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.
-- Frederic Bastiat, The Law
Related:
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law
places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the
service of the plunderers, and treats the victim -- when he defends himself --
as a criminal....
