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Notable Quote

"If there is one well-established truth in political economy, it is this: That in all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of the consumer, it is in the consumer's best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and of trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price."

— de Molinari, Gustave event 1849

From Evenings on Saint-Lazare Street

Context: Les Soirées de la rue Saint-Lazare (1849), Eleventh Evening. Molinari's clean statement of the universal case for free trade — which he then applies, scandalizing even Bastiat, to the commodity of security itself. The elegance of the argument is that it grants no exceptions: if free trade lowers prices and raises quality, this must be true for all goods, including protection.

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