Frédéric
Bastiat
1801 — 1850
The most entertaining economist in the classical tradition — and the most urgent, because he was dying while he wrote the most important things.
He wrote the Candlemakers' Petition in 1845: a formal request to the legislature asking it to block all windows so that domestic candle manufacturers could compete on equal terms with the sun. He meant it seriously.
The Law (1850): written while dying of tuberculosis, finished in the year of his death. Its argument is simple and devastating — the law is legitimate when it protects rights; it becomes legal plunder when used to redistribute from some to others. The instrument does not change because the government is holding it.
He also introduced "the seen and the unseen" — the most important analytical tool in economics that most people have never heard of.