“Every day I see something I am convinced I hallucinated.”

He was quoting a local news story from Oakland, California. KTVU, a Fox affiliate, reported that car break-ins across the city had declined. A rare public safety win! Fewer victims. Fewer shattered windows. Fewer mornings ruined.

Then came the kicker.

KTVU warned the decline was “contributing to a downturn for some local auto glass repair businesses.”

Really. These lamestream media geniuses think crime going down is bad for business. Fewer smashed windows means less work for the guys who fix smashed windows. Therefore, maybe smashed windows were good?

Andreessen couldn’t believe it was real.

Neither could I.

Alas, it’s real. And unfortunately, it’s always been real. A French economist named Frédéric Bastiat explained exactly this kind of thinking in 1850 and called it what it is: a fallacy.

The question worth asking is why this fallacy never dies.

The Boy and the Window

Bastiat told a simple story in his 1850 essay “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.”

A boy throws a stone through a shopkeeper’s window. Bystanders gather. Someone points out that the glazier will now have 6 francs of new business. The glazier feeds his family. He spends his earnings. The economy benefits! Perhaps the boy did a service.

Bastiat called this the broken window fallacy.

Yes, the glazier gets 6 francs. That’s what’s seen.

What the shopkeeper would have done with those 6 francs had his window not been broken… that’s the unseen. Maybe he would’ve bought new shoes. Maybe he would’ve hired an assistant. Maybe he would’ve saved toward a better shop.

The broken window destroys wealth and then rearranges what’s left. Sure, the glazier gains 6 francs. But the shopkeeper is 6 francs poorer. The shoemaker loses a customer he never knew he was losing. The net result is no new wealth and one shattered window.

The boy didn’t help the economy. He merely moved money from one pocket to another and charged a pane of glass as the toll.

The Glazier Always Gets the Interview

Here is the uncomfortable truth: the broken window fallacy is popular because it flatters those who tell it.

It’s always easy to point at what is seen. The glazier’s new business. The workers who were hired. The money spent.

A camera can capture all of it. A reporter can find someone to interview about it.

By definition, what isn’t seen is invisible. The shoemaker who never made the sale sits in his shop, unaware that he was robbed. No cameras come for him. Nobody counts the dinners not ordered at the restaurant the shopkeeper would have visited. Nobody runs a story about the second shop the man might have opened someday, with the money that is now sitting on the glazier’s workbench.

The seen is concrete. The unseen is hypothetical. In a world built on deadlines and clicks, concrete always wins.

KTVU didn’t set out to run a pro-crime story. The reporter wasn’t sitting in an editorial meeting wishing for more smashed windows.

They simply saw the glaziers. They didn’t see anyone else.

The Government Runs the Same Play

Once you have read Bastiat, you will notice this pattern everywhere.

When politicians announce a new stadium, the cameras show construction workers and smiling mayors. They don’t show the restaurants that never opened because taxes went up to pay for the stadium. They don’t interview the small businessman who couldn’t get a loan because the bank was financing city bonds instead.

When a trade tariff saves jobs at a steel mill in Ohio, the news shows the mill workers and their union rep. It doesn’t find the auto worker who lost his job 6 months later because the cars became too expensive to sell. It doesn’t knock on the door of the family that stopped buying a new dishwasher this year because the price went up.

When a city bans short-term rentals to protect hotels, the headlines feature grateful hotel owners. They don’t find the retired couple who can no longer afford their vacation because the cheap option is gone.

Seen. Unseen. Every time.

Bastiat wrote this when Napoleon III was emperor of France and the telegraph was a new technology. The insight is 175 years old. The fallacy it describes is apparently immortal.

Wrap Up

You can’t force reporters to find the unseen or stop a local news station from running the auto glass story.

But you can train yourself to look for it.

Every time a policy is announced as a win, ask yourself, “Who isn’t in the room?” Every time a business is celebrated for surviving, ask what killed the one that didn’t open. Every time a government program claims to have created something, ask what wasn’t built because the money came from somewhere.

This isn’t cynicism or pessimism. It’s accounting.

Bastiat called economics the science of the unseen. He was right. The seen takes care of itself. It gets press conferences, news segments, and cheerful ribbon-cuttings.

The unseen needs someone paying attention.

That’s you.

The auto glass shops in Oakland will survive the decline in crime. The people of Oakland will be better off. Their cars will stay intact. Their mornings will improve. The money they would’ve spent on repairs will go to something they actually chose.

That’s wealth. Not the glazier’s invoice for the broken window.