Welcome to Douglas Wilson's The Plodcast, presented by Canon Press. Yes God.

God.

Welcome to the Plodcast episode 221. I'm Douglas Wilson. I'm very glad you joined us.

It's good to have you here. This is a, let's spend a pleasant 15 minutes together, right?

So I want to talk a little bit about something Let's spend a pleasant 15 minutes together, right?

So I want to talk a little bit about something that I was reflecting on today,

maybe yesterday, maybe both.

And it had to do with people's reaction to COVID, but there's a pattern of thought that we need to take

note of.

I'm going to appear to be, I will appear to be jumping the tracks here, but I'm going to be I will appear to be jumping the tracks here but I'm not really in Henry

Haslett's fine book economics in one lesson he he goes over what's called the Broken Window fallacy, the Broken

Window fallacy and that's the idea that if someone throws a brick through a

window then that's that's a job creation.

That gives extra business to the glazier and the window shop guy is going to have,

if someone who went up Main Street, down Main Street breaking windows,

it might be the best week that the glass and awning place has had in a number of years.

However, destruction is still destruction, and it's a net negative, not a net positive.

The optical illusion is created because the positive is all located in one place and you could send a television reporter down there and interview him and he could say things like, yeah, I don't know what happened, but man, we've never had, we've never had this kind of week ever.

I'm gonna be able to buy the kids a new pair of shoes because we're having such a good week.

Now, what's going on?

The benefit of all those broken windows is located in one place and it's photographable and the

negative the negative consequences of it which are much much larger are spread

...