#rsrh The broken window fallacy.

This one is going around the ‘sphere – I got it from Ed Driscoll – but if you want something to go viral, you gotta do your part.

In that vein, here’s something S. M. Stirling once had one of his characters say, when given the argument that war and/or disaster is great for economic growth:

“[I]t’s nonsense to think that when you take what people grow and make, lug it to the other side of the world with a lot of sweat and time, and then throw it on a bonfire, it somehow makes you well-off…”

Or, to put it yet another way: Wealth = resources + opportunity + (labor+competence/2). There. I’ve just solved the riddle of economics, so everybody who was working on it can go do something else now.

Because I’m a giver*.

Moe Lane

*So when you’re done wincing at what I just did to various poor, defenseless economic theories, hit the tip jar.  I got hotel/airline expenses to the RedState Gathering to defray.