According to Wikipedia, “The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen” to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.” The broken window fallacy describes the things seen and the things not seen. If you break a window, then you have to use your money to fix it. This is the thing that is seen. What would have happened if you didn’t break the window? You would have used your money to buy something else that could have helped you in some way. This is the thing that is not seen. there are so many other things that you could use that same amount of money for that you used on the window that you broke. 

According to Study.com, “Government intervention is when the government gets involved in the marketplace for the purpose of impacting the economy.“ In this essay, I am supposed to write an example of the broken window fallacy as applied to a government intervention that was not discussed by Hazlitt, so let’s do that. 

An example of this is war. During war, government spend millions of dollars on the military programs. This is the thing which is seen. But what about the thing not seen? That same amount of money could have been spent on things like healthcare, food, clothing, giving people more jobs.