> Except that it was Quesnay, wasn't it, who invented the very term,
> proclaiming his opposition to the ancien régime's institution of internal
> tariffs with the ringing slogan "laissez faire, laissez passer."
>
>
> Shane Mage
===============
No.
It wasn't.
It was Vincent de Gournay.
Calling for the State to remove internal tariffs is a call for the State to interfere in the political economy, with all the attendant distributive consequences and opportunities for rent seeking that entails.
"[W]hat business men and economists really meant by *laissez-faire* was; prevent everybody else at home and abroad from doing as *they* please, in order that we may do as we please with what we claim as our own." [John Commons The Economics of Collective Action]
"*Political Value*, the value added by advantageous treatment from politicians, whether legislators, judges, executives, or administrative boards, in the exercise of the several powers of sovereignty, in so far as this value exceeds that of the ordinary lawfulness and exposure to competition out of which the value of going plant or goodwill emerges. As a use-value this political value does not usually represent an additional service to customers, creditors, or laborers, inspiring their confidence, loyalty or patronage, but it is rather the superior privilege emanating from the blunders, corruption or wisdom of public officials, as shown in the tax exemption bonuses, special franchises, inside information, judicial opinion, and similar exercise of royal prerogative or the modern sovereignty superior to that received by competitors who enjoy only ordinary lawfulness." [John Commons The Legal Foundations of Capitalism]