Legal Plunder Defined

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.  It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.  The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

What is legal plunder?  You won’t find the phrase in a dictionary, but the following working definition should prove useful:

Legal plunder (n):

a. legalized theft

b. wealth redistribution through legislation

c. a destabilizing political force

d. a cancer infecting the free-markets

e. an estimated 52% of the federal government budget

Before discussing further the nature of legal plunder, perhaps we should begin with a civics lesson.  In order to fully comprehend the criminal nature of legal plunder, we must have in our minds a firm conviction of what the legitimate purpose of government is.  We need only to remind ourselves of the famous words penned by Thomas Jefferson in one of our most cherished American state papers, The Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

In other words, governments are instituted among men to protect their God given rights – nothing more.  Step outside the bounds of legitimate government and you cross over into tyranny and despotism.  Frederic Bastiat’s ‘The Law’ provides further insight into the proper role of government:

Each of us has a natural right – from God – to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.  These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other.  For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality?  And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend – even by force – his person, his liberty, and his property, then if follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly.  Thus the principle of collective right – its reason for existing, its lawfulness – is based on individual right.  And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute.  Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force – for the same reason – cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.¹

Simply stated, the common force (i.e., the State) can only perform acts that the citizens comprising that common force are morally and legally permitted to act upon.  The flip side of that coin is that if an act committed by an individual is criminal, it should be self-evident that the State has no right or authority to commit a similar act.  Citizens can organize to protect their rights, but cannot join hands to violate the rights of others.  Therefore, the State – the common force organized to protect rights - cannot legitimately violate the rights of others.

Generally speaking, legal plunder is the act of coercively taking private property from one individual and giving it to another.  The most common mechanism used today to plunder the citizenry is through the collection of taxes – granted, some of the collected revenue is for legitimate purposes of government, but much, if not most, represents government sanctioned theft.  While taxation is the mechanism used to plunder the People, it is legislation that gives legal plunder the façade of legality.  However, ‘legal’ does not necessarily mean ‘legitimate.’  Use of the political process in this fashion is very dangerous in that legalized plunder blurs the distinction between justice and injustice.  Stealing from someone is always and everywhere unjust.  Why then is it not equally unjust if the State plunders its citizens?

What are some examples of state sponsored theft?  Primary examples include welfare, food stamps, school lunches, and any other government program designed to ‘redistribute the wealth’ of a nation.  Social Security must also be included, to the extent that an individual withdraws more funds than he or she has paid into the system.  All of these programs are at their core coerced charity.

There are other, more indirect and insidious² forms of plunder that are generally more difficult to identify but correspondingly more dangerous to the body politic.  Medicare and Medicaid are more akin to insurance programs, but these are in reality indirect forms of legal plunder as the programs are structured by design to subsidize healthcare costs for those who cannot afford to pay for them – but someone does indeed pay for this care:  other taxpayers.  So in effect, Medicare and Medicaid are cleverly disguised forms of wealth redistribution, which, as we have noted in our working definition, is nothing more than legal plunder.  Other more sinister examples of indirect plunder include fractional reserve banking and our fiat currency unit we call the US Dollar – the widespread pillage associated with these forms of indirect plunder will be addressed in more detail in future posts.

Let us turn once again to Frederic Bastiat, where he defines “spoliation” (the French equivalent of the word plunder) this way:

When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it – without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud – to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.³

Bastiat continues:

I say that this act is exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and everywhere.⁴

Indeed, the law now regularly commits acts of plunder in the name of philanthropy.  The statist may say that for the good of the poor and the elderly shared sacrifice is necessary, and that the state is the only viable method to consistently help those in need.  However, legal plunder is morally repulsive on many levels, and can only be justified through obfuscation and emotional appeal.  In a scathing exposé of collectivism (a form of legal plunder), Lyle H. Rossiter lays bare the moral bankruptcy of progressive causes:

But the social pathology of collectivism extends well beyond the economic realm.… beyond their regressive consequences, these policies adversely affect social order by generating, among other negative conditions, various degrees of class conflict between the recipients of welfare benefits and the productive individuals whose assets are confiscated to support them. Examples of this type of conflict include ongoing disputes over the funding of welfare, Medicare and Social Security programs. Liberal government policy pits producers against non-producers, the well against the sick, the young, against the old, and one race against another as the liberal agenda's federal programs usurp the community's authority and preempt its resources for charitable assistance to its own poor, sick and elderly citizens through voluntary efforts. What is promoted as "compassionate" in these programs can be seen in reality to be divisive and destructive, as the politicians incite conflict with the propaganda of victim-hood, all the while alienating the citizens from their own community's resources and discouraging voluntary cooperation. ⁵

Atlas Shrugged anyone?  Most people genuinely desire to help those who are less fortunate than themselves.  But helping others can be a messy business – all of that ‘holding people accountable for their actions’ nonsense can be very tiresome and problematic.  Wouldn’t it be easier if we simply let the government take care of the needs of the poor?  What possible harm could come from this magnanimity?  After all, aren’t we our brothers’ keepers?  Here’s what Bastiat has to say about the law and charity:

You say: “There are persons who have no money,” and you turn to the law.  But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk.  Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society.  Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in.  If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody.  But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money.  It does not promote equality of income.  The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons.  When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder. ⁶

The danger in combining charity and law is that ALL taxes are ultimately collected at gunpoint.  Where is this side of the moral debate?  Governments are instituted among men to secure their God given rights, not violate those rights by depriving one man the fruits of his labor and arbitrarily giving it to another.  This legalized pillaging not only destabilizes and undermines the legitimacy of the government – it will ultimately lead to revolt.  The state therefore cannot be the means of plunder without undermining its very purpose – to secure our God given rights.  From this we can draw the following conclusion:  that any official act of a governing body that operates outside of the legitimate scope and purpose of government constitutes an abuse of power.

1. Bastiat, Frederic, “The Law”, Foundation for Economic Education, page 2.

2. Dictionary.com provides a felicitous definition of the word insidious:  “Operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect.”

3. Bastiat., page 22.

4. Bastiat, page 22.

5. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D., ‘‘The Liberal Mind:  The Psychological Causes of Political Madness’’, 2006, pp 71-72.

6. Bastiat, page 27.