What is legal plunder? A few observations can make it crystal clear.
First, see if the law takes from one person what belongs to them and gives it to other people to whom it doesn’t belong. If a law benefits one person at the expense of another, there is a high probability it is legal plunder.
Second, if the law takes an action which a regular citizen cannot undertake without committing a crime, then legal plunder is likely afoot.
Any law that promotes legal plunder is a threat to society.
Dr. Dean Russell in 1984 wrote an article on legal plunder and pointed out how it puts society into decline – not progress as many would have the people believe.
Dean made references to Frederic Bastiat who believed there is a tendency that is common among people. When they can, they want to live and prosper at the expense of others.
History bears the truth of this - incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man —in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that compels him to satisfy his desires at any cost.
Bastiat noted that, man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder and since work is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.
Plunder will only stop when it becomes more painful and dangerous labor, and the proper purpose of law is to stop the tendency to plunder instead of work.
We witness daily the demand for more free programs. A large and growing minority would rather live off the backs of another’s labor. This fatal tendency shows up in programs to support farm prices, minimum wage laws, tariffs and other restrictions against trade, subsidies to start and stay in business, government supported medical care, compulsory unions and a thousand other programs where the government takes money from those who have earned it and gives it to those who haven’t – legal plunder.
There are a lot of programs where everyone has or will profit at the expense of others’ hard work. A prime example is social welfare programs of the state and federal governments – and they often destroy far more lives than help. Crime has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled and so have the number of government welfare agencies. For every additional billion dollars spent by government, the number of youth joining street gangs or turning to violence goes up in proportion.
Bastiat warned that once legal plunder becomes socially acceptable, the fatal tendency is for all to join in. The result is disaster. In due course, the distinction between legal plunder and illegal plunder tends to blur. The justification offered by the recipients of legal plunder is that they’re “disadvantaged” and really need the money.
The rationalization offered by illegal plunderers is pretty much the same. Just ask them. They’re never guilty, not really. It’s not their fault they were born poor—and you are rich. Also, it’s not fair.
The promises of leaders, teachers, sociologists have been broken. Billions and billions have been put into better education, medical care, food stamps, allotments, and public housing, to name a few, and it hasn’t helped. But it has quadrupled the amount of tax-money to support those programs. And toss in building more prisons to house the criminals created by the social programs. More legal plundering.
While some were helped, the net result has been disaster. The government programs are mostly designed to appeal to selfish and nonproductive instincts.
Bastiat summarized things by saying, “If everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties [liberty] and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor [i.e., private property in a free market economy], social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.”
Bastiat claimed the primary cause of the increasingly destructive social problems is a drift away from independence and responsibility and into a subservience to government that comes automatically when people engage in legal plunder.
How much of YOUR income is being legally plundered and given to other people?