Legal plunder

Legal plunder, is the act of appropriating, under the laws, the property of others. This was coined by Frédéric Bastiat, most famously in his book The Law, though it has become a concept in libertarian thought, since, and has been used similarly by others, including Daniel Lord Smail.

Today it is the appropriation of the assets of another person by power groups through rules of public law that violate the principle of equality and the Constitution.

Throughout history there are many examples of legal plunder as the political and economic regimes that have followed: partial legal plunder are the result of tyranny and protectionism or universal legal plunder the result of socialism or communism.

Frédéric Bastiat thought that the law can only implement the individual rights: personality, liberty, and property.

So, if the law goes against the person, liberty, property, it becomes perverse as it goes against the rights that should be protected.

For him The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense.

So he prefers a government that intervenes as little as possible in the sphere of people, liberty and property.

Every citizen is therefore responsible for his fortune or his failures.

Frédéric Bastiat to defend his idea of what should be the purpose of the law, has set a specific definition of "legal plunder".

First he defines "extra-legal plunder" "such as theft, or swindling, which is defined, foreseen, and punished by the penal code.

In that case, "magistracy, police, gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds" are the instrument of the State used against the plunderer and to defend the plundered party.

Legal plunder is when the law "takes from some persons that which belongs to them, to give to others what does not belong to them."

Examples of legal plunder include protectionist tariffs, redistributive taxation, crony capitalism, welfare etc.

In that case, "magistracy, police, gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds" are the instrument of the State to defend the plunderer and treat the plundered party that tries to defend his proprerty as a criminal.

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Wikipedia