The Law - Frédéric Bastiat, 1850 [1] Bastiat was a great French Economist and liberal political philosopher. He been considered as more of a popularizer than a

The Law - Frédéric Bastiat, 1850 [1] Bastiat was a great French Economist and liberal political philosopher. He been considered as more of a popularizer than an original thinker, but that's unwarranted. The Law is the greatest work of classical liberal political though that I have encountered. In school we all read Locke's Second Treatise of Government, but we should have first read The Law. It's very short--more of a long essay than a full length book--but it packs an earth shattering wallop. Bastiat is also an intellectual ancestor of the Austrian School of economics. The famous Hazlitt book, Economics in One Lesson, is an extended meditation on Bastiat's classic essay, That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen [2], which is the origin of the Broken Window Fallacy. [1] http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html [2] http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html