Economic Sophisms quotes

This arises from the nature of things.

Protection concentrates on one point the good which it produces, while the evils which it inflicts are spread over the masses. The one is visible to the naked eye; the other only to the eye of the mind.

In the case of liberty, it is just the reverse.

But this subject does not fall within the compass of my present design.

Which is best for man, and for society, abundance or scarcity?

What! you exclaim, can that be a question? Has any one ever asserted, or is it possible to maintain, that scarcity is at the foundation of human wellbeing?

Now, what is true in a syllogism is always and necessarily present to the mind. But incompleteness is a negative quality, an absent datum, which it is very possible, and indeed very easy, to leave out of account.

Man produces in order to consume. He is at once producer and consumer.

The reasoning which I have just explained considers him only in the first of these points of view. Had the second been taken into account, it would have led to an opposite conclusion. In effect, may it not be said:—

The laws, which should be at least neutral, take the part of the seller against the buyer, of the producer against the consumer, of dearness against cheapness,** of scarcity against abundance.

They proceed, if not intentionally, at least logically, on this datum: a nation is rich when it is in want of everything.

For they say, it is the producer that we must favour by securing him a good market for his product. For this purpose it is necessary to raise the price, and in order to raise the price we must restrict the supply;

And what does it matter?

Men are not fed on money. They do not clothe themselves with gold, or warm themselves with silver.

What matters it whether there is more or less money in the country, if there is more bread on our sideboards, more meat in our larders, more linen in our wardrobes, more firewood in our cellars.

What matters it whether there is more or less money in the country, if there is more bread on our sideboards, more meat in our larders, more linen in our wardrobes, more firewood in our cellars.

Restrictive laws always land us in this dilemma:—

Either you admit that they produce scarcity, or you do not. If you admit it, you avow by the admission that you inflict on the people all the injury in your power.

If you admit it, you avow by the admission that you inflict on the people all the injury in your power. If you do not admit it, you deny having restricted the supply and raised prices, and consequently you deny having favoured the producer.

What you do is either hurtful or profitless, injurious or ineffectual. It never can be attended with any useful result.

The obstacle mistaken for the cause,—scarcity mistaken for abundance,—this is the same sophism under another aspect; and it is well to study it in all its phases.

Now, it is very evident that M. Bugeaud's principle as a deputy is directly opposed to the principle on which he acts as an agriculturist.

To act consistently, he should vote against all legislative restriction, or else import into his farming operations the principle which he proclaims from the tribune.

We should then see him sow his corn in his most sterile fields, for in this way he would succeed in working much to obtain little.

And what does this signify, it will be said, if the smaller quantity produced under the regime of protection has the same nominal value as that produced under the regime of liberty? The answer is obvious.

Man does not live upon nominal values, but upon real products, and the more products there are, whatever be their price, the richer he is.

In writing what precedes, I never expected to meet with an anti-economist who was enough of a logician to admit, in so many words, that the wealth of nations depends on the value of things, apart from the consideration of their abundance.

Then if it sells the half, it will be one-half richer! And if it should sell the whole, to its last tuft of wool and its last grain of wheat, it would bring up its revenue to 100 millions.

Singular way of getting rich, by producing infinite dearness by absolute scarcity!

Again, would you judge of the two doctrines? Submit them to the test of exaggeration.

Our theory consists merely in observing universal facts, universal opinions; calculations and ways of proceeding which universally prevail; and in classifying these, and rendering them Co-ordinate, with a view to their being more easily understood.

Our theory is so little opposed to practice that it is nothing else but practice explained.

We observe men acting as they are moved by the instinct of self-preservation and a desire for progress, and what they thus do freely and voluntarily we denominate political or social economy.

that we are yours body and soul! that you have an exclusive right over our stomachs and our limbs! that it belongs to you to feed and clothe us on your own terms, whatever be your ignorance, incapacity, or rapacity!

No, you are not men of practice; you are men of abstraction—and of extortion.

For my own part, it seems to me, that if I had entered the precincts of the science by the same gate, if I had failed to perceive clearly that Liberty, Utility, Justice,

Peace, are things not only compatible, but strictly allied with each other

, and, so to speak, identical, I should have endeavoured to forget what I had learned, and I should have asked:

And does the thought never occur to those who say so, that the public begins to see with disgust that this affected language disfigures the pages of those very writers who axe most successful in filling their own pockets at the public expense?

Oh! affectation! affectation! thou art verily the besetting sin of our times!

What!

I am ignorant of what constitutes general good or evil. I give myself no trouble about that. The immediate effect of each measure upon my own personal interest is the only law which I can consent to recognise."

There are no principles! You might as well say there are no facts; for principles are merely formulas which classify such facts as are well established.

Machinery, and the importation of foreign commodities, certainly produce effects. These effects may be good or bad; on that there may be difference of opinion. But whatever view we take of them, it is reduced to a formula, by one of these two principles:

… where no law can be voted, where no tax can be imposed, but with the consent of those whose dealings the law is to regulate, and whose pockets the tax is to affect, the public cannot be robbed without first being imposed on and misled.

Our ignorance is the raw material of every extortion from which we suffer, and we may be certain beforehand, that every sophism is the precursor of an act of plunder.

My good friends I when you detect a sophism in a petition, button up your breeches-pocket, for you may be sure that this is the mark aimed at.

Our ignorance is the raw material of every extortion from which we suffer, and we may be certain beforehand, that every sophism is the precursor of an act of plunder.

My good friends I when you detect a sophism in a petition, button up your breeches-pocket, for you may be sure that this is the mark aimed at.

Let us see, then, what is the real object secretly aimed at by the shipowners of Bordeaux and Havre, and the manufacturers of Lyons, and which is concealed under the distinction which they attempt to draw between agricultural and manufactured commodities.

to create useless industries, to favour superfluous conveyances, to support a greater amount of labour than is necessary, not for the good of the public, but at the expense of the public—is to realize a true petitio principii.

It is not labour which is desirable for its own sake; it is consumption.

All labour without a commensurate result is a loss. You may as well pay sailors for pitching stones into the sea as pay them for transporting useless refuse.

A sophism sometimes expands, and runs through the whole texture of a long and elaborate theory. More frequently, it shrinks and contracts, assumes the guise of a principle, and lurks in a word or a phrase.

May God protect us from the devil and from metaphors!

was the exclamation of Paul-Louis. And it is difficult to say which of them has done most mischief in this world of ours. The devil, you will say; for he has put the spirit of plunder into all our hearts.

After all, the design of my present work is not exactly to implant convictions, but rather to awaken doubts.

I have no expectation that the reader, on laying down the book, will exclaim I know; I would much rather that he should say candidly, I am ignorant!

"I am ignorant, for I begin to fear that there is something illusory in the flattering promises of scarcity." (Sophism I.)

Only, the agent employed has been changed; it is no longer by force, but by cunning, that they seize upon the public wealth.

To rob the public, we must first deceive it.

The trick consists in persuading the public that the theft is for its advantage; and by this means inducing it to accept, in exchange for its property, services which are fictitious, and often worse. Hence comes the Sophism,—Sophism theocratic, Sophism economic, Sophism political, Sophism financial.

Hence comes the Sophism,—Sophism theocratic, Sophism economic, Sophism political, Sophism financial. Since; then, force is held in check, the Sophism is not only an evil, but the very genius of evil It must in its turn be held in check also.

And for that end we must render the public more cunning than the cunning, as it has already become stronger than the strong.

Good Public! it is under the influence of this conviction that I dedicate to you this first essay—although the preface is strangely transposed, and the dedication somewhat late.

I speak to those who deem wealth, of some importance. We understand by that word, not the opulence of some classes, but the ease, the material prosperity, the security, the independence, the instruction, the dignity of all.

There are only two means of procuring the necessaries, conveniences, and enjoyments of life: Production and Spoliation.

There are some people who represent Spoliation as an accident, a local and transient abuse, branded by the moralist, denounced by the law, and unworthy of the Economist's attention.

It is rarely the many who despoil the few. Were it so, the few would soon be reduced to such a state as to be no longer able to satisfy the cupidity of the many, and spoliation would die out for want of support.

It is almost always the majority who are oppressed, but spoliation is not the less on this account subject to an inevitable check.

For, if the agent be Force, as in the cases of War and Slavery, it is natural that Force, in the long run, should pass to the side of the greatest number.

Another natural law deposits a second germ of death in the heart of spoliation, which is this:

Spoliation not only displaces wealth, but always partially destroys it.

Slavery paralyzes, to a great extent, men's faculties.

Spoliation not only displaces wealth, but always partially destroys it.

Slavery paralyzes, to a great extent, men's faculties.

Priestcraft diverts men's efforts towards objects which are puerile or hurtful.

Priestcraft diverts men's efforts towards objects which are puerile or hurtful.

Monopoly transfers wealth from one pocket to another, but much is lost in the transference.

This is an admirable law. Without it, provided there existed an equilibrium between the forces of the oppressors and oppressed, spoliation would have no limits. In consequence of the operation of this law, the equilibrium tends always to be upset;

This kind of spoliation is formally forbidden by the decalogue—Thou shalt not steal.

When this takes place between individuals, it is called theft, and leads to the hulks; when it takes place between nations, it is called conquest, and leads to glory.

Whence this difference? It is proper to search out its caùse, for it will reveal to us the existence of an irresistible power, public opinion, which, like the atmosphere, surrounds and envelops us so thoroughly that we cease to perceive it.

Not that in the midst of the most ignorant people pure and devoted priests are never to be found; but the question is, how can we prevent a knave from assuming the cassock, and ambition from encircling his brow with a mitre?

Spoliators obey the Malthusian law: they multiply as the means of existence increase; and a knave's means of existence is the credulity of his dupes.

Public opinion must be enlightened. There is no other remedy.

The agents of the government. Thus, they confer on the executive the power of fixing the limits of its own operations and exactions.

They act like the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who, in place of himself deciding on the number and cut of his coats, referred the whole thing—to his tailor.

And when matters have thus gone on from bad to worse, the people at length have their eyes opened, not to the remedy—(they have not got that length yet)—but to the evil.

We cannot deny that war, slavery, thraldom, priestcraft, government abuses, privileges, frauds of every kind, and monopolies, have been the incontestable and terrible manifestations of these two sentiments combined in the heart of man—desire of enjoyments, and repugnance to fatigue.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Yes, but every one desires to have the greatest possible quantity of bread, with the least possible amount of sweat.

Such is the testimony of history.

The same statesman would never have ventured to say that liberty is too precious a thing for France to stand higgling about its price, had France only reflected that a heavy budget and liberty are incompatible.

It is not by monopolists, but by their victims, that monopolies are maintained.

In the matter of elections, it is not because there are parties who offer bribes that there are parties open to receive them, but the contrary;

Assume the complete diffusion of defensive morality, it resolves itself simply into the conviction that men's interests, rightly understood, are always in accord with justice and general utility. Such a society, although certainly well ordered, would not be very attractive.

There would be fewer cheats simply because there would be fewer dupes.

Vice always lurking in the background, and starved, so to speak, for want of support, would revive the moment that support was restored to it.

Such a society would remind us of one of those exact, rigorous, and just men, who are ready to resent the slightest invasion of their rights, and to defend themselves on all sides from attacks.

You esteem them; you perhaps admire them; you would elect them as deputies; but you would never make them your friends.

But the two principles of morality I have described, instead of running counter to each other, work in concert, attacking vice from opposite directions.

which you will welcome the more willingly, I hope, as it differs in nothing from that which constitutes the privilege which you vote year after year in your own favour.

The means of favouring us, which I have thus marvellously discovered, is to prohibit the use of sharp axes in this country.

I maintain that such a restriction would not be in the least more illogical or more arbitrary than the one to which you subject us in the case of your cloth.

In that case they might perhaps say to themselves, "Better far to be self-supported in the midst of a set of customers in easy circumstances, than to be protected in the midst of an impoverished clientèle."

For to desire to enrich by turns each separate branch of industry by creating a void round each in succession, is as vain an attempt as it would be for a man to try to leap over his own shadow.

I think it necessary to submit to the reader some theoretical remarks on the illusions to which the words dearness and cheapness give rise.

but you will have more customers, and, above all, richer customers. Is it possible you can never have thought of this, when you see nine-tenths of your fellow-citizens underclothed in winter, for want of the commodity which you manufacture?

If you wish to prosper, allow your customers to thrive.

This is a lesson which you have* been very long in learning. When it is thoroughly learnt, each man will seek his own interest in the general good;

At the end of three months, the Celestial Emperor sent again for the mandarin, and said to him:

And Kouang opened his eyes, and looked.

And he saw at some distance from the canal a multitude of men at work. Some were excavating, others were filling up hollows, levelling, and paving; and the mandarin, who was very knowing, said to himself, They are making a highway.

His misfortune arises from his having lost the use of his hands, and not from his having been cured of his leprosy. He would have been a fitter subject for your compassion had he been lame, and leprous into the bargain."

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Beware of that sophism.

This little book of Sophisms is found to be too theoretical, scientific, and metaphysical. Be it so. Let us try the effect of a more trivial and hackneyed, or, if you will, a ruder style.

Alceste. Franchement, il est bon à mettre au Cabinet.

To speak plainly, Good Public! you are robbed.

This is speaking bluntly, but the thing is very evident. (C'est cru, mais c'est clair).

on the contrary, they are perpetrated according to law; and if they are worse than common thefts, they do not come under the cognizance of la correctionnelle.

Besides, right or wrong, we are all robbed or robbers in this business.

The author of this volume might very well cry "Stop thief!" when he buys;

Verily, it is marvellous that people should persist in maintaining that all which an individual steals from the masses is a general gain.

Perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone, the quadrature of the circle, are antiquated problems; but the theory of progress by plunder is still held in honour.

A priori, we should have thought that, of all imaginable puerilities, it was the least likely to survive.

Some people will say, You are partisans, then, of the laissez passer?—economists of the school of Smith and Say? You do not desire the organization of labour.

Yes, gentlemen, organize labour as much as you choose, but have the goodness not to organize theft.

Another, and a more numerous, set keep repeating, premiums, tariffs, all that has been exaggerated. We should use them without abusing them. A judicious liberty, combined with a moderate protection, that is what discreet and practical men desire.

John:

A very complicated simplicity truly!

The man who has resolved this problem must have a hundred times more genius than your Mons. Piron or our Rowland Hill.

Paul:

Bah! let us put charity always in the foreground. It is so fine a figure that its very mask is a good passport.

I shall give my butter to the people, and they will give me their money. Is that what is called selling?

We shall see rising around us cow-houses, dairies, and barrel chums, and the foundations laid of new sources of industry. Not that I have any interest in this proposition. I am not a cowfeeder, nor have I any wish to be so.

The sole motive which actuates me is a wish to be useful to the working classes.

(Applause.)

… buying has disappeared also, and will continue every day to disappear more and more until Paris becomes a bare field, and until the copses of Master Peter have no more value than the copses of an equal extent of land in the Forest of Bondy.

It is thus that monopoly, like every other system of injustice, carries in itself its own punishment.

Son: That appears to me not very clear, but the decadence of Paris is an incontestable fact. Is there no means, then, of counteracting this singular measure that Peter and his colleagues got adopted twenty years ago?

If there be less meat, less firewood, less butter, the share falling to each will be smaller. Now there must be less if we prohibit what should be allowed to enter the city.

Parisians, abundance for each of you can be secured only by general abundance.

The People: Vive, vive l'Abondance!

The People:

Hang nobody, and set everybody free.

These two things are very different, and if you mix them up, you reason as Robinson did. In the most complicated, as in the most simple cases, the sophism consists in this:

Judging of the utility of labour by its duration and intensity, and not by its results

; which gives rise to this economic policy: To reduce the results of labour for the purpose of augmenting its duration and intensity." *

Reply: "

What nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but corn.

"

Reply: "

This is as much as to say that in a ship without provisions, everybody will have as much biscuit as if the vessel were fully victualled.

"

Reply: "

What is essential is, that every great country should have iron.

"

And, by way of improvement, add: "

Phlebotomy is not health, and the proof of it is that bleeding is resorted to for the purpose of restoring health.

"

If you are told that the sun gives you his heat and light without remuneration,

Reply: "So much the better for me, for it costs me nothing to see clearly."

And if you are answered that industry in general loses what would have been paid for artificial light,

Reply: "Don't let that disquiet you.

If we are inundated, it is a sign we have the means of paying for the inundation; and if we have not the means of paying, we shall not be inundated.

"

Reply: "

The government has only to allow the beef to be imported, and the most civilized people in the world will know how to use it without being taught by a master.

"

is there a human foresight apart from humanity? Archimedes might repeat every day of his life, 'With a fulcrum and lever I can move the world;' but he never did move it, for want of a fulcrum and lever.

The lever of the state is the nation; and nothing can be more foolish than to found so many hopes upon the state, which is simply to take for granted the existence of collective science and foresight, after having set out with the assumption of individual imbecility and improvidence.

"

Seeing that the public charges are heavy, I, as a seller of corn, am to pay nothing, and you my neighbour, as a buyer of corn, are to pay double, viz., your own share and mine into the bargain.'

Mr Corn-merchant, my good friend, you may have force at your command, but assuredly you have not reason on your side.

"

Reply:

"Liberty is necessary everywhere, and for the same reason."

If you are told, "Each country has its wants, and we must be guided by that in what we do." (M. Thiers),

Reply:

"Each country acts thus of its own accord, if you don't throw obstacles in the way."

If they tell you, "We have no sheet-iron, and we must allow it to be imported," (M. Thiers),

Reply: "When a country wishes to have everything produced at home, there can be no freights either for exports or imports.

It is just as absurd to desire to have a mercantile marine under a system of prohibition, as it would be to have carts when there is nothing to carry.

"

Reply: "

All injustice is profitable to somebody (except, perhaps, restriction, which in the long run benefits no one).

To argue from the derangement which the cessation of injustice may occasion to the man who profits by it, is as much as to say that a system of injustice, for no other reason than that it has had a temporary existence, ought to exist …

A profound study of the system of protection has taught us this syllogism, upon which the whole doctrine reposes:

The more men work, the richer they become;

The more difficulties there are to be overcome, the more work;

The more men work, the richer they become;

The more difficulties there are to be overcome, the more work;

Ergo, the more difficulties there are to be overcome, the richer they become.

Utopian dreamer, we reply, that is the very reason why we forbid you to make the clock, and order you to make the iron. Don't you see we are providing employment for you?

Sire, it cannot have escaped your sagacity that this is exactly the same thing in effect as if we were to say to the country, "Work with your left hand, and not with the right."

To create obstacles in order to furnish labour with an opportunity of developing itself, was the principle of the old system of restriction, and it is the principle likewise of the new system which is now being inaugurated.

To create obstacles in order to furnish labour with an opportunity of developing itself, was the principle of the old system of restriction, and it is the principle likewise of the new system which is now being inaugurated.

Sire, to regulate industry in this way is not to innovate, but to persevere.

As regards the efficiency of the measure, it is incontestable. It is difficult, much more difficult than one would suppose, to do with the left hand what we have been accustomed to do with the right.

Deprived of all the enjoyments of life, when he, fortnight after fortnight, put a day's wages on the quaterne, how many delicious hours did he afford his family!

Hope was always present at his fireside. The garret was peopled with illusions.

The wife hoped to rival her neighbours in her style of living; the son saw himself the drum-major of a regiment; and the daughter fancied herself led to the altar by her betrothed.

The lottery was the poetry of the poor, and we have lost it.

The lottery gone, what means have we of providing for our protegees? Tobacco-shops and the post-office.

If, in such circumstances, Sire, Utopian dreamers were all at once to agitate for the right hand being again set free, would they not throw the whole country into alarm? Would such a pretended reform not overturn the whole existing state of things?

Then our system must be good, since it could not be put an end to without universal suffering.

And yet we confess we have the melancholy presentiment (so great is human perversity) that some day there will be formed an association for right-hand freedom.

for it may be said that twenty years hence left hands will be as skilful as right hands are at present, and that then you could no longer trust to gaucherie for an increase of national employment.

To that we reply, that according to the most learned physicians the left side of the body has a natural feebleness, which is quite reassuring as regards the labour of the future.

Should your Majesty consent to pass the measure now proposed, a great principle will be established: All wealth proceeds from the intensity of labour. It will be easy for us to extend and vary the applications of this principle.

for this is no more impossible (as we have seen) than to extract iron from the mud of the Seine. You see then, Sire, that the means of increasing national labour can never fail.

And after all has been tried, we have still the practically ex-haustless resource of amputation.

To conclude, Sire, if this report were not intended for publicity, we should take the liberty of soliciting your attention to the great influence which measures of this kind are calculated to confer on men in power.