Clayton, excellent work, and I wish you luck in completing the project. I too recently re-read L’Etat and sent it to my friends as a read relevant to OWS. That said, I think Bastiat may be a bit stale and “behind the times” for the socialists (i.e. pretty much every economically ignorant person) that have sprouted after his death. Bastiat simply flies over their heads. For them, the answer to Bastiat’s question is clear. Government (democracy) HAS been discovered and it works perfectly fine as the equalizer (redistributor) of the wealth which the rich (corporations, business, capitalists) have extracted from the rest through “greed and exploitation” (LTV). Though faulty to its core, there is no (Bastiat-implied) contradiction and confusion in their narative.
In their view, the resources for all the governments projects (i.e. people’s needs) ARE there (the 1%'s wealth). The majority (OWS) only needs to get vocal enough to force/prod the government into seizing them and using them to satisfy the mob’s demands. The fact that there are so many unsatisfied needs (scarcity) is merely THE PROOF that the 1% have bribed the government to seize much less than the mob’s “fair share”. Just like with every other socialist movement (VP, ZGM, etc.) scarcity has never been a problem. There IS enough stuff out there! The problem is only with how it’s being “distributed”. A government must exist to check the greed of the exploitors (1%) and to make sure that the exploited (99%) get “back” their “fair share”.
I like to think that the OWS people are “the economically ignorant segment of Ron Paul supporters”. Educating them would be no small task, though.
Sad, but true.