A short film made by some Mises University students. See what you think.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/13436/the-broken-window-2/
The Broken Window
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Win.
Baker’s voice was sort of annoying, but overall a good video.
Indeed, I recall a surly drama critic at a high school festival (oh, about a thousand years ago). He was an egghead version of Simon Cowell, self-serving critic on the American television show _American Idol_. An S.O.B. to be sure, but he was correct. The high school critic said, much to the horrified ears of the students and some parents, “If you’re going to do a Groucho Marx imitation, do it only if it’s good.” So take note, “Italian baker.”
How refreshing that I did not have to withstand the cacophonous, mind slapping effects of half-second, shaking cameras, twelve different photo angles, and noise. Goes to show you that steady, direct, clean filmmaking can be quite engaging, even with an arithmetic model.
Nicely done.
I like the visuals. I like the narration. I like the music.
The character voices, however, are distracting and don’t fit the tone of the rest of the video.
If the story of the characters had simply been narrated, this video would be great.
Still, kudos to the students.
An outstanding contribution to the world of basic economics education. These students should be proud. They have created something beautiful, effective, and beneficent.
Well done. Thank you.
Did you hire the Italian guy from the Virtual Barber Shop?
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Wow! Just wow!
Yeah, ditch the thick Italian accent and it would be perfect.
This is GREAT! Succinct, accurate, and well-presented. I’m saving this to refer people to whenever necessary (i.e., daily).
The Italian accent is just a little cheesy though. May as well fix it, because this could get a whole lot of views.
However, I’ve heard people say that the broken window fallacy is false. Better get ready to handle objections.
Ditch the accents. Please.
Please ditch the accents.
agree with everyone on the accents. they are -how you say?- NOTTA SO GOOD! MAMMA MIA! XD
This is incredibly well done and impressive. Bravo.
other than accents, awesome. normal voices would have been better. i want to post this video on facebook but all i have is an iphone and without the title of the video i am unable to search youtube to copy the link.
Well done. I will be sharing it.
You can right click on the video to open it on youtube or.
Here you go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG3AKoL0vEs
Let’s see what we’ve learned from this video.
First, physical damage destroys wealth. That would be correct.
Second, WW Two provided a jobs stimulus that brought us out of the Depression. Also true.
Third, 9/11 provided a boost to our economy. True as well. We had a huge consequent burst of defense-related spending, with Homeland Security and whatnot. Plus, of course, two messy and intractable wars. All money spent, even if not well spent.
And fourth, that no matter what we spend our money on, we might have spent it on something else. Irrefutable. But a little silly. Every time we spend a dollar we have choices.
Out of the tremendous destruction of WW Two we were able to release ourselves from the intractable depression we had become mired in through full employment. A full employment, we might add, that did not come during the years there was no stimulus, and we waited on the private realm’s creation of work to be done. But they didn’t do it, and the government eventually did… creating a new era of unparalleled and widespread prosperity. Plus, much money was made (and fresh wealth created) on the reconstruction of a destroyed Europe.
So what might have been the outcome had we stayed out of WW Two?
A: We’d likely still have remained in a depression until Hitler’s legions relieved us of our pain, by invading the US and running us as a subsidiary.
And what might have been the outcome had Hitler never have tried to rule Europe?
A: Less wealth would have been destroyed, of course. But there would have been many fewer jobs also. And as those of us who haven’t amassed great wealth need jobs to survive, a case could be made that the destruction (or something like it) was needed for wage seekers to prosper.
Bastiat had a lot to say about the net loss of wealth. But not much to say about the creation of work to be performed for pay. And that is also a societal value, every bit as much as is the accumulation of wealth. In fact, most of us can’t live without it. So no matter how much wealth accumulates in the hands of the wealthy class, the rest of us need some gainful task to be accomplished by our labors. Otherwise we cease to be.
Are you for real? How can you come to this site, and I presume read some of the material here, and still espouse this nonsense?
Even if WWII allowed the US government to effectively commandeer all of the nation’s resources towards the war effort, our obliteration of foreign capital as a result of our bombs destroyed their productive capacity after the war. As a result, the whole of humanity suffered more from our entrance. Stop looking at just one segment or event in time, and look at the broader picture.
htran: May I assume you’re aware that we didn’t start that war?
Possibly the greatest unexamined assumption in Austrian Theory is that government investment is ALWAYS wasted, and NEVER serves any useful purpose. Whereas private investment…? You know the rest.
By the early 1940s it had become apparent to everyone that Hitler had a grand plan for Europe, the Middle East and every part of Asia he didn’t award to Japan. And that it entailed killing off all the races he couldn’t use, enslaving those he thought might serve as the trainable handicapped, and putting the Nordic race in charge of everything.
So there was every reason to believe that the potentially strongest economy on earth might have to intercede. It wasn’t like the first one, the Great War. That one really was sort of an elective exercise.
If the government hadn’t gone to war and hired everyone to get to work, we’d still have been in the Depression. We know that available private funds would not have created a war machine sufficient to save the world. And we even know that they wouldn’t have been enough to resuscitate the domestic economy… because by 1941, they hadn’t.
The obliteration of foreign capital really happened back in 1914-1918, and continued throughout the 1920s. Most of the advanced nations had recurrent financial crises and ruinous bouts of hyperinflation, following the mass destruction of wealth they had either willingly engaged in or been subject to. So Europe, by 1938, could barely stand on its own feet.
This isn’t one you can blame on the Yanks. We didn’t ruin Europe– they did it to themselves.
And best of all, the unintended consequence of all that deficit spending was that we set the stage for a period of general prosperity and rising fortunes such as the world had never previously experienced. So out of a ruinous war, some good did emerge… due to massive spending on a scale that, without the threat of Hitler, would never have been politically possible.
80, 90 times you’ve been told it’s not always completely wasted and that private investment is never perfect.
I must be misreading, because the implication here is stupefying. I’m practically at a loss, and almost hoping mpol and mex and matt are taking the weekend off, because I’m just ducking when the s— starts flying.
A couple of immediate thoughts, as I need to step away from the porch and just sigh in dismay.
Firstly, U.S. citizens might be a lot of things, and blindly rationalizing government agents’ dirty work is more ubiquitous than I care to admit. But stooges for the 1940’s Nazis, I don’t think so.
Secondly, “Bastiat had a lot to say about the net loss of wealth. But not much to say about the creation of work to be performed for pay.”
I’m sorry??? What is the complement to loss of wealth? How can you possibly be overlooking the associative component, which precisely is work creation, for pay?
I can only think of Dave Barry, “See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.”
I guess I feel much better now about Nagaski, Dresden, and the wonderful Big Three.
I’m playing Starcraft 2. You shouldn’t have to worry about me too much
If it really annoys you that we reply I am not sure why since you are doing the same thing without us?
Annoy me? On the contrary. Was simply an observation that I was going easy compared to what choice words would be coming michael’s way. : )
Haha, I got you anyway, Franklin. Maybe because I really was on a break into the real world at a family reunion. This one was a *very* special episode of our beloved sitcom, judging by the first few lines and the all the response (too many laughs to credit).
For some time I’ve half-way agreed with Richie:
“Why don’t you guys please ignore this troll? The more you engage this moron, the more you are his dog.”
But then I agree with you and Donald too. I’m somewhere in the middle, I just glance at his delirious tomes anymore, scanning for the inevitable sources of a good joke.
[And if this is Jeff, he has completely lost his mind]
To think that Hitler’s “legions” could cross 3,000 miles of open ocean to invade the US shoreline is quite possibly the most militarily ignorant supposition ever made. How many ships, landing vessels and men did it take for the Allies to cross the small English Channel to invade Normandy? How many more would it require to cross 3,000 miles of the Atlantic? Needless to say the size of this necessary fleet would be beyond any — or all — European country’s abilities and resources.When you consider how easy of a target this flotilla would be for submarines, surface craft, airplanes and even Atlantic storms, the endeavor becomes as large an impossibility as it would be in reality.
But then again, who would expect someone who espouses such flawed thinking in economics to be able to think clearly or accurately on military stratagem?
Indeed, Hitler couldn’t even cross the English Channel. He never had a chance to, even if he won the Battle of Britain. Royal navy much, much to strong.
Militaristically impossible.
Also very interesting, the German Reich was nearly broke at the beginning of WWII.(They where spending twice as much as they brought in) So, in a massive joke on history, if Neville Chamberlain’s policy was followed to the end, conceivably, Hitler would have been a side note in history. Kind of funny actually.
Phil, you make a good point. I doubt a victorious Axis would bother following up their success in winning the rest of the planet by invading America right away. They wouldn’t have to.
Germany would control everything out to India, including the entire Soviet Union. Japan would take East Asia and the entire Pacific, including Australia and Hawaii. And Italy would get, oh, maybe Albania and half of Africa. So it would take a few years to digest that meal.
But the Axis powers would have cornered nearly all the oil. And nearly all the world’s population. You don’t think it would only be a matter of time before they digested the Americas economically, as dessert and an after-dinner mint?
You are an idiot. When thinking about history, the dumbest and most common thing ideologues like yourself do is pretend that it started on whatever date is most convenient for them. These incredible, Satanic forces of pure evil you paint in your childish way did not arise straight out of hell in the 1930s. They were direct responses to the English/American Empire (itself the result of mundane evil).
You speak of Russia as if it were a doormat. They won the second installment of the Great War with a little help from fools like you, they may well have fought the German Empire to a standstill without it. Germany would never control these populations. The Ukrainians for instance gladly welcomed them for about 5 minutes until they got to know their “liberators”. A lot like your troops today all over the Middle East, doing things like scratching “Semper Fi” on to ancient ziggurats.
Dead right Matt, these unending excuses for military intervention will kill us all. Justify one intervention by pointing to the consequences of the previous intervention…..insanity.
All interventionists and for all reasons today remind me of the children’s parable, “The Little Old Lady That Swallowed a Fly.”
Let me at least congratulate you for putting something of substance in your comment. It’s not often that you venture a thought.
The subject under discussion was not what led to Hitler’s rise. It was what would have happened had we not entered the war on England’s side.
So I have not just pretended that WW II “started on whatever date is most convenient for me.” Nor is the following accurate:
“They were direct responses to the English/American Empire (itself the result of mundane evil).”
Evil as all empires may be, Germany didn’t just decide to rule the world because they hated the British Empire. And America’s empire was nothing much in those days. Maybe the Germans coveted our occupation of Puerto Rico? The Philippines? Germany’s competitive rise initially came about because they wanted to dominate the world economically and militarily. So did all the other ‘advanced’ nations. Ask Otto von Bismarck about this.
It is, however, the case that the Nazis rose to power in a tide of resentment against the terms they were obliged to accept at Versailles. This was much the same as the way the Iraqi public stood by Saddam all the more after the onerous terms he was forced to accept after the Gulf War. There is indeed a message there for all conquerors to heed: a little forbearance in victory can save a whole lot of trouble later on.
Then there’s this:
“You speak of Russia as if it were a doormat. They won the second installment of the Great War with a little help from fools like you, they may well have fought the German Empire to a standstill without it.”
The USSR was militarily incompetent at the advent of WW II. Stalin had nearly wiped out his general staff during the purges of 1938. He had hardly any generals left. And his troops were so sparsely equipped that when the Soviets invaded Finland in the Winter War, they surrendered in droves to the plucky, well equipped Finns just to get hot meals and real boots. POW conditions were better than what Stalin had given them to win a war! Not to mention the fact that their patriotic spirit was so low they had special political units standing behind them with machine guns, just to force them to charge forward, not disappear into the underbrush.
The Soviets crumbled under the Nazi advance, although much personal bravery was exhibited. See Valery Grossman’s excellent war diary, A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945. Or his masterful novel, Life and Fate. What saved their butts was American lend-lease. And they know it. When I was in Russia, many years later, half the people I met still remembered to thank me (as an American) for helping them save Russia. Without our equipment it’s likely they would have saved their territories beyond the Volga. I doubt they’d have been able to retake European Russia or the Ukraine from the Wehrmacht. Both sides were exhausted after Stalingrad.
Oh well. Onward. “Germany would never control these populations. The Ukrainians for instance gladly welcomed them for about 5 minutes until they got to know their “liberators”.”
This isn’t even good revisionism. The Ukrainians hated Stalin so much they mostly all went over to the German side, even knowing they were just switching conquerors. Not to mention 3/4 of a million Russians. You don’t recall Vlasov’s Army (aka the Armed Forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia)? At war’s end, well over a million remaining members of this army surrendered to the Brits and the Yanks in Austria. And were treacherously handed over to Stalin for execution or the camps.
Hitler had the drive and momentum. His big downfall was turning on Stalin, overextending himself and expending his strength at Stalingrad and Kursk. I will accede that at that moment, lend-lease had not yet kicked in and the battles were won largely with only grit. But still it was apparent to all that without US involvement, the world was in grave peril from the Nazi war machine.
BTW I will still have to protest your constant ragging on me for “my” invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. You can’t pin that one on me. I was against it from the start.
Definitely arguable, as I suggested below, but only miscreants even greater than you can argue for the wisdom of Wilson’s war. And there were not two World Wars, there was an intermission in one Great War, and there hasn’t been an intermission since.
As I’ve explained over and over again, they are your wars because of your woeful ignorance or disgusting compromises. Why did you choose Obama as your agent when he time and again funded these murderous boondoggles and when he clearly convinced the money men that he would continue them and be their man to sell new ones?
Distilled to its essence Michael’s pitiful point is that the sheltered worlds of the rich and comfortable must be turned upside down once in a while so as to let hoarded money fall from their pockets and into the hands of the desperate laboring class. Wars, disasters, and draconian measures are all OK so long as their aim is to shakedown anyone with greater than average wealth.
This mindset demonstrates to me that Michael has yet to make the effort to analyze even the basics of Austrian economic theory. Until he takes some time off (say a year) to study these basics seriously I resolve to wade no longer through the pseudo-intellectual bilge he so easily generates.
“Distilled to its essence Michael’s pitiful point is that the sheltered worlds of the rich and comfortable must be turned upside down once in a while so as to let hoarded money fall from their pockets and into the hands of the desperate laboring class. Wars, disasters, and draconian measures are all OK so long as their aim is to shakedown anyone with greater than average wealth.”
No matter how many times I go to the trouble of saying something, you want to believe I’m wrong. So you have to twist and distort my point until it’s something I never said.
Sad to say, the USG does understand that its prosperity is dependent on a permanent wartime economy. And so its leaders are compelled to keep it going by expansion. And, from time to time, they need to start an actual war, just to keep the justification for all that spending alive.
These are things I have never supported. It’s evil. No one could honestly think otherwise. But that’s the way it works right now. The only way my position differs from yours is that you very likely believe we should tear it all down and start over. And my observation is that every point in history where an advanced nation gets thrown into revolutionary chaos, it ends up broken. And the New Order that follows is usually totalitarian.
Please don’t tell me we’re totalitarian already. I assure you we’re not. This is kid stuff compared to the real Ts.
I have become a committed anti-revolutionary. I understand that the only way we can make use of America is to take over its government through democratic means (as was intended by our Founders) and turn it toward better uses. No more wars, no disasters, no draconian measures. Instead, democracy based on the free choices of an enlightened, engaged and non-bamboozled public.
That will not be happening for as long as half the nation is squabbling with the other half on tactics, and perpetually undoing one another’s work. We’re tearing the place down brick by brick when we should be rebuilding it to better serve us. My opinion.
Shut up and stop voting Democrat then.
Where’s your third party?
Heard the one about how a trained-from-birth fully grown elephant can be held down with a tiny stake placed in the dirt?
Homer: Thanks. Are you sure you don’t want to come? In a civil war re-enactment we need lots of Indians to shoot.
Apu: I don’t know what part of that sentence to correct first, but I cannot come.
Echoing the quote from Apu, i simply do not know what part of Michael’s post to make fun of first. And I really looked. It is just one huge wilful clusterfuck of a misunderstanding. He has officially defeated me – well played Michael, superb. I am in awe truly, your ability to waffle one whilst ignoring the fundamentals no matter how many time they are put to you is truly incredible. You’re like a terrible X-factor contestant who keeps giong back on stage to ever increasing boos.
Well, at least i presume it’s wilful. Because if it is not, i’ve spent some of my time on this site arguing with the person who must have the highest value of
(opinion of himself x willingness to bullshit) / (intelligence x knowledge of economics)
in history, time I’ll never get back.
Alternatively, maybe I’m over analysing, maybe it’s simpler. Can we see a photo michael, this might help me decide whether you’re collossally dimwitted or just a first class asshole?
It’s Tucker, I tell ya, having some warped fun, like the sadistic kid, gleefully shaking the glass jar of red and black ants. : )
By the way, not being a Simpsons follower, I’d never heard that quote. But what a great laugh it gave me.
That Dave Barry quote was pretty good – on his wikiquote page it also says
“I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me.”
Since I discovered Austrian Economics, this applies to me. And good – who wants to sit around having the stimulus “explained” to them by people who, when you ask them to define money, stare at you “like a dog that’s just been shown a card trick”?
michael,
Intentionally breaking windows is not the answer. Unless, of course, the question is “What did you young punks do last Saturday night after you left the party?”
I’m still working on your letter I promised, but I admit that I got a little bogged down on those intellectual property threads. I’m a slow reader and I still work for a living, most days. I’ve been waiting for some rather obvious conclusions to be drawn. Nothing but disappointment so far. Oh well.
As you may know from that little spat about IP, whether or not information is something that can even be owned, the concern boils down to the obvious. That is the same thing you are concerned about, can a few of us own the most and control the masses by keeping their purses from containing enough coins to jingle. Now I really don’t think you actually endorse vandalism, but that you are genuinely concerned that there needs to be some way for the less fortunate latecomers among us to garner more than an eviction notice for their efforts.
Other than taxation, there seems to be little else that has the potential to remedy that situation. But it appears that you are becoming less and less enamored with your government’s ability to actually do anything right. You are also disappointed with what you have seen so far regarding libertarianism. You may be right, that under a libertarian social structure, as it now appears it would function, all wealth would flow to the landed and or the most capable in a relatively short time. Sure everyone else would be free, free that is to work in my mine or on my farm and pay me rent to live in the housing that I just happen to own.
Libertarianism, or as I prefer anarchy, is headed in the right direction. But what you and many others are witnessing as you investigate libertarianism is backlash, a truly monumental backlash against all the horrors and violence done by the state or condoned by the state. I actually think you can see that there may be a gem in this pile after all. Our knowledge and our understanding is imperfect but not insubstantial. And it is growing. By leaps and bounds. All of its ideas are not right ideas, and new ideas may well be wrong. The process of sorting and setting its foundation is being conducted in the fashion of, what else, anarchy. Its messy. Chaos abounds. Feelings may suffer as firmly held beliefs are challenged. New enlightenment may occur at any moment. It may take many lifetimes and many people may join and leave, as it pleases them. What will emerge as a result of all of this activity will be a thing of beauty that can be used by everyone. Why else would we expend such a great effort on it.
Oh yes, you are also contributing to that foundation, in your own way, despite what some here may think. Unless you really are that psychotic troll as some here seem to think.
Cordially,
Don
Hi Don. It’s obvious you haven’t been spending much time here. This will be at least the fourth time I’ve had to repeat myself. One doesn’t increase wealth by breaking and fixing windows. One doesn’t increase wealth by breaking and fixing windows. One doesn’t increase wealth by breaking and fixing windows.
There. Three more times. That ought to do it.
2. I’ve been following the anti-IP message here with some degree of wonderment. You have to wonder what’s going on when a gang of people devoted to property rights segregates some class of property and vehemently shouts that it HAS NO RIGHT! So, noting that techies and software sorts abound on this forum, my assumption has been that most folks here want to grab the artwork of others and package it as downloads. That way you don’t actually have to write a novel to make money on it.
Am I wrong? Maybe you could enlighten me. There is no ethical justification for stealing the product of intellectual labors. There just isn’t.
Maybe dire need. If someone found a good cure for cancer and planned to bill it out at a million dollars a dose. Easiest then would just be to shoot the guy and take his cure. But if he plays music so sweetly that a million people want to buy his CD? You have no right to just take it and sell those people 99 cent downloads. The music belongs to its creator.
Finally this: “..you are also contributing to that foundation, in your own way, despite what some here may think. Unless you really are that psychotic troll as some here seem to think.”
What I’ve been trying to do is to hold up a mirror, exposing examples of the Holy Wisdom for the dumb thought processes they are. Bad logic, unexamined assumptions, the swallowing of dogma as implicit truth and at the bottom, just the idea that there is some master theory that will solve everything, and all we have to do now is convince the world we’re right! That’s what the Marxists used to think… and they were just as wrong. Although Marx did describe an elegant theory, just as nice looking as the one put out by Mises, Rothbard and Hayek.
But I do get the feeling that except for a few who stop for a moment to think about my comments, it’s mostly setting pearls before swine. My efforts are lost on sixty percent of the faithful– and instead of thinking about things the way I suggest they at least consider, they take me for an enemy of the Faith.
If I were merely a psycho troll it wouldn’t afford me enough fun to amuse me.
Here’s something I found you might like:
“…certain ideologies are a danger to the public, and need to be identified as such. These are the closed, fundamentalist doctrines that cannot coexist with other belief systems; their followers deplore diversity and demand an absolutely free hand to implement their perfect system. The world as it is must be erased to make way for their purest invention. Rooted in biblical fantasies of great floods and great fires, it is a logic that leads ineluctably toward violence. The ideologies that long for that impossibly clean slate, which can be reached only through some kind of cataclysm, are the dangerous ones.”
That’s Naomi Klein, from The Shock Doctrine.
“[One], One doesn’t increase wealth by breaking and fixing windows.”
“Second, WW Two provided a jobs stimulus that brought us out of the Depression.”
“Third, 9/11 provided a boost to our economy.”
There, that should take care of that.
Still picking through the manure here, we say we want an end to all destruction and we advocate saving, he gives us a quote:
“The ideologies that long for that impossibly clean slate, which can be reached only through some kind of cataclysm, are the dangerous ones”
Though he has been corrected time and again, he persistently identifies *as a desire for collapse* our warnings that *his* idiocy writ large is causing the collapse that even he is starting to notice.
“…I do get the feeling that except for a few who stop for a moment to think about my comments….”
So that they may more carefully show what an incredible idiot you are.
Also, I think Naomi is a real nice girl, but it’s typical of lefty half-wits to think that disasters are somehow caused by the Bible, that it is not the Bible warning of disasters. Classic Michael, get it all backwards and then run with it.
michael,
Please accept my apology for not making my meaning clear. Words are not my friends and I have difficulty finding precisely the ones that best convey the non-word ideas that are trapped in my head. I do not believe that ‘slate cleaning’ should be done, or that it is a good idea, or that it is even necessary. If I have written anything to that effect or gives that impression, I was truly amiss in my selection of words. I know full well that I too often leave out many words, and in so doing I utterly fail to transfer the idea that is in my head to others, or else the other person happily forms an idea in his head that has little or no resemblance to that which is in mine. I will try harder.
To be perfectly clear, I do not advocate the violent overthrow of any existing government. Neither do I support the continuation of any government by the use of force. I do not presume that you do either. I do not bristle when you make a post in support of the state as, you have no doubt noticed, others may. Since I have been following your posts at this site you have become considerably more able to see and even denounce certain of the more blatant abuses of citizens by the state.
It is possible for an anarchic society to coexist with a government, but only if that government permits it. And that is the real problem, the government is the one with the big club. It is oxymoronic that a nonviolent society be established by the use of violence.
Any plan for an anarchic society must offer clear and demonstrable benefits over and above those a state provides. And that implies that it must be perceived as desirable not only to the ‘masses’, who would be expected to be in favor casting out the overlords, but more importantly to the ‘ruling elite’, for they are, after all, the ones who will make it happen.
Urgency is overrated. Getting it right is not.
Even this is possible.
Cordially,
Don
Don, I know you are bending over backwards to be charitable to this guy, how about doing us the same favor? You must realize that our reactions aren’t purely based on his being a Statist. That’s what you suggested, and I only say this to try to prevent him from running with it.
And call this “bristling” if you will, “the ruling elite” will never make anything like that happen and there will not be, cannot be *a* plan.
Patience
Patience waiting on “the ruling elite”? I think you’re missing the idea somewhere.
mpolzkill,
I chose the word “bristle” to be charitable to you, and others.
Please accept my apology for not making my meaning clear. “Any plan for an anarchic society… it must be perceived as desirable” The singular “it” refers to any one of a multitude of plans. Any plan must be desirable in order to be accepted.
By ‘ruling elite’ I mean natural leaders. Mostly, they happen to be ‘ruling’ in the setting of a state because there is no effective competition to the state at this point in time. If the natural leaders can be convinced that anarchy can provide a better result for everyone and at the same time require much less effort on their part, perhaps it may actually be implemented someday. It will be necessary to convince them that it will be better for them too. Not an easy task.
I have many friends, dear friends that I would like to retain as friends, who have ideologies that are practically interchangeable with michael’s. I need all the help I can find to enable me to at least competently explain to them what libertarianism and anarchy is in a manner that will help them understand and accept it. I have found so far that if I cannot demonstrate how anarchy offers a clear and direct benefit over the current statist arrangement, acceptance is nil. This site provides a treasure trove of ideas from which I may choose.
Including yours.
Cordially,
Don
OK, I see now, thanks Don. But still, most of the bristling is over the months of his dishonesty and extreme arrogance. And yes, natural elites, I agree with that. “All men are created equal” is taken the wrong way by many. We all should have equal negative rights, but obviously some are more gifted than others.
This will sound harsh, but before the world will see anything resembling a free society, most of these people are going to have to die of old age or in the catastrophe that *they* are mindlessly bringing on. They are very well trained slaves. This isn’t exactly the idea, but it’s really close:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbv41abhC3c
mplozkill,
“… before the world will see anything resembling a free society, most of these people are going to have to die of old age or in the catastrophe that *they* are mindlessly bringing on.”
I think I wrote something to that effect on an index card once, so as not to forget it, and then I circled and drew a slash through it with red. Not because I didn’t believe it. Here is why I actively reject that conclusion every day [well OK, not *every* day]. While it takes relatively little effort of thinking to grasp that anarchy, properly understood, is by far the best way forward for mankind, it takes monumental effort in persistence to keep trying to explain it to others in a manner so that they may embrace it too. Some days ‘most any excuse to quit is good enough, and that sentiment may be enough to tip the scales.
I have another index card on which I wrote the following: “The journey of understanding can be halted by the tiniest of obstacles. The work of the mentor is to identify and expose that obstacle for the student to see and overcome.” Obviously there can be many obstacles and in rapid succession, but there likely is only *one* that is causing the blockage *now*. If I limit my effort to one person and one obstacle at a time, I can persevere a little longer. Even a tiny success is better than none at all.
Cordially,
Don
Yeah, there’s definitely a chance for any and all persons. I wouldn’t break my neck at it, but more power to ya, Don. Nice talking to you, as always.
Matt
And maybe also get a card with this on it, Don:
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life”
- Leo Tolstoy
Don, I’m not blaming you for anything. I’m describing The Movement. You’re in quite a different category.
I endorse a government by the consent of the governed, and understand we have a lot of work to do, considering the divisiveness that has fractured our country into warring factions. And what particularly annoys me here is the simplistic approach on the part of some people to think we can just get rid of government and magically end up in some sort of frontier paradise, where every hombre defends his ranch with a six shooter and a rifle.
You can’t have a government without enforcing some measure of authority on those who want to bring it down. To me, the USA is remarkably lenient. We don’t have a draft, we don’t put (too many) political prisoners in the dungeons and we don’t line folks up en masse and shoot them. As nations go, we’re not the worst.
Not to our own at least. What we do, though, is sponsor autocratic third world dictators who then run death squads to keep their societies in perpetual turmoil. We keep civil wars alive so they never end, by backing one side against the other forever if needed. Look at Colombia. Half of it occupied by the Army, the other half by the rebels. None of it safe.
Don’t worry about your power to articulate your ideas. They come out just fine. What I like is that unlike many others, you have some. So we can have a civil dialog, and ultimately mutual understanding.
The crocodile tears are just nauseating. You are apparently 90 years old, so you had quite some time to stop advocating domestic warfare (stealing from one to give to another who, I don’t know, just might then vote for your party). You still haven’t.
michael,
Sorry, I overlooked your question.
“Am I wrong? Maybe you could enlighten me. There is no ethical justification for stealing the product of intellectual labors. There just isn’t.”
This looks chaotic, I know. I will have more to say about this in the ‘dissertation’ I am writing for you, but for now, yes, there is no ethical justification for steeling the product of intellectual labors, and no, ‘intellectual property’ is not property that can be owned by the thinker.
There really is no conflict here, only the illusion of one.
Cordially,
Don
“my assumption has been that most folks here want to grab the artwork of others and package it as downloads. That way you don’t actually have to write a novel to make money on it.”
Right, and we oppose the drug war because we all desperately want to get high. We oppose prostitution laws because we want to hire hookers. Surely it has nothing to do with wanting to reduce the waste and abuse of the current system.
“Maybe dire need. If someone found a good cure for cancer and planned to bill it out at a million dollars a dose. Easiest then would just be to shoot the guy and take his cure.”
Murder. Cute.
“You have no right to just take it and sell those people 99 cent downloads. The music belongs to its creator.”
Whatever it is, IP is a special case. I oppose it in its current form, but would not complain if some less abusive free-market analogue of it were to appear. Many of its opponents hold that same view, though some doubt that such an alternative system is possible. The best way I can put it is that I respect the idea of artists asking and receiving payment for their work while opposing the apparatus of the state as a means of extracting that payment.
“their followers deplore diversity and demand an absolutely free hand to implement their perfect system.”
Right, because it’s only fair that we respect the diversity of people who want to continue using aggressive violence to shape society. At its heart, libertarianism opposes aggression. The problem comes in when you fail to recognize aggression for what it is, or worse, recognize aggression but deem it to be justified by the ends.
And as for Naomi Klein herself, I cannot accept the arguments of someone who thinks that the mercantalist policies of the Bush administration are in any way free-market.
I think we agree on IP then, if you’re saying you support the idea in principle but just don’t like some of the details of current law. It’s obvious that lengthening the period drug companies are allowed to have exclusive distributional rights to drugs makes health care a lot more expensive in this country. So the way PhRMA controls the language written into regulatory acts like the current health care bill, or the old prescription drug benefit a few years back, is just a license to charge us all more for things we have to have. They’re drug pushers with legal monopolies. (Don’t I sound Austrian here?)
“And as for Naomi Klein herself, I cannot accept the arguments of someone who thinks that the mercantalist policies of the Bush administration are in any way free-market.”
Have you actually read the book? This sound a lot more like something you’d read about her here than it does anything she might have written.
In the book, “free market” has a distinct set of quotes around it. It’s used much more in the Milton Friedman mold than it is in any sense Hayek might have put the phrase. And what it describes, loosely, is the loosening of any constraints against the combination of capitalist rapacity and US military might (and economic muscle) throughout the world. For her the term is synonymous with economic imperialism having a free hand to dominate any nation on earth, economically by preference, but militarily as need be.
It’s the belief that the United States is the only nation entitled to have ever had a revolution against economic domination. And we’ve already had ours. Everyone else has to buckle under, and see their revolutions crushed.
That, I believe, is different from the sense in which the term is employed at mises.org.
Also, she does not condemn our mercantilist policies as being Bush inventions. We have had mercantile plans to dominate the Western Hemisphere since the days of Manifest Destiny. Since Polk’s conquest of Mexico. Since Taft’s snapping up of the Philippines just as they were fighting their own war of independence. Democrats, whenever they’re in office, carry on precisely the same master plan as do the Republicans.
A more neutral term for the policy might be “neo-liberal”. Could you get behind that? Maybe you should check the book out at the library again, and have a second glance at it.
Why don’t you guys please ignore this troll? The more you engage this moron, the more you are his dog.
It’s fun, occasionally, and I kind of agree with you as well… But I also think having many responses to some of his decent questions is not bad.
Re: Michael,
I’m pretty sure that housewifes were happy to see the newest tank on their Sears catalog during 1944.
Because they had all these government jobs, right?
Arbeit macht frei, right?
“Bastiat had a lot to say about the net loss of wealth. But not much to say about the creation of work to be performed for pay. And that is also a societal value, every bit as much as is the accumulation of wealth.”
Work performed for pay is not a “societal” value if the service performed, or the product created by the work, is not needed. Yes, it will benefit the person being paid, but that is all. It will also negatively affect the person or people who pay for the work, and get nothing they value in return. In this case, $X is taken from somebody’s wallet, and put into somebody else’s. Money is shuffled around. That is all. No wealth is created. The effect is purely redistributive.
This ignores opportunity costs. The people who paid for the unnecessary work could have used the money to pay for a service or product they actually valued, had the money not been taken away from them.
It should also be pointed out that Bastiat does specifically address “the creation of work to be performed for pay” in his Economic Sophisms. Erecting obstructions to stimulate the employment in removing said obstructions does not enrich society; it impoverishes society. Again, opportunity cost.
His A Chinese Tale is another brilliant illustration of this concept.
I don’t think we need to belabor the point further, that paying people to dig holes and then pay others to fill them in is not economically productive. One shouldn’t need to read Bastiat to figure that one out.
Nor is that the kind of make-work the USG is currently engaged in. If you can point to specific parts of the stimulus program that consist of unproductive work, please do. There’s no doubt that there are some; any time politicians get involved there’s plenty of pork to be shared. But by and large, the money goes toward goals I, as a taxpayer, can go along with. I’d like to see the country get cleaned up, now that we have so much idle capacity and so many unemployed people to work with. It makes a lot of sense to me, like hiring people to clean up your yard or basement instead of just giving them a handout. Or telling them to go to hell.
“Work performed for pay is not a “societal” value if the service performed, or the product created by the work, is not needed.”
The efforts put forth by all Americans during 1941-45 in defeating the Axis were, IMO, needed.
Welfare, in fact, is needed. Someone really needs some money, and the work is not there for them to take. Plus, when they then spend that money, it does yet more needed work.
One category of spending that I think is saturated (that is, we do not need any more of it) is the deploying of investment capital in schemes that make money. *$37 trillion dollars* in investment value has just collapsed (the number offered by Alan Greenspan) and the world still goes on. It was money put somewhere where it was of no use to anyone but a few already very rich people. And it was wagered in a giant casino, rather than doing anything much in the way of work.
The money that bid up that stack of fairy dust could have been put to much better uses.
I think that there is a fairly good case that many Americans had to help fix the mess they helped so much to create in 1917. That 1917 is always the thing.
It was very well made but the music and the voices made it kind of silly. I didn’t liked it.
Excellent!!!!!!!, I think that Paul must take a course with her!!! http://bit.ly/ac6q9c
This is really well done and an impressive creation of the group at Mises U. But a point that I wish was emphasized more in discussions on the Broken Window Fallacy is that not only is the unseen purchase ignored at the expense of the seen purchase, but that the unseen purchase made by the consumer is actually prefered by the consumer. Too often Keynesians speak about the need to boost aggregate demand while ignoring the futility of just spending on things that people do not prefer, like public works projects or some such thing. This point is especially insidious when it’s the government that is responsible for doing the choosing of what is or isn’t to be produced, rather than the consumers throughout the economy. The subjectivity of value is a cornerstone of the “Austrian” theory of economics. I think in times like these this is an especially important point to emphasize.
That is a good point. I will add that to the checklist when I get into arguments with friends and family who are totally convinced that war, especially WWII, is an economic stimulus
Michael, I’m suprised anyone even tries instead of outright ignoring you.
Reading your posts is like watching a small child soil himself. His parents then clean him and potty train him (that’s when others reply to you and explain why the myths, fallacies and bugaboos you posted aren’t real).
Then the child just gets back up and soils himself again.
Everyone here has done such a good job insulting michael, which he certainly deserves, but nobody yet has refuted his argument.
The idea that somehow war eventually creates more prosperity down the road is rooted within the academic intellectual elite. It is an extremely important facet of their thinking and it needs to be addressed every time it’s brought up. Simply saying “read mises.org for another year or so then come back” is not a sufficient reply to what people here see as a dangerous fallacy.
The fate of destruction is the joy of rebirth. It’s the basic premise of self organization. World War II destroyed lives and property, true. But the concerted, collective efforts of the entire country absorbed in the full employment of wartime production helped bring it from the downward slump in spending and consumption that existed during the depression. Indeed, the extreme amount of damage caused by the war created a massive gap that was eagerly filled by the countries’ reconstruction efforts, which stimulated employment and production, thus leading them into recovery and eventual prosperity.
If I were to posit this notion as an economic theory, then it would seem reasonable for me to attribute Europe’s rapid economic growth and rise in living standards after the war to things like the Marshall Plan and other massive influxes of foreign credit. Keep in mind that I’m playing the devil’s advocate, as I would have to be several degrees insane to seriously believe that this is a viable way of improving the human condition. But in my ignorance, I do not exactly know why this view is wrong. I need a clear and concise economic argument that completely invalidates this line of thinking. If one can’t be brought to bear, then there’s really no point in insulting the holder of such views. Mises spent his entire life fighting them with cold hard economic logic.
I’d like to stress that the purpose of this comment isn’t to defend michael’s position, but to encourage proper criticism and discussion of views anti-thetical to our own and explain exactly why they’re wrong, as opposed to simply brushing them off.
Well said, Tim.
“…encourage proper criticism and discussion of views anti-thetical to our own and explain exactly why they’re wrong…”
Yes, that’s what you’re doing, excellent – but let’s see how long you last. I did it for a bit too, patiently and politely making my way through his comments so that anyone reading would see the counter arguments. There is only so much of this you can do though, what with michael being an evasive hand-waving imbecile and all – now i just want to shame/insult him into going away.
Tim,
I agree with your sentiment. But there is a big difference between someone who is interested but unsure of Austrio-Libertarian ideas (a newbie) and one who is not. I often look for the newbies to reply to but Michael does not fit the profile of a newbie. My assessment of Michael is this:
a) He is underemployed, unemployed, or retired (he has too much time on his hands)
b) Is not interested in Austrio-Libertarian ideas (he doesn’t come here to learn)
c) Has the intelligence to understand but rejects our ideas (a premeditated rejection)
d) He is nothing more than an opportunist or pragmatist (in other words, he lacks any philosophical or theoretical foundation. *
*It would be easier to hold a discussion with a Marxist or even a Fascist. Michael picks and chooses whatever is psychologically satisfying. If you’ll notice, Michael debates details not axioms or theories…why… because he has none nor does he care to understand any. This is why debating him is so tiresome and frustrating for most bloggers.
Bottom-line: Michael is mentally masturbating at the expense of the highly intelligent and well-intended bloggers of this site. If you wish to assist him in that exercise, then by all means do so…a case could be made that being his sparring partner might sharpen one’s skills (or dull one’s interest)…on the other hand, if you believe your going to change his mind and educate him then your woefully wasting your time.
Tim,
Please consider the following problems with your Devil’s advocacy:
Historical events (or accumulations of economic data) cannot be used as the basis for any economic theory. Historical events are the outcomes of the inherently complex system we call civilization, and so it is hopeless to attempt to devise an economic theory based on the observations of this system. Our minds are tempted to over-simplify the historical record (to the extent that it is accurately recorded) by forcing these events into a cause and effect framework that is more suitable for simple “unmotivated” systems. In an inherently complex environment the post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy runs wild. To give you a flavor of this with regard to the success of Europe’s post-war development, how would your demonically advocated theory factor in the then recent discovery of vast quantities of cheap oil surrounding the Persian Gulf?
The economic relations within a civilization are self-organized around the principle of individual want satisfaction—not on some principle of labor maximization. This should be obvious given that leisure is one of man’s wants. The quantity of capital goods that exist at any given time represent the level of stored land and labor inputs that were generated in the past. This quantity of capital goods also determines the diversity and productivity of present land and labor inputs. In this way we can connect real labor and land income with the degree of want satisfaction.
The essence of the broken window fallacy is then to recognize that any loss (or diminution in the rate of increase) of want-satisfying capital goods leads to a relative loss in land-labor diversity and income level. This results from the need to employ methods of lower physical productivity to satisfy a given want. The demand for low-skilled labor necessarily increases as labor diversity is squeezed, and this may indeed benefit certain individuals whose limited skills were not well rewarded in the original production structure. Nevertheless capital goods destruction is a “less than zero” sum game that can never be honestly sold as a desirable path to increased want satisfaction.
My final quibble relates to your characterization of my suggestion to Michael. I did not say “read mises.org for another year or so then come back,” I did encourage him to study and analyze Austrian ideas over a period of time long enough for him to understand the logic of its foundations. It took me about a year to analyze (not just read) Rothbard’s MES in my spare time. If he is not willing to put in a similar effort then I feel that I am merely casting pearls before swine.
Tim: I hesitate to thank you for your plea urging that people employ their faculties in the service of reason… noting that you then feel the need to distance yourself from the thought that someone might think you were defending me.
It’s not the war and destruction that creates the wealth. It’s just that we needed one as an excuse to start spending again. Without it, there was no political will, not even among hardened New dealers, for spending on such scale as would have been required to take us into a period of general liquidity. Everyone was too cautious.
And even though we invented money merely to serve us as a medium of exchange, our wisest heads sat around bemused by the lack of money, wondering how they could get us exchanging labors and objects of value again. They never dared just printing more money, in the massive quantities required to get us back on our feet.
Until finally a great evil, war, forced our hand and ended up leading us toward a fresh round of prosperity. During which we were wise enough to pay down the debt that had been created.
The war itself did serve one positive purpose. I doubt you’d have liked a world where the Axis powers, unopposed by American productivity, took over and ran everything. I know I wouldn’t have. So I thank everyone who donated their blood, sweat and tears to the war effort. Their sacrifice made us free.
Tim, you do make one very important point, something I come close to agreeing with:
“The idea that somehow war eventually creates more prosperity down the road is rooted within the academic intellectual elite.”
If you take a close look at American history you’ll find that our elective wars have been started by politicians of all stripes, Republicans and Democrats alike. And that in taking such terrible actions they have been prompted by the people who profit from such wars, the heads of the military and security industries. Just as was the case in Nazi Germany, the push behind the drive to control the world has come from major industrialists, arms dealers and people controlling heavy industrial output. They need a market… and war is it.
I would put WW Two in a different category, one of necessity. But virtually all our other wars have been to allow greater economic opportunities to those who stood to benefit greatly. And those are not just the politicians, but the people who pay them to perform the functions they perform.
When you describe someone as being an “academic elite” I think more of people like Noam Chomsky. And as I recall, he disapproves of our many wars for gain.
Oh man, I didn’t see these down here. The Kid and Daniel had me in stitches, I swear this is the greatest entertainment with no women present that I know of. Then just look at the next round of hand-waving and pants-soiling here! I’m afraid it’s all reached a zenith and will have to now subside.
Did you see the post on one of the other threads a couple of days ago, some guy presumably called michael signed in as
“michael (not the douchebag one)”
which had me laughing for about 20 mins.
And now I’m laughing again, thank you very much.
To pay ‘vandals’ to ‘break windows’ and after pay ‘glaziers’ to repair them, makes the ‘vandals’ and the ‘glaziers’ richer, more prosperous, and if the ‘vandals’ and the ‘glaziers’ are the same people, it makes them even more richer, more prosperous.
If we take this same amount of money spended for breaking and repairing, and we don’t break no window at all, and use this money to add a brand new useful ‘window’ instead of breaking one, in each ‘house’ where we would have broke a ‘window’,
this with the same people who was breaking and repairing useful windows,
then those same people will also become more richer, more prosperous.
Thus no need to ‘break windows’ to prosper.
And, in addition, as a whole, there will be more windows in the ‘neighbourhood’, so that not only the ‘glaziers’ will be more richer, but also, all the owners of ‘windows’ which will have two useful windows instead of one.
Thus, in a whole economy, it is better to do ‘construction’ of new useful things than ‘destruction and reconstruction’ of existent useful things.
“And, in addition, as a whole, there will be more windows in the ‘neighbourhood’, so that not only the ‘glaziers’ will be more richer, but also, all the owners of ‘windows’ which will have two useful windows instead of one.”
Not necessarily so. Let’s say everybody buys a new window because the government forces everybody to, in order to help the glaziers’ union. Then the new windows, which people paid for, were windows they didn’t need and didn’t want. Since they didn’t want them, and since value is subjective, they get no extra value from having them. Hence, they are less prosperous than they would have been if the government had not forced them to pay for windows.
In my example, useful window(s) and new useful window(s) represent any thing, goods or services, that people need and want. Useful window(s) also represent useful things that can be destroyed by the war.
Do we *need* to make war to bring economic prosperity or can we do otherwise: that is the question.
You are proposing a different problem. But I don’t say that they cannot be imbricated one in the other.
No, Gary, it’s not a different problem. It’s one and the same. If the “windows” are broken by war, this is effectively the same as the “homeowners” being forced by the government to buy new “windows” that they don’t need or want. Either way, the “homeowners” spend money they would rather not have, and the “glaziers” make out like bandits.
You may say that the two cases are different, because in the first case, the homeowners have two windows, not one. But so what? They didn’t want the second window, wouldn’t have bought it had they not been forced to, and thus the second window has no value to them. Material goods don’t magically have economic value, just by virtue of existing. People have to want, or value, them. Let’s say that a UFO flies by, empties its septic tanks, and drops a zillion tons of alien poop into the Grand Canyon. Are we wealthier, because we now have a zillion tons of alien poop that we didn’t have before? Well, that depends on whether we value the alien poop. If not, then we’re no wealthier than before. Actually, we’re worse off, because we can no longer use the Grand Canyon as we did before. *grin*
1- When the window is already an useful window, and it is broken by accident or purposely, and the owner replace it by a new window, this another window is also an useful window, a window that the owner wants and needs.
2- Broken by war is the same as broken by a vandal or a branch of a tree. The homeowner is not force by the branch or the vandal to repair his window. If he repairs it, it is because that he thinks that having a window there is good for him.
3- Once again, in “the two ‘windows’ the homeowners have”, ‘window(s)’ can be anything else that the owner wants and needs, not necessarilly windows as it.
4- And also, in my example, the vandals-glaziers represent the U.S.A. during the war and after.
Gary,
“1- When the window is already an useful window, and it is broken by accident or purposely, and the owner replace it by a new window, this another window is also an useful window, a window that the owner wants and needs.”
Yes. So what?
“2- Broken by war is the same as broken by a vandal or a branch of a tree.”
Yes. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all what the window is broken by. The owner still has to either live with a broken window, or pay for the cost of a new one. Either way, he is out something. In the one case, he is out a window. In the other case, he is out whatever he would have spent his money on had he not bought the new window (opportunity cost). Either way, it is a net loss to him, and not a net gain to society.
“3- Once again, in “the two ‘windows’ the homeowners have”, ‘window(s)’ can be anything else that the owner wants and needs, not necessarilly windows as it.”
I understand that “windows” could stand for any item whatsoever. Again, so what? If someone is forced to buy a second item he doesn’t value, then he is simply down the money he spent on the item. And again, there is no net gain to society.
“4- And also, in my example, the vandals-glaziers represent the U.S.A. during the war and after.”
This is an inaccurate analogy. The vandals-glaziers represent those in the US (or anywhere else) who profited from the destruction. Not all of the US profited from that destruction. Some people suffered a net loss.
“Either way, he is out something”, if it happens that the window has been broken, whatever the raison.
Now we have to compare this situation with the situation where the window is not broken (no war). In this second situation, the money he would have spent to repair the window, he could now spend it on whatever he consider fitted for him, thus increasing his wealth (window + something else).
So, if we take the same amount of money necessary to make war (break windows) and to reconstruct (repair the windows), and instead, we don’t make war and let the existent things as they are, and we take this same amount of money and spend it on whatever we consider fitted for us, then the result will be an increase of our wealth (existent things + something else that we consider fitted for us ).
This fallacy is very common, but one of the places I have heard it most frequently is from expatriates of the People’s Republic of China when they state that they wish China to acquire a huge arsenal of window-breaking aircraft carriers, missiles, etc. because that will bring the PRC the same wealth as the USA has historically enjoyed. It is very difficult to explain to them that the wealth preceded the window-smashing goons and not vice-versa. No doubt the fallacy is propagated within the PRC by the would-be goons themselves.
So many people here are annoyed with the accents. I actually like the accents.
LOL, fantastic video. But Peter Griffin’s fake Italian accent is much better.
We nixed the accents. Let us know what you think!
It is better now. A nice video.
Here is what I don’t understand. Maybe you guys could enlighten me–without bitting my head off.
It seems to be that the nations in the more in those temperate climates have done better economically in the last couple of centuries. When you have to pay to heat your house in the winter and either cool your house in the summer (or summer in a different place as the wealthy did more frequently in the 19th century) you have a situation not unlike the broken window fallacy. Your are paying for heat or cooling that you might not otherwise have paid for if you were living in say Haiti or Hawaii. But yet no one could argue that those places (especially Haiti) have been doing better than say the North America mainland. But heating and cooling are very much like breaking windows. I mean there are expenses involved that you would not have had to pay for had the weather been better. So nature is doing the vandals job in a sense. But yet these economies where heating and cooling are essential seem to be doing better than economies where people are not constrained by the spending that climate forces upon them.
I am sure I am missing something here. Please enlighten me.
In Haiti or Hawaii, if someone spend, say, $1 000 for an heating system that he doesn’t need at all instead of buying, say, a small boat that he needs with this same $1 000, this will change nothing in the productive part of the economy, i.e., the encouragement of industry in general will be the same in each case.
But for him, there will be no additional enjoyment at all if he buys the heating system, while there will be an additional enjoyment if he buys the boat. The boat is an addition to his wealth, his quality of life, while the heating system is not.
That’s okay Jeff, I’ll see if I can explain the difference…
The “broken window” argument is that we shouldn’t be grateful for bad things happening on the basis that they create a need to fix the problem. The fact that a borken window creates employment for glaziers disguises or hides what other productive enterprises a) the shopkeeper with the broken window would have spent their money on and b) what the glaziers would do instead of fixing broken windows.
Now with the weather issue you raise I’d say there are two points that separate this from a broken window:
Firstly, is a temperate climate necessarily a bad thing (a broken window)? Although it means there will be seasons that require additional heating, temperate also means that it is often more comfortable to work than if it were a dry or tropical climate; there may be increased productivity over hotter areas, which may require air conditioning to provide the same level of comfort. Also, hotter climates cause more perspiration / evaporation and therefore there is a greater need for rehydration, for people, crops and animals. The costs of both cooling and hydration in a hotter climate offset the costs of heating in a temperate one.
Secondly, and more directly related to the point made in the broken window argument, we don’t justify living in a temperate climate because it gives heating engineers and fuel sellers gainful employment. That is just a positive externality, a happy side effect for the people who make a living this way. If we could choose to make the climate so it was never too hot nor too cold, the broken window argument suggests that we shouldn’t debate this decision on the basis of whether that would put heating engineers / air conditioning engineers out of work – they would doubtlessly do something else productive unrelated to climate control. If we would (or could) sustain a temperate climate only to maintain the need for these jobs, the broken window fallacy is in full effect.
We may however debate the choice of ‘perfect’ climate with regard to whether it really is perfect – what effect would it have on crop growth and animal habitats if we removed these extremes, for example. That would be to discuss whether extremes of climate are a problem or a necessary and benficial natural occurence. It would not be related to the broken window argument, unless the window was broken to let some cool air in and we have no intention of replacing it.
Finally, the differences in economic success across countries evidently has less to do with weather and is more closely related to how the economies are structured. Whatever effect a temperate climate has had on the fortunes of the USA, Canada, UK, countries such as Australia, Malaysia and Singapore have had their economic successes too despite being outside the temperate regions. What all have in common is a highly evolved market-based approach to the economic problem, albeit with a high degree of government ownership in the case of Singapore.
Interesting question though, and I hope my answer helps you with the broken window part of it; I believe it’s one of the most widely encountered fallacies and yet one that often goes unchallenged.
Jeff wrote: “But heating and cooling are very much like breaking windows.”
Nature is doing the breaking job.
Heating and cooling are doing the repair job. They are the glaziers.
The good weather is the useful window.
Each time we have to heat or to cool, it is like if we have repeatedly to repair an useful window that has been broken or needed some other kind of reparations.
To continue the Jeff analogy with the broken window fallacy story, we could say that Haiti, or Hawaï, is a house where the window is never broken; and that the North America mainland is a house were the window is repeatedly broken and repaired.
In ‘Haiti house’, the owners are more wealthy than they would be if their window were repeatedly broken; and in ‘North America mainland’ house, the owners are less wealthy than they would be if their window were never broken.
But from this viewpoint alone, we cannot tell which one of the two is the wealthier. One can have just enough wealth to live in a house of $200 000 with an intact window, and the other enough wealth to live in a house of $2 000 000 with a window repeatedly needing repair while staying the wealthier of the two for a very long time.
The only thing we can say is that either one would be wealthier with a useful window keeped intact,
and less wealthier with a useful window repeatedly broken and repaired.
Concerning the industry in general, it is not affected, whether windows are broken or not: only the consumer side is.
Surprised Sam didn’t include the link…
Here’s the version with no accents:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4jhlPLVVs
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