Stop quoting Bastiat!
In the wake of the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina there have been a lot of people who has tried to deny the beneficial effects of this by quoting the classic essay "What is seen and what is not seen".
But that's wrong, we shouldn't listen to Bastiat,after all he's French (FRENCH!!!!). And had Americans listened to the French then the U.S. Government wouldn't have started the Iraq war. We must never forget how America was attacked on 9/11 by Islamists and therefore it was absolutely imperative that we eliminated Saddam Hussein's regime who after all had a habit of killing Islamists and instead give Iraqis the freedom to vote for a Islamist government. Only a frogeater could come up with the America-hating idea that giving Iraqis the freedom to create a Islamist government wasn't the right response to the Islamist attack on America.
Similarly, only a frogeater could come up with the idea that destroying wealth isn't the best way to create it.
But why wait for Mother Nature's random acts of destruction to help get the economy going? Why waste the expertise that the U.S. government has in the area of destruction? So, to help kickstart the economy we should evacuate all major urban areas and then unleash a massive dose of B-1 bombers, F-16 fighters and Cruise missiles and reduce all cities to rubble. Just think of the unprecedented construction boom this would help create! And then after the cities have been rebuilt, we could again evacuate the cities and destroy them again and so on in a endless cycle of first building cities and then destroying them so as to ensure that the construction boom will be sustained forever! Moreover, unlike the destruction created by hurricanes, this would also create jobs in the bomb manufacturing industry. And we sure shouldn't let some America-hating frogeater stop us from implementing this guaranteed path to prosperity.
Comments (16)
I find the attempted vindication of modern socialist France by associating it with Frederic Bastiat to be highly distasteful.
Furthermore, I never saw the broken window fallacy used as justification for invading Iraq. Does Bastiat have anything to do with the Iraq war? Certainly there will be many windows broken, but as far as I know the supposed economic benefits of rebuilding those windows are not being used as justification for breaking them.
While the war in Iraq is condemnable on a number of grounds, trying to bring Bastiat into it and using him to condemn a justification that was never used in the first place does not seem appropriate.
Published: August 31, 2005 3:49 PM
"I find the attempted vindication of modern socialist France by associating it with Frederic Bastiat to be highly distasteful."
Huh? Who said anything about French socialism (which I have repeatedly attacked)? What was being attacked and ridiculed was the silly
anti-french outbursts of pro-war pundits in which everything French was rejected because of disagreement over Iraq .
"Furthermore, I never saw the broken window fallacy used as justification for invading Iraq. Does Bastiat have anything to do with the Iraq war?"
If you had been more perceptive, you would have noticed that the same backward mentality applied in both cases, in Iraq the establisment of a Islamist government in the name of fighting Islamism and in the broken window fallacy the destruction of wealth to create wealth.
Published: August 31, 2005 4:15 PM
One point I've picked up over the years is that sarcasm rarely works on the web. Once Lew wrote a column ridiculing the Iraq invasion by calling for an invasion of Brazil. He still receives angry emails from Brazilians--even after having put up a huge sign on the article that he was not serious but quite the contrary.
Published: August 31, 2005 4:33 PM
Bastiat already recommanded a similar ironic solution to create wealth according to the protectionist plan: burn Paris (in French -- translator sought). Which is scarier, such socialists as St Chamans and Sismondi did consider the same plan, only seriously, as Bastiat tells in his Economic Harmonies, chapter 6.
That said, no proponent of war in Iraq used economic gains as a justification for it. Only anti-capitalist people have said (and believed!) that war was being fought "for profit".
Published: August 31, 2005 5:20 PM
I thought the sarcasm went over pretty well, the scenario Stefan describes is precisely what people seem to be thinking now, and after every other wealth destructing event. You can actually lay out the scenario Stefan did to a group of people and the majority will think it would be a great idea and of course the media would be all over it. Headlines would be “full employment and better living standards for all� after every bombing. How sad indeed.
Published: August 31, 2005 5:27 PM
"Huh? Who said anything about French socialism (which I have repeatedly attacked)? What was being attacked and ridiculed was the silly anti-french outbursts of pro-war pundits in which everything French was rejected because of disagreement over Iraq ."
There's a difference between rejecting modern France (which is socialist, anti-liberty, was and profiting from a corrupt arrangement with Saddam Hussein brokered by the UN) and rejecting the France of Bastiat's time, which was significantly more libertarian. Many Americans hate France, but still love the Statue of Liberty. There is a lot to hate about modern France, but you're defending it with a French icon that the French have hated or ignored for years. You are implying that hatred of modern France implies rejection of the historical France (and Bastiat in particular), which is what I find distasteful.
"If you had been more perceptive, you would have noticed that the same backward mentality applied in both cases, in Iraq the establisment of a Islamist government in the name of fighting Islamism and in the broken window fallacy the destruction of wealth to create wealth."
There are a lot of examples of the means running counterproductive to the ends, and using Bastiat's broken window (an economic example) to make your political point doesn't fit as well as the many purely political examples available. Applying the broken window fallacy is an unnecessary stretch involving a man inappropriate to the situation (Bastiat) for the purpose of mocking those who go too far, but not THAT far. A more appropriate (and more well known) comparison would be to the contradictory slogans in Orwell's 1984.
Published: August 31, 2005 6:34 PM
Yes, how dare you exaggerate so in your sardonic tone!
Only fancyleprachaun knows the bounds to which your sarcasm may extend, and they stop clearly at references to Orwell's 1984.
To point out that a frenchmen, while old and dead, is at the same time a defender of free markets and yet still somehow french, is an attack on fancyleprachaun and all those who would lump individuals in with the actions of their government.
This is beyond the pale, and fancyleprachaun won't stand for it!
Published: August 31, 2005 10:27 PM
"There's a difference between rejecting modern France (which is socialist, anti-liberty, was and profiting from a corrupt arrangement with Saddam Hussein brokered by the UN) and rejecting the France of Bastiat's time, which was significantly more libertarian. Many Americans hate France, but still love the Statue of Liberty. There is a lot to hate about modern France, but you're defending it with a French icon that the French have hated or ignored for years. You are implying that hatred of modern France implies rejection of the historical France (and Bastiat in particular), which is what I find distasteful."
First of all, it is nonsense to imply that American Francophobia is related to its welfare statism. If that were so, how come Francophobes don't hate equally welfare statist Italy, Denmark or Sweden? Or to use a even better example, how come nearly all (you are perhaps a exception) francophobes not only not hate, but positively love Israel who is just as (if not more) socialist as France?
And how come nearly all (again you might be an exception) francophobes love President Bush who has expanded the welfare state in America more than any president since LBJ? That should be more relevant for any American antistatist since Jacques Chirac isn't spending an ever-growing amount of their money, while Bush does.
No, francophobia is instead a result of the fact that France is seen as a potential threat to global American hegemony and that France dared to defy the Emperor and not tell him what he wanted to hear and instead decided to give America the friendly and sound advice that invading and occupying Iraq would not be a good idea either for America or the rest of the world.
In addition I suspect that the old English rivalry with France has rubbed of on modern America which is why the anti-French hatred is often of a more passionate and psycotic nature than the hatred towards the two other perceived main obstacles to American global hegemony: Russia and China.
Secondly, while France was perhaps more libertarian in the 19th century then they are now, so were the other western countries and relatively speaking the French government were quite interventionist during the days when Bastiat and Jean-Baptiste Say lived.
And more to the point: what difference does it make in this context?
Why does the validity of Bastiat's and Say's essays somehow depend upon whether their government were highly interventionist or not?
It is senselessly collectivist and statist to reject the ideas and arguments of somehow just because their government pursues. And it is highly irrational to reject the sound advice on the Iraq issue given by the French government just because their economic policy is unsound. One should be open to arguments even from someone who is wrong on other issues. Not to mention how irrational it is to rename French fries to "Freedom fries" and develop an antagonism towards French private citizens and companies because you disagree with the French government on Iraq.
You are highly deceptive in your arguments when you say I "defend modern France", falsely implying that I defend the economic policies of its government, when what I defend is that all French people and all ideas and products from it should be evaluated on an individual basis. This means embracing some French things like (According to my preferences) the writings of Bastiat and Say, Jacques Chirac's advice to America not to attack Iraq and the Asterix cartoons while rejecting other French things like Jacques Chirac's economic policies and the habit of some Frenchmen to eat frogs.
"There are a lot of examples of the means running counterproductive to the ends, and using Bastiat's broken window (an economic example) to make your political point doesn't fit as well as the many purely political examples available."
Why should analogies from economics to politics be considered inappropriate? And just because their are other possible analogies doesn't mean that this one shouldn't be used as well.
Published: September 1, 2005 4:30 AM
Look, we get it. Lots of posters at Mises hate Bush and the Iraq war. This post could be a parody of others that start with economics and then slip into unhinged turrets.
Feel free to do economics, feel free to write against the war. Stop mixing the two, it makes you look unhinged.
I'm thinking of pieces like this one from 2003 that made a stab at trying to tie together Fed policy to a beligerent war in Iraq.
Published: September 1, 2005 1:27 PM
I've learned that it's really less about the "broken window" than it is about the GDP. You see, cleaning up the mess and rebuilding a casino does more to boost GDP than running a functional casino would, in the same amount of time. The causal connection is that these economists confuse a larger aggregate GDP with a healthy economy ... we can break every window in their houses, but that won't do any good. What we NEED to do IMO is to deflate (pun intended) their conception of the GDP as "the economy."
Published: September 1, 2005 2:30 PM
Bill R: They don't call the
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Gross for nothing. It only measures and are only supposed to measure the level of production, not how the level of economic wealth has changed.
That is measured in a alternative gauge called Net National Product(NNP) or National income, where the destruction of economic wealth in the form of capital consumption is deducted from the level of production.
Usually though, the change in the level of economic wealth (NNP) and the change in the level of production (GDP) is roughly identical so for the most part GDP does roughly give a good picture of economic development. But in the special cases where there there are large scale destructions of existing economic wealth
(Whether through natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes or the man-made disasters known as war) though, GDP will be misleading and then focus should be on NNP.
Published: September 1, 2005 3:37 PM
actually evacuating, bombing cities and NOT rebuilding wouldn't be such a bad idea as they are mostly hotbeds for socialism
Published: September 5, 2005 5:00 PM
Ari, it's not the cities per se which are socialist, but the people living in them so if you move them to another place it won't do anything good.
Published: September 6, 2005 11:09 AM
No, actually the major urban city is a remarkable in the ways it generates dependency on government institutions such as rent control, public housing, terrible public schools, the high population densities crime rate and lack of trees and fresh air which guarantees despair...please, get them out of there!
Published: September 6, 2005 2:49 PM
Arielb, there is no support for the theory that the city is socialist because of the city itself rather than the people living there. I know that in many countries, political culture is actually less socialist in cities than in rural areas. This is for example true for Sweden where the socialist parties are far weaker in Stockholm than in the rural areas. This is also true for Britain where Labour Party support is concentrated to Scotland, Wales and Northern England, while the Greater London area is dominated by the Conservative Party, apart from the city districts where ethnic minorities have become a majority.
(For the moment we can set aside the fact that the "right-wing" parties is often useless or worse once in power. What matters here are the voters intentions).
The reason why American cities differ from Stockholm or London is most likely because they have a far higher prevalence of low-skilled labor from ethnic minorities and a higher relative turnout for them, providing a much stronger electoral base for redistributionist schemes.
While it is true that the high housing costs that high population density creates could create support for public housing and rent control, this presupposes that the low-skilled labor already existed there like in America. I know that in Stockholm the high housing costs have acted as a barrier for low-skilled labor to move in, helping to preserve Stockholm's status as a center for high-achievers and thus people uninterested in redistributionist schemes.
Published: September 7, 2005 5:09 AM
france is not corrupt in anywat, but america is, america has huge arms deals with saudi arabia, the demon lands, of satanitsm, that has caused al qeda, the smile of evil
Published: October 29, 2005 10:06 AM