Bastiat: The Law

Our society can be characterized by 1) the exacerbated consumerism resulting from the financial system and 2) diverting the focus from real problems to less relevant ones. One could even say that the second problem is a derivative of the first. However, I would like to think that the problem lies in society's lack of thought about what governs us. Lack of critical reflection to be more precise.

Our society is characterized by being always busy, we seek to condense information as much as possible in order to "save time" something extremely curious if we understand that human life expectancy has been extended and is prolonged over time. The average citizen's life is based on working, doing business, paying taxes, signing contracts, reading the news, driving, doing housework, getting permits, applying for new jobs. If we stop to reflect we see that time has become an overly valuable asset for people, and it should be, but society is not managing it well because there is room for reflective thinking and even more for reflective and critical thinking about the laws that govern them.

It is vitally important that citizens reflect on the law and what it really implies, today the law is seen as a daily constant, people forget the real purpose of it for the benefit of society, even to the point of believing that everything by social acceptance can be considered law. Governments and politicians now issue and modify laws at will, always based on the argument that they are modified for the collective good. Politicians today focus on propaganda to gain legitimacy within the masses and not on the real welfare of the people. Politics as defined by Machiavelli was nothing more than a game of power, so it is necessary for citizens to guard the true sense of law. The abundance of laws are nothing but obstacles that prevent us from seeing the true purpose of the laws.

There has not been a broader exponent than bastiat to explain the law and what it entails. It is amazing how a 19th century author was able to describe the causes of most of the ills in the world today. In his book "The Law" Bastiat synthesized how politicians used the law to violate the property and freedom of people, and how these politicians used the state apparatus as an omnipotent saving force that is infallible and had the capacity to solve all the problems of society.

Bastiat's starting point is to recognize that God has given men a gift. It is the gift of life, a physical, mental and moral life, from which Bastiat will derive his final conclusion: the law is only justified for the protection of people, their freedoms, rights and property. And nothing more.

Bastiat said that the law is the collective organization of the individual's right to self-defense: the existence of personality, freedom and property is not due to the fact that men have dictated the laws. On the contrary, it is the pre-existence of their personality, freedom and property that determines that men can make laws.

The most fundamental thing about bastiat is that, I said earlier, it predicts the future of how this perversion within the law generated conflict, thus generating wars through revolutions that use the law as an instrument of repression.

Something very palpable about today's society is that they are not aware of the times in which they are living, and of how many state-sponsored things that anyone with common sense would see as a clear violation of rights become normalized and end up being a law that is accepted as universal dogma by all citizens. A clear and palpable example of this is taxes or the lost war on drugs.

It is absolutely terrible to see how people themselves do not understand the changes that are taking place in their societies, and how things should really work in a true state of normality where "The law" that Bastiat preached is applied as it is.

If we put in evidence everything that Bastiat told us to prevent these problems we see how some societies did the opposite. Venezuela, for example. In Venezuela, it could be said that there are two different groups with respect to the current situation, 1) that believe that in order to solve the problem we must go deeper into the current system and 2) that on the other hand we have another group that thinks that the evil of the system lies in the politicians of the moment. What most of these people don't understand is that Venezuela needs a complete change with respect to society and the role that the state, the people who take charge of the state and more importantly who will be able to shape the state, should play.

The case of Venezuela is no stranger to any other state, in fact, nowadays any state is prone to set aside "the law" for the benefit of political power. The problem of today's society will be and will be as long as people do not become aware of their situation and leave aside the rule of law and allow it to be modified by politicians whose knowledge of law is vague.

The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

The law is something to be taken into consideration in any of the aspects, even more so when it is subject to the changes of politicians in turn to favour their mandate.

If a law limits the use of human talents, or is contrary to private property, or attacks the rights of others, that law will have negative effects on society.

This approach is refreshing for societies that suffer from legislative activism, i.e. governments that issue large numbers of regulations as a result of their concerns.

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Notes:

1. The law - Frédéric Bastiat

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_{Posted from my blog with SteemPress : Here}

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