"What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" by Frederic Bastiat

At our book club meeting yesterday we decided to do just one small thing over the holidays: read Frederic Bastiat’s essay “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen,” available online (see link to the right.) His book, The Law, was one of the first ones we read in this club, and is awesome, as are all his works. In case you’re not familiar with him, he was a French economist and politician in the mid-1800's, who, dismayed by the decent into socialism which was occurring at that time, wrote many “inspired” pleas for a return to liberty. He is widely quoted, including by President Benson and also in Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin which we just read.
While The Law is a political treatise, “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen” is on political economy, addressing the consequences of taxation, why the government cannot create jobs (which we often hear), drawing attention to the inequity of “public works” and government-sponsored fine arts, etc. Regarding the latter, Quinn and I have been listening to The Phantom of the Opera audio-book as we drive around, and I was interested to note that the Paris Opera company in which the story is enacted was a state institution. Looking this up I found out that it was created by King Louis XIV in 1713. This little fact will help you better appreciate the environment in which Bastiat lived. Government intervention into civil affairs has a long history in France, and is a slippery slope. If the government can run an opera, why not a school, an automotive company, or a health insurance company? Is there a definite point beyond which the government won’t go once it gets on the slope?