“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.
Bastiat never had to account for DEI in his broken window theory. In an ideal world, the massive amount of money that will go towards rebuilding could have indeed been used on more productive things. But this is California we are talking about and we all know that the money would have just gone to more DEI programs, kickbacks and exorbitant salaries for city officials.
DEI is a broken window. So is HR. Sooooo many broken windows.
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.
I would tend to say that about English.
That probably has something to do with English including words from German and French (and Russian and Hawaiian and …)
Complexity of language is a feature, not a bug. It allows you to assess the levels of experience, intelligence, and education of the speaker within a few sentences. Amiright?
Lathechuck
And (in theory, at least), having a larger vocabulary allows more precise description of the idea you’re trying to portray, but that assumes the recipient of your message has a similarly large vocabulary (and/or know what a dictionary is – and how to use it), and that they also believe that words actually have meanings.
We are so screwed as a culture….
Well, sure, but we don’t do it as violently or as passionately as they do.
Two somewhat spiritual observations about the LA fires…
First, God is paying attention. I’m not a particularly religious person, nor am I a literalist when it comes to interpreting the Bible, but dang this sounds just like Sodom and Gomorrah 2.0. In the last year or so , Hollywood has really ramped up the satanic, perverted and pedophile-based messaging and then boom…..the “City of Angels” is suddenly on fire. The fact that the fire happened because a bunch of lesbians/trannies were put in charge of all of the key infrastructure and failed to do their job, is an interesting twist on the new version.
Second observation……. Dems are finding that karma is a bitch as they are REALLY going to regret how they botched the Carolina recovery effort. They thought they could weaponize it against conservative NC residents but never figured their wealthy donors in LA would suddenly lose their houses and be needing a taxpayer bailout. If they had just played nice in NC, no one would bat an eye at spending billions on LA recovery. But now everyone is going to paying very close attention and calling out every hypocrisy. I’m just waiting to see if Kamala will offer the LA residents the same $750 dollars that was offered to the NC folks.
Nice try, but SoCal hillside homes, favorite of celebutards, burn every two or three years.
This is only slightly more annoying than normal, but hardly noteworthy in the grand scheme of what happens here nearly annually.
(It is peaking my Epicaricacy Meter, nonetheless.)
But it hardly rises to divine intervention.
God is no more nor less pissed this year than in any other, nor is this any manifestation of same (it’s frankly far too mild to be such), and I wouldn’t think such was the case unless a meteor storm also took out every movie studio in the L.A. area, right after the volcano erupted and took out both Hollyweird, and West Hollyweird, right after the earthquake fault opened up and swallowed all the residents thereof in a lava-filled crack in the earth miles deep that ran from the Pacific Ocean to downtown L.A., and drowned stragglers when the sea waters raged in.
Which is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
If that happens, give Franklin Graham a call.
Zero Hedge has the current damage estimate in LA at between $250 and $275 billion dollars and described it as the most costly disaster in the state’s history (and the fire isn’t even contained so this could go a lot higher). Even Hurricane Katrina, which is viewed as being one of the most costly storms in US history, only did $200 billion dollars in damage.
If the locals can brush that off as a minor annoyance, then more power to them.
It’s not a minor annoyance.
It’s a non-event.
Locals, who not coincidentally live in the 97% of inhabited L.A. County that never burns down don’t really give a sh*t.
Entitled millionaires in McMansions are the main ones hurting over this.
The local news is busy kissing their asses.
As was pointed out in comments at my blog, the median home price in Pacific Palisades, which is the property driving the bus on that damage estimate, is 4 million dollars.
These are celebutards, not working class people.
They’ll be fine, or not, but which it is, is largely a matter of complete indifference to most residents of L.A.
The cure is not letting entitled millionaires build more McMansions in areas that burn every other year.
City and county governments haven’t said that out loud, yet.
I just did.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I’ve been joking that God must have heard me say that if He doesn’t start burning coastal cities, He owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology. I’m an agnostic, so I think what’s really happening is that the Old Testament is a decent record of historical events, and events tend to be cyclical. Like the Hindu Yuga cycle, you get good times which leads to increased corruption and anti-social behavior amongst those in charge of enforcing social behavior, which inevitably leads to a crash. Or the Kali Yuga, as the Hindu’s would call it.
To those that the fed.gov handouts will make a difference to, they don’t care about. The rest are salivating at the prospect of taking control of that land.
I see a huge disconnect between the politicians, those with a little wealth, those with a lot of wealth, those that believe there is a fish that isn’t visible, and those that believe wealth is like ripe fruit on a tree owned by someone else. The equitable solution for the problem of fire prone areas will involve a lot of tax dollars, committees, posturing and maybe some violence. One thing is for sure: the Weather Channel will broadcast on Los Angeles until another hurricane, which will be determined to be stronger because of the fires in California.
Yup. It will be twisted to an ideological purpose.
There is nothing like the light of a $150 billion wildfire to spotlight a few things that were for most people hiding in the dark. This week I’ve learned a couple of things about the LA power structure that makes me glad I’m in a sophisticated, advanced, functional State like, ahem, Alabama.
1. There is not a single Republican on the LA City Council. “Only” two-thirds of them are “Democrats”. The other third of them (Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Ysabel Jurado) are ***Democratic Socialists***, which is a separate thing out in California…
https://dsa-la.org/
…and probably more widespread across the USA than you think:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic_Socialists_of_America_public_officeholders
2. Billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick secured control of vast amounts of water in the 1990s, diverting water to Imperial Valley agriculture and not LA. It’s their pool, LA only swims in it during business hours.
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/01/13/the-resnicks-la-california/
3. In another example of second-in-command DEI hires, California Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis (soon to replace Newsom?) was bankrolled into that position by her billionaire real-estate mogul father Angelo Tsakopoulos, who made his fortune developing multi-family housing units. The rumors are already swirling that Pacific Palisades is gonna be rezoned away from single family homes into high density apartment complexes that will rise from the ashes of fire-sale lots there.
https://yournews.com/2025/01/10/3098871/newsom-allegedly-collaborating-with-developers-to-rezone-burn-areas-for/
Governor Kunilingus will be awesome for the jokes alone!
“Billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick secured control of vast amounts of water in the 1990s, diverting water to Imperial Valley agriculture and not LA. It’s their pool, LA only swims in it during business hours.”
This practice goes back much farther than the 1990s.
https://youtu.be/sjWQvFhspxM?t=63
Great rundown. Wonder how many other Resnicks sit out there with their monopolies on public goods?
When a business spends money, it can be for one of two things: something that adds value and facilitates growth, like buying new machinery or hiring new workers, or for stuff that doesn’t add value and hampers growth, like broken windows and HR. An increasing number of jobs are the latter, not adding any value and hampering growth. That people like Newsome don’t know this is why electing people who have never had a real job tends to end disastrously.
“But, but, they mean well.”
True story:
A Frenchman once tried to sing “99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall” in French.
He passed out and died from oxygen depletion before he got to the third stanza.
But he was French, and the other Frenchmen viewed it with typical Gallic indifference.
Hahahahahaha! Maybe he could have gotten to the fourth stanza if he didn’t smoke a pack during the first three.
John, you should have stated, “What do you call your puppy that herds watermelons?”
“My Melon Collie Baby.”
And, in a month or so LA will be a semi-distant memory, just like Western NC, except for a sympathetic libtard story or three weekly that will focus on a POC family recovering bravely despite being POC. Or substitute LGBTQWXYZ2+.
No, LA will fester, because those who would rule us are interested in that place.
The French speakers in Switzerland altered the number system of 70, 80 and 90 to septante, huitante, nonante to simplify life.
As usual, the Swiss are ahead of the game. I’m part Swiss, and I’ll say math is important to them – their flag is a big plus.
The contrast is indeed stark, to the level of coverage and concern, between North Carolina, an LA. One group is thought not be the cool people, and the other, avant garde. As long as there has been civilization, such things happen. Inequity, they call it. All one can do is try to replace it with a little wisdom and love. I harbor a little hate for the LA group, and I want to see the people in NC get some help, first.
Anon-
I either had a primary or a secondary residence in the WNC Mountains/Foothills 1976-2022. Hopefully Trump will do what’s right. Remember that, outside of Asheville, Boone & the off-mtn Foothill Cities), you have a huge population that will band together and make do.
Can’t say the same for LA.
Agreed. It is amazing how little focus has been placed on the political discrimination that took place there. People should be in prison.
The culmination of deliberate incompetence, deliberate culture of corruption and fate appears to have descended upon California at a most opportune time. Biden exiting and Trump entering, both would have, or will have, provided full financial support of public funds for those whom can provide for themselves, but won’t.
The events of Appalachia will fester deeper in many Americans while the Establishment will continue with their Russian Aristocracy pantomime Kabuki play. Then they’ll feign surprise that the “masses” are in “rebellion” to the status quo of society.
The Dancing Blue Lazer Cannon also appears to have been active in this Chinese Kung fu Opera.
Deliberate incompetence is the perfect way to describe it.
AKA – Weaponized Incompetence. Seen it in action in workplaces FAR too often…
I’m thinking it’s a feature to the GloboLeft, not a bug.