Because resources that were consumed to replace a window cannot be used for something else. See here.
The baker needs to break his window before he can replace it? I’ve never heard of that in my life. The window could quite possibly be repaired for a lessor cost, but even if couldn’t, it could certainly be replaced without taking the effort to break it, and creating a mess to clean up…thus putting extra cost on the baker.
You wouldn’t be just creating an unrealistic businessman just to try and make your example work, now would you? Not to mention, the window in Hazlitt’s story doesn’t seem to have this frightening crack that is the driver of your entire scenario.
Um. That is not what you said. You literally said “His losses are in effect redistributed to the majority”. Redistribution of losses is the same thing as “socialized losses”. When you redistribute something you spread it around among other people. The only way to redistribute losses is to force other people to pay for someone else’s misfortune. This is also called a “bailout”.
Um. That’s the whole foundation of what we’ve been discussing. An overall economy being better off means the population as a whole is wealthier than before. The entire point of the parable of the broken window is to illustrate that destruction of property does not make the population wealthier, it makes the people poorer overall.
Take it on a large scale to make it more easily seen. Before the bomb went off we had a whole city. Buildings and homes all filled with useful goods. Streets to get around, making travel and commerce easier, an infrastructure that provided convenient electricity and water to residents, making their lives much more comfortable than they otherwise would be. Now, after the explosion, all that stuff is gone. Resources are now going to be consumed to rebuild all of that stuff. Physical raw materials, time, labor…all going into replacing what already existed. If the destruction had not occured, all of that collective effort could have gone to other things…production of more goods and services that people desired. People already had the houses and the buildings and the roads and the parks. All those materials and time…all those resources could have built…another city. (Or god knows what else. Think about the resources it takes to create a city. What couldn’t be done with that kind of capital and productive activity?)
They could have built another Disneyland. And the world would have had a brand new theme park to enjoy. But all that time, effort, and capital instead went into recreating what had already existed. After consuming god knows how much raw material, how many lifetimes of man hours, how many armies worth of labor…we’re just right back where we started. All that effort, just to get back to where we already were. The world lost a theme park (or who knows what else).
This is the whole point of the parable…destruction of wealth does not create wealth.