RE: Genoa and Beyond II: The View from the Black Bloc

["David Shemano" <dshemano@xxxxxxxxxx>]

<<<<< "What violence does breaking a window at Nike Town cause? It makes a
loud noise; maybe that is what is considered violent. It creates broken
glass, which could hurt people, although most of the time those surrounding
the window are only Black Bloc protesters who are aware of the risks of
broken glass. It costs a giant multi-billion dollar corporation money to
replace their window. Is that violent? It is true that some underpaid Nike
employee  will have to clean up a mess, which is unfortunate, but a local
glass installer will get a little extra income too.>>>>

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As the resident reactionary, I have to ask, does this mean that the
anarchists do not do readings of Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt at their strategy
sessions?

David Shemano

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The Broken Window

LET US BEGIN with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating
Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass.

A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker's shop.
The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and
begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and
the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels
the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost
certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune
has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin
to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass
window cost? Two hundred and fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After
all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business?
Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $250 more to
spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend
with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go
on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical
conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little
hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public
benefactor.

Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first
conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean
more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn
of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper
will be out $250 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he
has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some
equivalent need or luxury.) Instead of having a window and $250 he now has
merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon,
instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the
window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the
community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and
is just that much poorer.

The glazier's gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor's loss of
business. No new "employment" has been added. The people in the crowd were
thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier.
They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They
forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see
the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit,
precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately
visible to the eye.