BeCuriouzLearn something new every day
Why a broken window doesn't help the economy
💡 Destruction is never a net economic gain — the spending it forces is always spending that would have created something new instead.
A vandal smashes a shopkeeper's window. A bystander shrugs: at least the glazier gets paid, who then buys bread, and so on — isn't the broken window secretly good for the economy? In 1850 the French economist Frédéric Bastiat used exactly this scene to expose one of the most common errors in economic thinking, in his essay That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.
The mistake is counting only what is seen — the glazier's new business — while ignoring what is not seen. The shopkeeper had to spend, say, six coins to replace the glass. Had the window never broken, he'd have spent those same coins on new shoes. Now the glazier gains, but the shoemaker loses a sale that would otherwise have happened. Society is not richer by one window's worth of activity — it is poorer by exactly one window, because a useful thing was destroyed and had to be remade instead of adding something new.
This is the core of opportunity cost: every coin spent repairing damage is a coin that can't be spent creating value. The error feels persuasive because destruction produces visible, immediate activity, while the forgone alternative is invisible — it simply never happens. The same fallacy resurfaces whenever people claim wars, natural disasters, or planned obsolescence "stimulate" the economy.
Source: Frédéric Bastiat, 'That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen' (1850)