Legal plunder


Legal plunder is a concept in libertarian thought which describes the act of using the law to redistribute wealth. This was coined by Frédéric Bastiat, most famously in his 1850 book The Law.
Libertarians have described many actions of governments as "legal plunder", including taxation, protectionism, and eminent domain.

In the thought of Frédéric Bastiat

Frédéric Bastiat advocated that the law should only serve to implement what he believed were preexisting natural rights: personality, liberty, and property. According to Bastiat, legal plunder is when the law "takes from some persons that which belongs to them, to give to others what does not belong to them."
was stoned so that the king could take his vineyard as a vegetable garden.
Bastiat gave many examples of what he considered to be legal plunder: