.”

  A fine conclusion, and one worthy of the initial premise!

  Fortunately, both premise and conclusion are false, because behind the half of the phenomenon that is seen is the other half that is not seen.

  The franc saved by James Goodfellow and the necessary effects of this saving are not seen.

  Since, as a result of his own invention, James Goodfellow no longer spends more than one franc for manual labor in the pursuit of a given satisfaction, he has another franc left over.

  If, then, there is somewhere an idle worker who offers his labor on the market, there is also somewhere a capitalist