And this is relevant to this little girl bypassing the constraint of acquiring land/capital because....
Obviously the little girl didn't bypass anything. She didn't have to purchase the inputs because her mother certainly wouldn't have accused her of stealing them.
But if you had read that essay...then you would have realized that everything requires inputs. Do you think I would argue that inputs aren't required for lemonade when they obviously were? If she didn't have the inputs then she wouldn't have been able to make the lemonade. Just like if you don't have the necessary inputs then you can't make a pencil. This is the basic division of labor concept.
Your argument was an obvious reference to Elizabeth Warren's speech...
I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No! There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
As a pragmatarian I have no problem with taxes. My issue is with people like Elizabeth Warren who somehow think they know better than 150 million taxpayers exactly which inputs from the public sector are truly necessary for the successful operation of their businesses.
If roads are truly essential for business owners to make money...then they would spend their taxes on roads. If educated workers are truly essential for business owners to make money...then they would spend their taxes on public education. If maurauding bands and fires are truly detrimental to business owners' bottom line...then they would spend their taxes on firemen and police.
But you can't say that those government inputs are essential...and then turn around and argue that taxpayers would not fund them. And to argue that Elizabeth Warren and 538 congresspeople know better than 150 million taxpayers is beyond absurd.
Nobody pulls themselves up from their bootstraps? Fine...sure...great. But if you think you know better than 150 million of our most productive citizens which public goods are truly essential for the successful operation of their businesses...then you suffer from something that Hayek referred to as the fatal conceit.
Dealing with people's fatal conceit is like being Dutch Oven'd. But nobody can clear the air better than Bastiat. He's febreze for conceit.
Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority. - Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
This means that the terraces of the Champ-de-Mars are ordered first to be built up and then to be torn down. The great Napoleon, it is said, thought he was doing philanthropic work when he had ditches dug and then filled in. He also said: "What difference does the result make? All we need is to see wealth spread among the laboring classes." - Bastiat, The Seen vs the Unseen
In the first place, justice always suffers from it somewhat. Since James Goodfellow has sweated to earn his hundred-sou piece with some satisfaction in view, he is irritated, to say the least, that the tax intervenes to take this satisfaction away from him and give it to someone else. Now, certainly it is up to those who levy the tax to give some good reasons for it. We have seen that the state gives a detestable reason when it says: "With these hundred sous I am going to put some men to work," for James Goodfellow (as soon as he has seen the light) will not fail to respond: "Good Lord! With a hundred sous I could have put them to work myself." - Frederic Bastiat, The Seen vs the Unseen
When James Goodfellow gives a hundred sous to a government official for a really useful service, this is exactly the same as when he gives a hundred sous to a shoemaker for a pair of shoes. It's a case of give-and-take, and the score is even. But when James Goodfellow hands over a hundred sous to a government official to receive no service for it or even to be subjected to inconveniences, it is as if he were to give his money to a thief. It serves no purpose to say that the official will spend these hundred sous for the great profit of our national industry; the more the thief can do with them, the more James Goodfellow could have done with them if he had not met on his way either the extralegal or the legal parasite. - Frederic Bastiat, The Seen vs the Unseen
Thus, considered in themselves, in their own nature, in their normal state, and apart from all abuses, public services are, like private services, purely and simply acts of exchange. - Bastiat
If the socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the state should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better. There is, however, a point on this road that must not be passed; it is the point where governmental foresight would step in to replace individual foresight and thus destroy it. It is quite evident that organized charity would, in this case, do much more permanent harm than temporary good. - Bastiat, Justice and Fraternity
Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer, for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race. - Bastiat
