How to Identify Legal Plunder

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply.
See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them,
and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if
the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing
what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil
itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it
invites reprisals. If such a law—which may be an isolated case—
is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and
develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly,
defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is
obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that
this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry
is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor
workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The
acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The presentday
delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of
everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of
organizing it.

Frederic Bastiat, The Law