Talk:Parable of the broken window

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[edit] Exceptions to the broken window fallacy

There is a required condition for the broken window parable to be a fallacy : it only applies if the shopkeeper would otherwise have used six francs to buy a good or service in the village. Imports and hoarding mess the parable up. If the village is in depression and the shopkeeper is going to either hoard his money or spend it on foreign goods, then it is probably best for the village to have that window broken.

--Guillaume777 05:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

In your example you're also assuming that the glazier won't hoard the money he makes just like the shopkeeper. Which one of them has the money is irrelevant because we don't know what either of them will do with it and there isn't any reason to suppose one outcome is better than the other. The real harm here isn't that some currency has changed hands but rather that the glazier had to expend effort doing something useless. The fact that the shopkeeper paid for that effort is why people become confused. The trivial version of the fallacy is that the glazier's kid breaks the window and the glazier makes a new one for free; clearly here the glazier is harmed by having his time wasted and no benefit is derived from it by anyone.

I don't see why is that. Suppose the shopkeeper was going to buy a new and better tool from a nearby village that would increase his production... The point is in any case money is potential that is in this case lost and could otherwise be used. If the shopkeeper spends his money on foreign goods this means he is going to import something of equal value either to increase productivity (tools) or social wellfare (books, food for his familly) that will allow them to think / live better and produce more. Plus he will probably import something localy unavailabe thus increasing diversity.

--ntg_sf, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Guys, just remember this article is about *the parable*, not your personal opinions about it :-)

--Juraci Krohling, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

We're talking about the fallacy in the fallacy. Is that possible? I'll assume it is (Crap, now I'm doing it) Really. Mr. ntg, I doubt you have a point against hoarding (Or, as I call it, a bank account) because money in circulation is better than no money in circulation. Also, since all fallacies (is that the correct plural?) need to apply to modern society, if the kid breaks the window, it's the super-rich owner of Safeway that gets hurt a tiny bit, which is probably covered by insurance, who reduces their shares by a billionth of a cent. (See; Stainless Steel Rat series, by Heinlein.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.163.229.187 (talk) 23:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] War

...immense resources are spent merely to restore things to the condition they already were before the war began.

This only applies to the country that has been invaded. The invading country may well benefit. Am I missing something?--Adoniscik 18:36, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The invading country removes able men from the workforce, causing shortages in that area. It literally blows up or burns resources in the form of ammunition, bombs, fuel et c. It removes resources such as steel from the industry, driving up prices and/or causing shortages.
In short, yes you miss something. You care only about that which you see, and not that you do not see. /85.228.39.223 (talk) 06:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted two paragraphs that discussed why war is sometimes a good idea. The point of the broken window fallacy is that the apparent economic benefits that come from increased production of war-related materials in-and-of itself is not really a benefit; the hidden opportunity costs will always outweigh the benefits. I think the article’s section on war makes that perfectly clear. The two paragraphs that I deleted mentioned that sometimes going to war is a good economic decision because it can allow you to capture economically valuable resources or avert a worse war later on. While that’s surely true, it has nothing to do with the broken window fallacy. It appears that someone thought the article was taking on an anti-war POV and wanted to interject their own ideas about war not necessarily being such a bad thing. As the article stands now, there is no appreciable anti-war bias; the article simply points out that the extra employment and production associated with war that often leads people to claim “war is good for the economy” is actually an economic broken window. May 22, 2006

Actually, it occurs to me that there is a situation where the Broken Window is beneficial to an economy. (Let me first say, I've studied a lot of econ, and I can tell that you also know what you are talking about, and I'm not arguing for perpetual motion here, the broken window fallacy is still a fallacy.) Here's how it could work: If an economy is being operated irrationally, but the broken window changes economic conditions so the townsfolk behave less irrationally, then there could be net GDP and utilitarian improvement. WWII could be described this way: The Fed followed stupid irrational tight monetary policy after the '29 crash, and this made the economy worse and the Great Depression greater. WWII then engendered a more appropriate stimulative montary policy, and bailed the economy out. The fallacy is not noticing that it was monetary policy that changed, rather than the wholesale destruction of a vast amount of wealth, and the economy would have been even better off following the appropriate monetary policy in the first place, with the windows intact. (Oh, and while I'm at it, decaying European crony colonialism, while once an economonic stimulant, may also have become a drag on the world economy, and WWII sweeping colonialism away may have also liberalized the world economy to the point of improvement, even though it entailed destruction and "transfer or theft" of private assets.)

The end of this article seems to degenerate into a political debate (ex: "WWII had exactly that effect," implying that Bastiat is wrong).

Perhaps we should simply expose the parable, and leave contrary opinions to their own entries, thus avoiding the transformation of wikipedia into a gigantic flamewar.

Sprotch 19 Aug 2004

Small comment: A reference to when Frederic Bastiat created the parable of the broken window would be nice. After a fast check I'd say it's 1850, but I won't edit the article because I haven't done a good enough check to see whether that is correct. -- anon (Ilari Kajaste) (and sorry if this talk message isn't where it's supposed to be - I'm still a bit confused about talk pages)

In order to analyze this let us suppose 2 countries are at war, let us call them A and B. If A wins and no citizen of A dies, while all citizens of B die, and assuming both countries have n citizens, then the whole economy is now half of what it was at the beggining. What is the economic benefit of that?

The real problem seems to be that natural resources are scarce, so a war may be in best interest of the few in country A that will control the supply of said natural resources. The rest of the people just follows because they are programmed to follow.

A consecuence of having more efficiency is that you need less people and less time to produce more products. Eventually people have terrible wages, very long working hours and very harsh working conditions. Supply and demand play a role here, when job supply is too big (too many jobless) and demand is too small (very few workers can produce everything needed).

You can send half of the jobless to fight a war and the other half will have to deliver the supplies to them. This will of course take the jobless out of the country (or in a bag). It is a solution, but it is not very clean, since some of the jobless return and they are still jobless, besides they have nightmares.

Another solution would be to educate the jobless so that they can get a job. This just means that instead of fighting a war they are sat in a classroom. A lot less bloody experience, but the amount of people looking for a job after the course is finished is the same. Actually they could take your job eventually (provided they are smart enough). This solution is ok if they know how to start their own companies, so that they create jobs instead of taking other people's jobs.

A third solution would be to pay them for staying at home, drinking beer and watching tv. Very much like the Matrix, but wasting money and energy instead of obtaining it. It may not seem reasonable, but what is the purpose of society if not obtaining the goals of society? What are the goals of society? Working more in order to earn less? The purpose of society necessarily is to benefit the society. It turns out that people used to work 100 hours per week, and now they only work 40 hours per week, which means that most people have leisure time. And they spend in the leisure time, which means the production must go up, which means more workers are employed.

In France people work 35 hours per week.

In Germany they work 32 hours per week.

Germany is the country with biggest exports in the world.

So instead of having thoughts about killing the jobless, we should educate them and reduce the number of hours of work per week. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.144 (talk) 15:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I venture a guess as to what might be going on here:

The "average" citizen gets more income from wages, salaries and tips than all other income sources combined. So we learn to equate "work that needs to be done" with "income opportunity". The *classical economists (where * can be neo-, para- etc. etc.) seem to find it incomprehensible that so many people have so much difficulty conceiving of themselves as getting income as investors, entrepreneurs, or some other class other than the working class. Capitalism is as intuitively obvious to these classicalists (or classists as I like to call them) as the fact that life is a bitch and then you die is to the rest of us. There is no meeting of minds because of bad PR. Most of us hear the words "laissez faire capitalism" (or even "classical economics") and what immediately comes to mind is "survival of (only) the fittest". We assume that means 99th percentile or something. So we pray for more broken windows because we have an emotional need to feel useful.

"Bad PR"--could be. This calls to mind another fallacy which probably needs to be written up, but I don't know of a common name for it. It's the fallacy that there's only so much work to be done. I.e., that somebody needs to break a window, so I'll have something to do. The reality is that if windows never broke--because they're made of super space plastic, for example--then the window installers would still have work building new houses. And even if many window installers went out of the window business, they'd still have plenty of work: some would work at the space-plastic plant; some would start installing the new computer-controlled automatic barber machines that are all the rage in 2050...the point is, human desire is infinite, so if we never have to worry about windows again we'll start thinking about new things which were undreamed of before, which are luxuries today, and will be called necessities (indeed, basic human rights) 50 years from now.
Unions believe that fallacy when they insist, for example, that buildings continue to employ elevator operators after installing automatic elevators (and don't laugh--I've seen it!). --Len
"only so much work" -- I don't have any references, but my dad tells a parable which touches on the subject. It goes like this.
Two men are marooned on a deserted island. They've come up with a plan to build a boat from the trees on the island. Each day they cut down a tree, strip it, carve it into the right shape for a plank of their boat, treat it for resistance to leaks, and trim it for fit. One day a board floats ashore. The man named Harry picks it up and discovers it is already perfectly suited to be built into the boat. He walks over to the construction area with the board, but the other man yells, "Throw that board back, Harry, or you'll be out a day's work!" -- Crag 00:53, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)
Economists of the Austrian school of economics frequently cite this fallacy

We need a slight clarification. DOes this mean they frequently suffer from this fallacy, or that they frequently denounce it? - Montréalais

if you read the whole article, they cite it to show that they don't believe it, and that other people are stupid because they seem to believe in it. For example, look to where the article says that Paul Krugman argues that the WTC 9/11 destruction would stimulate the economy.

It seems to me that it is invalid to equate the "broken window" fallacy with tax. There are many cases where economies of scale mean that something can be centrally provided cheaper than by individuals. An extreme example would be defence spending. If every individual were to purchase equipment that they thought necessary to defend a country you could spend a lot without having an effective strategic force. Also there are many things that are necessary but not many people would individually see at their responsibility. -- Chris Q 14:15 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

Of course it is invalid. Sometimes taxation is used to break windows, sometimes it is used to do useful things. it depends.
The broken window fallacy is equally applicable to any category of economic activity. Whether that activity happens to be government activity or private sector activity is irrelevant. For example, consider, instead of "broken window", the (ahem - sorry for the bad pun) "broken Windows" fallacy.
Microsoft charge monopoly prices for software - somewhere around 5 times higher than market price, let's say. (The actual figure doesn't matter, just so long as it is indeed higher than a free market price.) Some people say (quite correctly) that this distorts the economy by diverting resources from other uses to the purchase of software and (again, quite correctly) that this results in a net loss to the nation because the portion of the money that is spent buying Windows or Office over and above the cost that these products would have in a free market is mis-allocated. Microsoft apologists, however, say (essentially) "so what?" In their view, Microsoft will just pay extra dividends and people who own MS shares will buy an extra Cadillac or two, or donate to a hospital, and the money gets returned to the economy anyway. This, of course, is just a more subtle version of the broken window fallacy. The breakage is harder to spot because it consists of diversion of funds and productive effort from whatever tasks a free market would allocate them to (a free market, remember, is generally considered the most efficient of all methods of determining economic prioriies) to a range of tasks, some of them productive (making extra Cadillacs), some of them not (buying influence in Washington, dreaming up ways to make Word documents unreadable by other programs so as to preserve the monopoly).

.

If you don't like the Microsoft example, pick another - Standard Oil, say, or the British east India Company. Monopolies always distort the economy. Of course, some monopolies are unavoidable - things like defence or water supply are very difficult to contract out. And it's not only monopolies that "break windows" - consider another example from the IT sector, computer viruses. Tannin


These sound worthy examples, but in the interim the examples given implied a right wing / economic liberal agenda, so I've tried to get nearer a NPOV: Governments instead of Labor unions fighting outsourcing as the measures shown are under government control (by coincidence, in recent news the World Trade Organisation found that the U.S. government was breaching rules with such protectionist measures). A more plausible example could be of Labor unions demanding that an employer keep on staff who no longer produce work of economic value. Similarly, bureaucracy isn't necessarily an economic evil : dave souza 19:06, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

According to Frédéric Bastiat's article, he is seen as a "forerunner [in?] the Austrian School", so I understand why the Austrian School is mentioned. But I'm not clear why the libertarians are mentioned. They may believe the same thing, but many do. Are they the originators of this analysis? If not, they I don't believe they need to be mentioned. Dhelder

The money spent on the war effort, for example, is money that can't be spent on food, clothing, health care, consumer electronics or other areas.

Hm. Somehow, this good money is anyway spent mostly on security and government with friends. Where's the huge, wide internet in the USA? Where's an efficient medical care in Canada? Come on. As long as there are governments, big money will be spent on the things, which regular taxpayer never needs, but which benefit means of production owners. Like war.

[edit] Sections

This article (it seems to me) could really use some headings to break the rather lengthy text up a little. PMcM 03:44, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

hmmm.. so doesn't the GDP have an inherent broken window fallacy? i'm thinking here of the exxon catastrophe specifically... just thought it might relate w/r/t: "Economists of the Austrian School and libertarians argue that the "broken window fallacy" is extremely common in popular thinking. For example, after September 11, 2001, some economists suggested that the rebuilding in New York would stimulate billions of dollars of economic activity, which would provide a net benefit to the United States economy" etc etc.

I'm not sure about the WTC example: the economy is measured by GDP (i.e., output) and motivating construction and borrowing to handle it could certainly increase the GDP, just as Exxon oil spills do the same. The idea is that the *wealth* of the world won't be increased as a result, but the economy itself could go up as a result. (Of course the issue about lack of confidence and growing concern of investments, like how the stock market went down after the attacks, could certainly erase and economic benefits rebuilding would give.) MShonle 04:21, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm surprised this article doesn't mention the Apollo missions. Richard W.M. Jones 13:37, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I completely support the Bastiat position that destruction is counter-productive.

The comment that victors profit in war is not a hard and fast rule. The United States of America did rise to become the most dominant power after WWII replacing not Germany but its ally and co-victor, Britain. By the 1960's West Germany was outpacing Britain in practically all aspects of economy - GDP, per capita income, worker productivity and with Mercedes Benz rising from the ashes of war to become one of the most prestigious and sought after car brands while British Leyland was soon to close due to bankruptcy. But this is explained through another socio-economic phenomenon called "the law of unintended consequences" which resulted from the intention of implementors of the Marshall Plan (to revive the economy of Europe to save it from communism) to be hard on the Germans (worked them for 16 hours a day) and be soft on the British (with their free-wheeling labor unions, their hefty pay increase schedules and long vacations). 70.174.62.11 Deusvolt

[edit] The eaten bread fallacy

How are broken windows any different from bread, clothes, automobiles and all the other goods we expect to use up or wear out and then have to replace?

Because bread that was somehow repeatedly eatable (say, a loaf that magically replenished sliced-off parts), unless it got "broken", would be better than bread you can only eat once. Having to spend only once for something is preferable to having to buy it repeatedly.

And why is it that when businesses deliberately break things in the pursuit of profits, economists call the process "creative destruction"?

Creative destruction isn't going around randomly breaking things. Its having a superor product or service, or a superior method of producing the same product or service, that forces other producers to adapt, or puts them out of business. The destruction part is the business that go under, and the investment in old methods that are now rendered useless, but the net effect is positive not negative. Twfowler 00:53, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some changes

I deleted the specific reference to WW2 and the following sentence: "Others attribute post-war recovery to the easing of regulations and dismantling of corporatist war boards." There have been arguments for war for thousands of years, and I don't think this particular statement illustrates the applicability (or not) of the fallacy. The sentence would, however, fit nicely in an article about WW2.

I also deleted several repeated occurrences of the broken record statement "the money would have been spent elsewhere". It should suffice to say that in the first two examples. Common Man 02:50, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing argument

The text uses some confusing examples. At the beginning it states:

  • soon they start to suggest that the broken window makes work for the glazier, who will then buy bread, benefitting the baker, who will then buy shoes, benefitting the cobbler, etc.
  • It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library
  • Perhaps he was going to buy bread, benefitting the baker, who would then have bought shoes, etc., but instead he was forced to buy a window. Instead of a window and bread, he had only a window. Or perhaps he would have bought a new shirt, benefitting the tailor; in that case the glazier's gain was the tailor's loss, and again the shopkeeper has only a window instead of a window and a shirt
  • Yet the facts observed by the onlookers remain true: the glazier benefits from the business, and so does the baker, the cobbler, and so on

The article is arguing both that the baker is better off and worse off. It seems to me that the argument at the beginning and the end are spurious. The real matter is contained by the parts in the middle. In any case the argument as stated is clearly weak. — KayEss | talk 16:05, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I think this sentence has Keynesian POV: "Note that the Austrian interpretation stems from the assumption that all resources are initially fully and appropriately employed." Austrians do sometimes assume this, but when they do it is very clearly a thought experiment set in an "evenly rotating economy". I don't see how or why such an assumption is needed here. Surely is possible to believe that make work projects are always a bad idea without beleiving that all resources are always "fully and appropriately" employed.

[edit] POV: "Special Interests"

I'm troubled by the section "Special interests and government," although I'm not certain yet how to improve it. If you click the link to read about the term "special interests" you might see that it is actually in itself a problematic term. This article, because of its wording, seems to imply a special interest is any group which asks the government for money.. Either that or it is relying on a common usage definition which is problematic. Some people might consider things like public education or health care as special interests.. i certainly wouldnt. Also, the broken window argument in this case completely ignores the factor of economy of scale.

It's a little bit like debating wether or not witches are evil... The whole question of who is a witch, what the word means, and whether they exist or not is skipped as if we all agree on those things. And having agreed on those things, what is the point of arguing witches are evil, since that is probably part of the definition we agreed to in the first place?

Perhaps the whole section should just be scrapped.

I suppose instead we could include a section on how the parable is used (or missused) in political propaganda. --LordBrain 17:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I think this section is valuable and should be retained but I also sense bias- I think all but one of the examples selected represent a particular POV. --Nil0lab 00:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] terrorist attacks/paul krugman

The section on terrorists attacks was misleading. It said Paul Krugman argued that the terrorist attacks would boost the economy through reconstruction. This is untrue, as can be seen in the reference article: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/91401.html. What he said was that politically, the effect of the attacks might be to boost public spending, which might boost the economy in a Keynesian fashion.

He did not say that the attacks themselves would have a positive effect on growth, that's ludicrous. It is not clear who the "others" might be that argued against Krugman, since to do so they would have had to have misunderstood him. The arguments in that section aren't false, but they set Krugman up as a straw man. I removed it because if no one made the arguments Krugman didn't make then it is silly to have a section refuting an argument that as far as I know no one ever made. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Graemeblake (talk • contribs) 01:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC).

I should have checked back on this page sooner - Krugman did, in fact, say that there could be economic benefits: "Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack -- like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression -- could even do some economic good. [...] there will, potentially, be two favorable effects. First, the driving force behind the economic slowdown has been a plunge in business investment. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings. As I've already indicated, the destruction isn't big compared with the economy, but rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending." I don't see how that could mean anything else. Korny O'Near 04:57, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not the place for a he said, she said back and forth between pundits. Given that Krugman does not claim that there is a net economic gain in his article, it is not a reasonable example for this article. Either a better quote or reference should be found, or more textual explanation of what is going on here needs to be included. Otherwise it just looks like two floating quotes, one from a NYT Opinion Page writer, and the other from a guest host for Rush Limbaugh, neither of whom inspire much in terms of encyclopedic authority.
Krugman wrote "the terror attack... could even do some economic good." He explicitly states the possibility of net economic gain; I don't know how much clearer it could get. Whatever else Krugman and Williams are, they're both published, well-known economists, so I think their opinions are extremely valid here. Whom would you accept as a greater authority? Korny O'Near (talk) 21:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Bastiat does not claim that there is zero good. If Krugman states that there is net good please provide the quote. The qoute you cite says some, not net. As far as how reliable either author is, WP is not the place to rehash opinion page rhetoric. Without context this is just dueling pundits, hardly useful or informative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.37.169.173 (talk) 22:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I think it's obvious from the context, and from his comparison to Pearl Harbor, that Krugman thinks it was a net economic good (or at least had the potential to be). If you thought a certain action would make you gain $2 but lose $10, would you write at length just about that $2 gain? In any case, my opinion and yours don't really matter; we have an opinion to that effect from a notable source (Williams). And who says Wikipedia is not a place for opinion page rhetoric? Please tell me where you get that idea. Opinion pages in newspapers are where many political and economic ideas are articulated, and opinion pieces are referenced in many other places on Wikipedia. Korny O'Near (talk) 23:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
It's certainly not obvious. You're reading more into Krugman's words than what is there. It may have been his unstated belief that it was a net good, but that appears nowhere in the article. It may be reasonable to have a more fleshed out section on terrorist attacks, and those who claim that they are a net benefit to society. While Williams may be a notable source, opinion page articles are rarely reliable sources. Op-ed pieces which are responses to other op-ed pieces are even further removed from credibility. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.53.32.98 (talk) 01:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Again, you come out with these statements that you don't support. Who says that opinion pieces, or opinion pieces about other opinion pieces, are not reliable sources? Is that a Wikipedia guideline, or your own opinion? Surely they're reliable sources for indicating the opinion of the author, which is all that these quotes are being used for. These kind of quotes of notable commentators' opinions are all over Wikipedia, as I said earlier. Korny O'Near (talk) 04:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure where you're going with this. You seem to want to go around and around about this. I'll leave it at this; the Krugman article does not make the Broken Window falacy, and Williams gets that wrong. These two quotes in isolation are not useful for clarifying what the parable of the broken window is about.Aprock (talk) 06:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't think I'm going around and around at all. We have one economist's opinion of what a modern-day application of the broken window fallacy is, which I think is important because other than that the article lacks any real-world examples, to place the idea in context. Of course it's going to be a matter of opinion; we're in the realm of ideas here. But the article doesn't say that Krugman committed the fallacy, it just says, "in this person's view, he committed the fallacy", which I think is a wholly defensible statement. Would you be more comfortable if the example were in a section entitled "Possible applications of...", to more clearly indicate that Wikipedia doesn't hold an opinion on it? Korny O'Near (talk) 18:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, that's my point exactly. William's view is wrong. While he may have an opinion, the facts are in conflict with his opinion. It's not the case that authority trumps logic. If you want to decorate the two quotes with context, giving an indication that his opinion is an opinion and not a statement of fact, and that he is inferring things which are not written in the original Krugman piece that would be fine. [sorry about the earlier signage, I was on vacation and forgot my password.]Aprock (talk) 18:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Fine, I'll look into making the section more even-handed. I should note, though, that Williams is not the only one who has this "wrong" opinion: a web search found two other commentators, Jonah Goldberg and Robert Tracinski, making the same claim. Meanwhile, I haven't found anyone, Krugman or otherwise, stating the opposite (I know absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but this is just to indicate that I'm not making an attempt to only present one side of the story). Korny O'Near (talk) 19:22, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Economics in One Lesson

The article says that Henry Hazlitt devoted a chapter in Economics in One Lesson to the broken window fallacy. My impression was that the book was about nothing but the broken window fallacy and its myriad variants and applications, hence the title Economics in One Lesson (the one lesson being the identification and rebuttal of the broken window fallacy). I can't find my copy at the moment, though.

[edit] Steve Jobs calls Microsoft "Broken Windows"

This quote was on the bottom of the page, I took it out. Phrases like "the inherent instability of Microsoft Windows" are stated as fact rather than as Mr. Jobs' opinion. If someone wants to reword it and put it back, go for it.

In an interview, Steve Jobs quotes the 'broken-window' parable in referring to the Microsoft Windows Operating System. The inherent instability of Microsoft Windows can be likened to the 'broken-window' fallacy, which quite ironically seems to be a self-breaking window or a faulty window. [1]

[edit] GDP

From the "Differing interpretations" section...

...the window owner's money (if the window was still intact)...saved for future consumption as an investment in the economy...serve[s] to increase GDP at a higher level of economic efficiency and utility...

This is untrue. Saving for future consumption represents investment potential, while the GDP only takes into account actual investment. Destinational (talk) 01:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Online Piracy section

I am removing the Online Piracy section. The section doesn't mention any Broken Window connection, and as far as I can see none can be made. Broken Windows is generally about something destroyed and always about an artificially imposed "Broken Window job" of dubious value displacing other economic activity. Copyright infringement involves no breaking of a window, the new copy is a pure creation of economic value. The copyright case is that unrestricted creation of new copies diminishes people's incentive to create other new works. While that is a strong and legitimate argument, it has absolutely no connection to Broken Windows. If someone feels the need to restore this section, please rewrite it with a clear illumination on how it involves Broken Windows. Alsee (talk) 00:08, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wow

This article is really good. How come I never come across such articles when I click on the "Random article" button? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.122.33.194 (talk) 14:50, 17 April 2008 (UTC)