Gustave de Molinari: Governance

Gustave de Molinari was Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist. Explore interesting quotes on governance.
Gustave de Molinari: 56   quotes 1   like

“It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 25

World , Faith , Law , Nature

“Because one fine day they took it into their heads to question and to reason, and in questioning, in reasoning, they discovered that their governors governed them no better than they, simpl[e] mortals out of communication with Providence, could have done themselves.It was free inquiry that demonetized the fiction of divine right, to the point where the subjects of monarchs or of aristocracies based on divine right obey them only insofar as they think it in their own self-interest to obey them.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 47

Communication , Question , Thinking

“The moral authority of governors rests, in reality, on the self-interest of the governed. The latter having a natural tendency to resist anything harmful to their self-interest, unacknowledged authority would continually require the help of physical force.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 51

Nature , Reality , Help

“The production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition. … [N]o government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 22

Law

“There are two ways of considering society. According to some, the development of human associations is not subject to providential, unchangeable laws. Rather, these associations, having originally been organized in a purely artificial manner by primeval legislators, can later be modified or remade by other legislators, in step with the progress of social science. In this system the government plays a preeminent role, because it is upon it, the custodian of the principle of authority, that the daily task of modifying and remaking society devolves.According to others, on the contrary, society is a purely natural fact. Like the earth on which it stands, society moves in accordance with general, preexisting laws. In this system, there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as social science; there is only economic science, which studies the natural organism of society and shows how this organism functions.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 15-16

Law , Way , Nature , Study

“Everywhere, men resign themselves to the most extreme sacrifices rather than do without government and hence security, without realizing that in so doing, they misjudge their alternatives.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 20

Men

“Everywhere, when societies originate, we see the strongest, most warlike races seizing the exclusive government of the society. Everywhere we see these races seizing a monopoly on security within certain more or less extensive boundaries, depending on their number and strength.And, this monopoly being, by its very nature, extraordinarily profitable, everywhere we see the races invested with the monopoly on security devoting themselves to bitter struggles, in order to add to the extent of their market, the number of their forced consumers, and hence the amount of their gains.War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security.Another inevitable consequence has been that this monopoly has engendered all other monopolies.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 34-35

Nature , Dependency

“No government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 23.

“A careful examination of the facts will decide the problem of government more and more in favor of liberty, just as it does all other economic problems. We are convinced, so far as we are concerned, that one day societies will be established to agitate for the freedom of government, as they have already been established on behalf of the freedom of commerce.And we do not hesitate to add that after this reform has been achieved, and all artificial obstacles to the free action of the natural laws that govern the economic world have disappeared, the situation of the various members of society will become the best possible.”

Gustave de Molinari

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 60-61

World , Law , Nature , Problem