The French, Broken Windows, And The Intentional Destruction Of Wealth

“Remember that broken basement window around by the side.  And be careful.” – Phantasm

Inspector Clouseau drove a tank during World War II.  Apparently, it was a pink panzer.

Dead French dude Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist who died in 1850, but not after having written books and essays that influence economics to this day.  Bastiat was handicapped by having to speak and write in French, which has the disadvantage of sounding exactly like a cat when it is drowning in Jell-O® Instant Tapioca Pudding™.  This is combined with the disadvantage of the French using letters more or less randomly in ways not at all related to the sounds they make.

Bastiat was heartily anti-socialist, and was ahead of the curve, especially in France where they had a socialist revolution every year that the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow on Bastille Day.  As I look to the country around us, and especially Los Angeles, I see that it’s probably time to trot out Bastiat’s old parable of the broken window, which is featured in his essay, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.

I remember an old girlfriend once yelled, “Are you even listening to me?”  Weird way to start a conversation.

In the parable, a snotty kid accidently breaks a window at his father’s shop.  What does the father sell?  He’s French, so probably cigarettes and baguettes and marionettes.  Regardless, the father has to call the guy who fixes windows, who is thrilled.  He gets to charge the father for fixing the window, he buys some glass, cuts it, and installs it.  Since he needs more glass, he even orders some from the French Glass Factory, and they make a tiny bit of profit, too.

What a great story!  This is what makes the economy zoom, right?  This is what Bastiat referred to as That Which Is Seen.

Well, not exactly.  The window as it was sitting there was just fine.  It was doing its job, letting the French people with their little, beady eyes get light so they could smoke and import foreigners.  There was nothing wrong with it.

That pane of glass represented wealth, if you will.  It was built in the past, sure, but it was doing its job, being a window.  When the snotty little kid broke it, he destroyed wealth.  Money that could have been used for his father to buy a new machine to plant cigarette seeds so he could grow packs of Marlboros™ will have to wait.

Things that will always be a mystery:  What number of French soldiers does it take to successfully defend Paris?

Broken windows, while putting a few francs into the pocket of the guy who fixed the window, overall made the country poorer.  That wealth could have done a nearly infinite number of things rather than fix the window.  Bastiat referred to that as That Which Is Not Seen.

When I look at the fire that just swept through Los Angeles, I think about Bastiat.  Billions of dollars of damage has been done in Los Angeles – and that was only after hitting two or three homes.

I kid.  But there are devastated areas where Governor Gavin Newsom is salivating at the thought of the economic activity associated with rebuilding.  He promised to remove “red tape” so that rebuilding could be less costly – which means that he knew all along that the “red tape” was nothing more than a means to destroy wealth by creating a vast sea of pockets that had to be filled with money before the building could start.

John Lennon was really ahead of his time:  “Imagine all the Paypal® . . .”

The impact of the fires is due to mismanagement and neglect of the important systems that society actually needs to prevent tragedy at scale.  There is a case for the protection to society brought by fire departments – even Bastiat would agree to that.  But we need competent people to run them, unless, of course, the goal is to have broken windows so that Gavin’s friends can buy up California land at the greatest discount of the past fifty years.

If it so obvious when there’s a fire, why isn’t it obvious when, during the Great Depression, the USDA drove herds of cattle off of cliffs to kill them to bring prices up, all while families were starving?  Did that create wealth?

What do you get if you cross a border collie with a pit bull?  A dog that’s smart enough to bury the bodies.

Why wasn’t it obvious when Obama tried to kickstart the economy by buying up perfectly usable cars in his Cash for Clunkers scheme just to explicitly destroy wealth so that more people would be forced to go out and buy cars?

Yup, breaking more windows to give jobs to the guys who replace windows.

Beware of those that would break windows to create prosperity.  War, of course, is the ultimate window breaking machine, I mean, outside of the GloboLeftElite that run places like Detroit and LA and San Francisco and Baltimore and . . . well, I guess war is the second biggest window breaking machine outside of GloboLeftElite leadership.  Except the GloboLeftElite doesn’t give us cool things like jet engines and large airplanes and microwaves and the AR platform to compensate for the rubble and poverty.

In cities, you ignore sirens and listen for gunshots.  In the country, you ignore gunshots and listen for sirens.  In Detroit, you ignore both.

The GloboLeftElite just gives us the poverty via broken windows, and calls it progress.

The real bright side?  At least the GloboLeftElite doesn’t speak French.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich. View all posts by John