Frédéric Bastiat：Economic Sophisms, Excerpt 265

Manufactures, shipping, labour--all have for end the general, the public good; to create useless industries, to favour superfluous conveyances, to support a greater amount of labour than is necessary, not for the good of the public, but at the expense of the public--is to realize a true _petitio principii_. It is not labour which is desirable for its own sake; it is consumption. All labour without a commensurate result is a loss. You may as well pay sailors for pitching stones into the sea as pay them for transporting useless refuse. Thus, we arrive at the result to which all economic sophisms, numerous as they are, conduct us, namely, confounding the means with the end, and developing the one at the expense of the other.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44145
Locator：Excerpt 265 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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