Book Club: Bastiat
The Fighting for a Free Future Book Club loved Bastiat. We hope you do too.
Last night, the Fighting for a Free Future Book Club discussed Frederic Bastiat's classics "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" and "The Candle Maker's Petition". We loved his timeless writing: we hope you do too.
You can find Bastiat’s collected works in full here. My speaking note introducing the session follows below.
Speaking Note: Bastiat – What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen and The Candlemakers’ Petition
Introduction to Bastiat
Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) was a French economist, writer, and politician—most famous for his wit, clarity and passionate defence of free trade and individual liberty.
He was writing in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, a time of deep political and economic turmoil. His enduring gift to us is his ability to make profound economic insights vivid and accessible.
1. What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen
Core idea
Bastiat introduces the concept of opportunity cost through the parable of the broken window. The fallacy he attacks: that destruction, or spending per se, stimulates the economy.
“The seen”: the glazier earns money to repair the window. “The unseen”: what the shopkeeper could have done with that money instead—invest, save, or buy something new.
Questions for discussion
How does this principle apply to modern policy—e.g. stimulus spending, public works, defence contracts?
Are there current political narratives that rely on ignoring the “unseen”?
Is the problem economic illiteracy, or a deeper moral and political instinct to do something, even at great cost?
How does the fallacy of the broken window appear in post-crisis economic policies—e.g. after COVID-19 or in response to climate events?
In politics, how often are policies judged only by their immediate effects rather than their long-term consequences?
How does media coverage contribute to our focus on the “seen”? How can we counter this tendency in public debate?
Are there cases where the “unseen” is dismissed as speculative or irrelevant? How can we help people to value what is not immediately visible?
2. The Candlemakers’ Petition
Core idea
A satirical letter from candlemakers asking the state to block out the sun to protect their industry from unfair competition.
Bastiat skewers protectionism by showing its logic when taken to absurdity. He anticipates public choice theory by revealing how special interests dress up their demands as public good.
Questions for discussion
What makes this satire so effective—and so enduring?
Where do we see modern equivalents of this logic? (E.g. tariffs, subsidies, tech regulation?)
What can classical liberals learn from Bastiat’s rhetorical approach?
What current industries or interest groups could be said to be writing their own version of the Candlemakers’ Petition?
How does modern protectionism present itself as defending national security, sustainability or cultural identity?
Can AI regulation, for example, be viewed through the lens of Bastiat’s satire—protecting legacy systems from competition under the guise of safety?
When politicians champion “buy local” or “levelling up,” are they sometimes engaging in the same logic Bastiat mocked?
Closing thought
Bastiat helps us to see what is often hidden in economic and political decision-making.
His challenge is not only intellectual but moral: to respect people’s freedom to act with their own resources in ways we may not see or understand.
Let us ask: in our own work, how can we help others see what is not seen?
I have always liked the Broken Window Fallacy but not heard of the candlemakers petition which is just delicious. It would be interesting to draw comparisons between both and the apparent renationalising of steel making in the UK when one of the absurd challenges that industry faces is energy costs several times that of the competition when cheap home produced energy is on our doorstep. You were honourably the excerption Steve but previous Conservative administrations as well as the current Labour one have insisted on shooting the nation in both feet in this regard.