Reply to Topic
There is no refutation to the broken window. The original 1850 fallacy is the same argument with the same conclusion, but in its original form presented in an even more rigged way, with variables like the business fixing the windows is hiring someone to break them. Well, obviously that is not a good thing, and it makes the fallacy as presented nonsensical. Why not use a more credible example and refute that? It is like arguing instead with a burning house or a disaster. Why not instead the leaky faucet fallacy? Those are good for plumbers.
Of course the fallacy is nonsensical. The entire point is first to demonstrate that it is, and then show how other things which people still repeat are based on the same basic idea. He shows you how silly the idea is at its root, but how easy it is to take the same idea and obfuscate it slightly so it looks less ridiculous.
I looked at it again and the reason it is so stupid is it is a contorted analogy. The boy hired to break the window represents government. It is really to criticize government spending, like stimulus spending. That is the problem I have with this nonsense. Just say what you want plainly. if you want to criticize government spending to stimulate the economy, talk about that, not broken windows and little boys hired to break them.
Moreover, his argument is not merely against government; most of these arguments are employed by private groups like unions, and private citizens who support them. It is applicable to those situations, as well.
And this criticism of the broken windows parable is spot on:
It has been argued that the 'parable', while intuitive, does not correspond to actual evidence.
That seems to be Hazlett all over. He doesn't present facts or statistics or case histories. He makes logic arguments, but skews the argument by rigging the presentation.
It has been argued that the 'parable', while intuitive, does not correspond to actual evidence.
That seems to be Hazlett all over. He doesn't present facts or statistics or case histories. He makes logic arguments, but skews the argument by rigging the presentation.
1) The book is for the layman. It is designed to explain economic mechanics in simple, straightforward terms for people usually uninterested in the topic (and therefore, easily taken in by the rhetoric surrounding it).
2) The book is written to be as timeless as possible. It is about fallacies that recur again and again, and thus it strikes at their core assumptions.
Another way of looking at it, the business repairing windows is helped by there being a market for what he does. It is good for him. If everybody had unbreakable windows he would be out of business. If we don't know where the money would have been spent elsewhere, we can't judge if going to fix a window was a better or worse consequence for the economy.
If everybody had unbreakable windows, then there would be no window repairman to begin with, and he'd be doing something else. Perhaps producing the unbreakable windows, or something else entirely. The more mishaps we can prevent or minimize, the more time and labor and resources are freed to prevent or minimize other mishaps.
Maybe the money would have gone to buy a lamp from China ordered diredtly there and shipped through the mail, and so wouldn't have benefitted his country's economy in the least, except the post office.
Everything has consequences, but the consequences have to be evaluated. What creates the greater good? We all know for every action there is a reaction. We need a fallacy to explain that?
The BW concept assumes a decision to spend money one way has an equal negative consequence for the way the money otherwise would have been spent. And that is nonsense. It is not simply an equal shifitng of resources. Money spent one way could have either a more negative or beneficial impact on the economy if it was spent differently. That is the problem with these sweeping generalizations. It is a facile argument.
What's important is what follows from this observation, because scads of arguments are made to this day that invoke the same idea, and make no attempt whatsoever to argue that the resources are being spent better than before. They simply leave one side of the ledger out of the equation. For example: every time a politician justifies stimulus spending by saying it will "create jobs." They treat this as a net benefit and go on about the money those employed workers will now spend, completely ignoring the money taken out of the economy to hire them and how that would have been spent.
What you seem to be arguing is that it's not not literally impossible for shift resources in a beneficial way. This is quite true, but the onus is then on the person advocating the shift to demonstrate that this is the case, and most do not even try. And even when they do, the onus is on them to explain why such an obviously beneficial investment has not already been enacted by others with an interest in doing so. None of this actually happens in public debate. There is simply the refrain of "creating jobs" and no mention whatsoever of the jobs or purchases or investment that is removed from the economy to pay for it.
This, by the way, is one of Hazlett's core premises: that the bad economist only looks at what is, and the good one looks both at what is and what otherwise would have been. "The seen and the unseen," it is called. And politicians are quite good at exploiting our natural tendency to emphasize the seen over the unseen. They can point to the product of their shifting, but nobody can point to physical examples of the things that never were. Amusingly, given the source of the quote, they never "dream of things that never were and ask: why not?"
Let me make this real clear because you don't seem to be getting it. When I say the "parable of the broken window" is silly, I am not talking about something Hazlett is refuting. The original essay is saying the same thing Hazlett is. He is just presenting the argument a little more tightly without all the stupidity in the original. He cleaned it up a little because it is so dumb. The original argument is making the same exact point Hazlett is making, but it throws in everything but the kitchen sink to do it. It creates a lopsided doomsday scenario to make its point. Hazlett is not refuting the broken window argument introduced in 1850. He is trying to argue it better, but the original author was making the same point.
It really should come as no surprise, will, that when you don't read the whole argument you end up dismissing it as facile or incomplete. It is incomplete, to be sure...if you refuse to complete it.
