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Free Market Alternatives to Statutory Law

A Case for Free Market Solutions to Socio-Economic Problems and the Abolishment of Compulsory, State-Mandated, Statutory Law
By: Anthony Knittel
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Worldwide

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for MGMT 533 Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Bases of Management Practices
Dr. Hamilton
December 20, 2007


Free Market Alternatives to Statutory Law
“The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!” (Bastiat, 1998, p. 1).
Claude Frédéric Bastiat (June 30, 1801 – December 24, 1850) was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly. I have invoked Bastiat’s words above because the same situation exists in America today as the France of 1849. The same socialist-communist ideas and plans that were then adopted in France are now sweeping America. The explanations and arguments then advanced by Mr. Bastiat are—word for word—equally valid today. Bastiat maintained a deep distrust of all government, in any form, and worked all his life to demonstrate that government control of private individuals and regulation of private industry was inefficient, economically damaging, and morally wrong. Bastiat asserted that the only purpose of government is to defend the right of an individual to life, liberty, and property. From this definition, Bastiat concluded that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes socialist policies inherently opposed to these very things. In this way, he says, the law is perverted and turned against the thing it is supposed to defend (Bastiat, 1998). This paper examines several areas of current statutory law within the United...