Have you ever thought, or heard someone else say something like, "ya, [Katrina, Haiti, Chile, ...] was a tragedy - but ultimately good will come of it - there will be jobs created, new infrastructure... in the end we'll be better off"? That is referred to as the Broken Window Fallacy, originally articulated by Frederic Bastiat -- hailed by Joseph Schumpeter as "the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived."
Tom Palmer and Atlas have recently released this video viscerally explaining the fallacy. I'll warn you that the introduction contains scenes of 9/11 -- if such things upset you, you may want to skip this one.
I highly recommend Bastiat's short, and easy-to-read essay titled "The Law" -- you might also enjoy his essays in "Economic Sophisms."
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