Frédéric Bastiat

Who was he: Frédéric Bastiat was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, legislator and member of the French assembly. Bastiat championed private property, free markets and limited government. He was the author of many economic and political economic works, which were characterized by their strong argumentation, clear organization and sharp wit. Economic Sophisms, one of his better known works, contains numerous strongly worded attacks on statist policies.

In The Law, his most famous work and a classic must-read for any free-market thinker, Bastiat revealed the idea that, through the development of a just system of laws a free society can emerge. Bastiat debated the legitimacy of interest with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon between 1849 and 1850. As editor of the Free Trade Association's newspaper, Le Libre-Exchange, Bastiat was quite effective in spreading his ideals. Bastiat established an organization in France called the French Free-Trade Association, which had successfully abolished most of France's trade barriers by 1860, a decade after Bastiat's death.

Bastiat declared that the only purpose of government is to defend the rights of life, liberty and property for an individual. He was inspired by Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and also worked with free-trade associations in France. Bastiat's most important contribution to economics was his stance to the effect that good economic decisions can only be made by taking the entire picture into consideration; that is, economic truths should be arrived at by observing both the immediate consequences of an economic decision and by examining the long-term consequences. In addition, one must examine the decision's effect on all people and all industries in the entirety of society.

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