WHAT IS MONEY?

...
...
F. That is to say, to impoverish them. The first conclusion, then, to which you would arrive would be this,—a nation can only gain when another loses.
B. This axiom has the authority of Bacon and Montaigne.
F. It is not the less sorrowful for that, for it implies—that progress is impossible. Two nations, no more than two men, cannot prosper side by side.
B. It would seem that such is the result of this principle.
F. And as all men are ambitious to enrich themselves, it follows that all are desirous, according to a law of Providence, of ruining their fellow-creatures.
B. This is not Christianity, but it is political economy.
F.  Such a doctrine is detestable. But, to continue, I have made you an absolute king. You must not be satisfied with reasoning, you must act. There is no limit to your power. How would you treat this doctrine—wealth is money?
B. It would be my endeavor to increase, incessantly, among my people the quantity of money.
F. But there are no mines in your kingdom. How would you set about it? What would you do?
B. I should do nothing: I should merely forbid, on pain of death, that a single dollar should leave the country.
F. And if your people should happen to be hungry as well as rich?
B. Never mind. In the system we are discussing, to allow them to export dollars, would be to allow them to impoverish themselves.
F. So that, by your own confession, you would force them to act upon a principle equally opposite to that upon which you would yourself act under similar circumstances. Why so?
B. Just because my own hunger touches me, and the hunger of a nation does not touch legislators.
F. Well, I can tell you that your plan would fail, and that no superintendence would be sufficiently vigilant, when the people were hungry, to prevent the dollars from going out and the grain from coming in.
B.  If so, this plan, whether erroneous or not, would effect nothing; it would do neither good nor harm, and therefore requires no further consideration.

F. You forget that you are a legislator. A legislator must not be disheartened at trifles, when he is making experiments on others. The first measure not having succeeded, you ought to take some other means of attaining your end.

B. What end?

Read all dialogue here

by FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT, Essays on Political Economy, David A. Wells, trans. and notes (New York:
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1877).