Economic Sophisms and "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen"
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Economic Sophisms and "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen"
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Overview
Both Economic Sophisms and What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen share similar stylistic features and were written with much the same purpose in mind, to disabuse people of misperceptions they might have had about the benefits of free trade and free markets. Throughout the book, Bastiat’s clever and witty arguments against tariff protection and subsidies to domestic industry are timeless, as governments and vested-interest groups are still advocating the same policies 160 years after Bastiat wrote.
Frédéric Bastiat was born in 1801, and during his short life (he died in Rome, on Christmas Eve, in 1850) he was witness to many historic events, such as the victory of Richard Cobden’s free-trade Anti–Corn Law League in 1846, the rise of socialism, the 1848 Revolution, and the rise of Louis Napoléon to the presidency of the Second Republic. Many of these events affected his ideas and became targets of his writings. In his final work, What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, completed only months before his death, he provides one of his keenest economic insights, that, although there are obvious beneficial effects of government interventions at first, that is, the “seen,” there are also the “unseen” consequences, for example, in the form of opportunity costs that are ignored but that often have deleterious economic effects. He makes this case most eloquently in the form of a parable in the opening chapter, “The Broken Window.”
To accompany Bastiat’s original works, we have provided detailed and comprehensive explanatory footnotes, glossaries, and appendixes. Bastiat refers to dozens of other writers and politicians and is critical of French government policies regarding taxation, tariffs, and subsidies to business. The glossary of authors and politicians provides detailed information about the individuals Bastiat mentions in his essays, the views they held, the books they published, and the laws that the French state enacted in order to maintain the system of protection and subsidies that Bastiat and the other free-market economists so strenuously opposed. This collection of supplementary material allows us a better understanding of the community of economists and politicians of which Bastiat was a part in the late 1840s.
Jacques de Guenin founded the Cercle Frédéric Bastiat in 1990. He had degrees in science from the University of Paris and from the University of California, Berkeley, and was the author of The Logic of Classical Liberalism.
Dennis O’Keeffe was Professor of Social Science at the University of Buckingham and Senior Research Fellow in Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.
Jean-Claude Paul-Dejean is a Bastiat scholar and a historian at the University of Bordeaux.
David M. Hart has a Ph.D. in history from King’s College, Cambridge, and is the Director of Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780865978881 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Liberty Fund, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 03/02/2017 |
| Series: | The Collected Works of Fr d ric Bastiat , #3 |
| Pages: | 728 |
| Sales rank: | 806,275 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 9.00(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Translated from the French
David M. Hart has a Ph.D. in history from King’s College, Cambridge.
Dennis O’Keeffe was Professor of Social Science at the University of Buckingham and Senior Research Fellow in Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.
Table of Contents
Foreword Robert McTeer xi
General Editor's Note xv
Note on the Translation xvii
Key Terms xxxi
Note on the Editions of the Æuvres completes xxxv
Abbreviations xxxvii
Acknowledgments xli
A Chronology of Bastiat's Eife and Work xliii
Introduction David M. Hart xlix
A Note on the Publishing History of Economic Sophisms and What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen by David M. Hart lxxv
Map of France Showing Cities Mentioned by Bastiat lxxxiii
Map of Southwestern France lxxxiv
Economic Sophisms 1
Economic Sophisms First Series 3
[Author's Introduction] 3
1 Abundance and Scarcity 7
2 Obstacle and Cause 15
3 Effort and Result 18
4 Equalizing the Conditions of Production 25
5 Our Products Are Weighed Down with Taxes 39
6 The Balance of Trade 44
7 Petition by the Manufacturers of Candles, Etc. 49
8 Differential Duties 53
9 An Immense Discovery!!! 54
10 Reciprocity 57
11 Nominal Prices 61
12 Does Protection Increase the Rate of Pay? 64
13 Theory and Practice 69
14 A Conflict of Principles 75
15 More Reciprocity 78
16 Blocked Rivers Pleading in Favor of the Prohibitionists 80
17 A Negative Railway 81
18 There Are No Absolute Principles 83
19 National Independence 85
20 Human Labor and Domestic Labor 88
21 Raw Materials 92
22 Metaphors 100
Conclusion 104
Economic Sophisms Second Series 111
1 The Physiology of Plunder 113
2 Two Moral Philosophies 131
3 The Two Axes 138
4 The Lower Council of Labor 142
5 High Prices and Low Prices 146
6 To Artisans and Workers 155
7 A Chinese Tale 163
8 Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc 168
9 Theft by Subsidy 170
10 The Tax Collector 179
11 The Utopian 187
12 Salt, the Mail, and the Customs Service 198
13 Protection, or the Three Municipal Magistrates 214
14 Something Else 226
15 The Free Trader's Little Arsenal 234
16 The Right Hand and the Left Hand 240
17 Domination through Work 248
Economic Sophisms "Third Series," 255
1 Recipes for Protectionism 257
2 Two Principles 261
3 M. Cunin-Gridaine's Logic 268
4 One Profit versus Two Losses 271
5 On Moderation 277
6 The People and the Bourgeoisie 281
7 Two Losses versus One Profit 287
8 The Political Economy of the Generals 293
9 A Protest 296
10 The Spanish Association for the Defense of National Employment and the Bidassoa Bridge 299
11 The Specialists 305
12 The Man Who Asked Embarrassing Questions 309
13 The Fear of a Word 318
14 Anglomania, Anglophobia 327
15 One Man's Gain Is Another Man's Loss 341
16 Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill 343
17 A Little Manual for Consumers; in Other Words, for Everyone 350
18 The Mayor of Enios 355
19 Antediluvian Sugar 365
20 Monita Secreta: The Secret Book of Instructions 371
21 The Immediate Relief of the People 377
22 A Disastrous Remedy 379
23 Circulars from a Government That Is Nowhere to Be Found 380
24 Disastrous Illusions 384
What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, or Political Economy in One Lesson 401
[The Author's Introduction] 403
1 The Broken Window 405
2 Dismissing Members of the Armed Forces 407
3 Taxes 410
4 Theaters and the Fine Arts 413
5 Public Works 419
6 The Middlemen 422
7 Trade Restrictions 427
8 Machines 432
9 Credit 437
10 Algeria 439
11 Thrift and Luxury 443
11 The Right to Work and the Right to Profit 449
Appendixes 453
Appendix 1 Further Aspects of Bastiat's Life and Thought 455
Appendix 2 The French State and Politics 486
Appendix 3 Economic Policy and Taxation 497
Appendix 4 French Government's Budgets for Fiscal Years 1848 and 1849 509
Appendix 5 Mark Twain and the Australian Negative Railroad 517
Appendix 6 Bastiat's Revolutionary Magazines 520
Addendum: Additional Material by Bastiat 523
"A Few Words about the Title of Our Journal The French Republic' (La République Française, 16 February 1848) 524
"The Subprefectures," 29 February 1848, La République Française 525
Bastiat's Speech on "Disarmament and Taxes" (August 1849) 526
Glossaries 533
Glossary of Persons 533
Glossary of Places 565
Glossary of Newspapers and Journals 567
Glossary of Subjects and Terms 572
Bibliographical Note on the Works Cited in This Volume 585
Bibliography 587
Index 611