(This is a commercial before the Quirk Post)This might seem long or boring but it's a MUST READ!You can only complain after reading the whole thing through.LET US begin with the simplest illustration possible:
let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of
glass.
A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window
of a baker's shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious,
but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare
with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window
and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a
while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection.
And several of its members are almost certain to remind
each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has
its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As
they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How
much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars?
That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never
broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then,
of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50
more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn
will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants,
and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing
money and employment in ever-widening circles.
The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd
drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far
from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.
Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right
in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in
the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The
glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident
than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper
will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for
a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he
will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need
or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now
has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the
suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window
and a suit he must be content with the window and
no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community,
the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise
have come into being, and is just that much poorer.
The glazier's gain of business, in short, is merely the
tailor's loss of business. No new "employment" has been
added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two
parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They
had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor.
They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter
the scene. They will see the new window in the next day
or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because
it will never be made. They see only what is immediately
Visible to the eye.
