A simple and excellent educational video about the naive liberal presumption that disasters are good for the economy.
The parable of the broken window was created by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illuminate the notion of hidden costs associated with destroying property of others.
Bastiat uses this story to introduce a concept he calls the broken window fallacy, which is related to the law of unintended consequences, in that both involve an incomplete accounting for the consequences of an action.
The parable describes a shopkeeper whose window is broken by his young son, and who has to pay for a glazier fixing his window. It conveys some thoughts on economy and money circulation.
