This Thinker Was the "Czech Bastiat" - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - Tomáš and Lukáš Nikodym:
January 11, 2018 - "On the occasion of Karel Havlíček’s 180th birthday in 2001, one economist called him “The Czech Bastiat”.... We find many similarities between these two men ... most importantly, both possessed a great ability to explain economic phenomena in a very simple, compelling way.... Both men were also economists, journalists, and statesmen. Havlíček was a poet as well....
"Havlíček’s increasingly liberal views (in the classical sense) made him quite unpopular among representatives and supporters of the absolutist monarchy. He fought its authoritarian principles, its censorship, and its repression.... A newspaper he started, National News, was forced to close in January 1850.... Havlíček did not give up. He started a new journal, The Slav, which officially satisfied all the regulations but put forth his views as boldly as he felt safe to print. He focused much of his writing on educating the people on the economics of free markets....
"Havlíček was a devotee of František Palacký, the 'founding father' of Czech democratic politics and its liberal orientation. Both Havlíček and Palacký understood history as a clash between external authority and free, inner reason.... Havlíček’s concepts of individualism and freedom were close to those of John Locke, a pioneer of the foundational view shared by most libertarians today.... As he saw it, the purpose of government was the protection of life, liberty, and property....
"A free-market environment was needed, Havlíček maintained, to benefit fully from the existence of the factory. That included the reduction or abolition of prohibitions and tariffs on foreign goods. Those in business who demanded protectionist policies were, to him, a kind of aristocracy because aristocracy has always been connected with the misuse of the political and legal power of the State....
"Freedom, argued Havlíček, is a necessary precondition of economic prosperity, as well as peace in society. 'It may sound strange, but peace and the certainty of protection of each individual’s property are features of the free countries.' There, he said, instead of the strife that regularly afflicted the unfree countries, economies are spared the turmoil of disruptive uncertainty and violent uprisings....
"He even claimed that every absolutist government, whatever its ideology, was, in fact, a communist government because of the lack of guarantees of individual property. 'The absolutist government is taking under the name of taxes, confiscation, expropriation, etc., the property of others and no one can even protest it. The government is taking the property of some and giving it to its supporters, together with other privileges. Isn’t that communism?'...
"In November 1851, Havlíček was accused again of violating the press law.... Luckily, he was freed by the local court but ... was arrested by police — without any charge or trial — and deported to the small city of Brixen in South Tyrol, ... to spend the rest of his life in exile.
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/this-thinker-was-the-czech-bastiat/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=push_notification
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January 11, 2018 - "On the occasion of Karel Havlíček’s 180th birthday in 2001, one economist called him “The Czech Bastiat”.... We find many similarities between these two men ... most importantly, both possessed a great ability to explain economic phenomena in a very simple, compelling way.... Both men were also economists, journalists, and statesmen. Havlíček was a poet as well....
"Havlíček’s increasingly liberal views (in the classical sense) made him quite unpopular among representatives and supporters of the absolutist monarchy. He fought its authoritarian principles, its censorship, and its repression.... A newspaper he started, National News, was forced to close in January 1850.... Havlíček did not give up. He started a new journal, The Slav, which officially satisfied all the regulations but put forth his views as boldly as he felt safe to print. He focused much of his writing on educating the people on the economics of free markets....
"Havlíček was a devotee of František Palacký, the 'founding father' of Czech democratic politics and its liberal orientation. Both Havlíček and Palacký understood history as a clash between external authority and free, inner reason.... Havlíček’s concepts of individualism and freedom were close to those of John Locke, a pioneer of the foundational view shared by most libertarians today.... As he saw it, the purpose of government was the protection of life, liberty, and property....
"A free-market environment was needed, Havlíček maintained, to benefit fully from the existence of the factory. That included the reduction or abolition of prohibitions and tariffs on foreign goods. Those in business who demanded protectionist policies were, to him, a kind of aristocracy because aristocracy has always been connected with the misuse of the political and legal power of the State....
"Freedom, argued Havlíček, is a necessary precondition of economic prosperity, as well as peace in society. 'It may sound strange, but peace and the certainty of protection of each individual’s property are features of the free countries.' There, he said, instead of the strife that regularly afflicted the unfree countries, economies are spared the turmoil of disruptive uncertainty and violent uprisings....
"He even claimed that every absolutist government, whatever its ideology, was, in fact, a communist government because of the lack of guarantees of individual property. 'The absolutist government is taking under the name of taxes, confiscation, expropriation, etc., the property of others and no one can even protest it. The government is taking the property of some and giving it to its supporters, together with other privileges. Isn’t that communism?'...
"In November 1851, Havlíček was accused again of violating the press law.... Luckily, he was freed by the local court but ... was arrested by police — without any charge or trial — and deported to the small city of Brixen in South Tyrol, ... to spend the rest of his life in exile.
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/this-thinker-was-the-czech-bastiat/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=push_notification
'via Blog this'
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