Economic Sophisms: The Candlemakers' Petition

Bastiat’s most famous essay is a pretend petition to the French parliament, written in the name of the makers of candles and lamps.

“Gentlemen, you are on the right road: you care little for cheapness and plenty, and your chief care is the producer.We are suffering from the unbearable competition of a foreign rival, who floods our national market with light at an incredibly low price.This rival is none other than the Sun.

We ask you to pass a law ordering the shutting of all windows, skylights, curtains and shutters, every opening through which sunlight enters our houses.If people need more candles, more tallow will be used, so there will be more cows and sheep, and farming will flourish.Thousands of ships will go whaling for lamp oil, and every worker, from the coal miner to the match seller, will earn higher wages.

You will say that sunlight is a free gift of nature.But you already keep out foreign products because they are cheaper, that is, because they are closer to free gifts.If you block what is half free, how can you let in what is entirely free?”

Of course, nobody would ever ban the sun, and that was exactly Bastiat’s point.