In an earlier essay, I wrote that because the black Death raised the value of labor, spurred innovation and eventually lead to the Industrial Revolution, we should help mankind by creating a new virus to destroy one third of mankind to spur innovation.

Of course my argument is absurd, and I admitted as much. Nor is it novel, Bastiat made a similar absurd argument, though on a smaller scale in his example of the broken window. His example was a window, broken by a malefactor. People would see the work given to the glassmaker and glazier and others and argue the malefactor actually made the town wealthier, though they would not see the other things that were left undone by need to replace a window, rather than spend energy and resources on new wealth.

Both are examples of the same silly argument, the form of which we most often hear being that war makes us wealthier or "spurs economic growth", or, on a more modest note, though no less absurd, "spurs economic activity." In some ways it is similar to the protectionist argument, which mistakes the total quantity of work done with the value of that work. It is a common mistake when looking at wealth and labor in the abstract, mistaking total work done with the value of that labor, forgetting to take into account the total capital involved, as well as the other uses to which that labor could be put. In a similar way, the arguments that try to make a virtue of shortages, and the additional labor that shortage requires, forget that without the shortage that same labor could be employed elsewhere, to greater effect, or, perhaps, some could be converted to more valued leisure. The simple fact is, the total amount of labor being performed tells us nothing about the wealth of the society.

The simple fact is, when something is destroyed we are less wealthy. We would never, in our private lives, think we were richer after our house burned down, simply because replacing that house required us to work overtime and take a second job. We would recognize that we would still be less well off by burning down our house.

We do not have such common sense when it comes to the economic life of a  nation.

And that is where "green energy" comes in. Very often, when someone mentions green energy, an opponent will, quite rightly, mention the tremendous costs involved. I have myself pointed out the utter impossibility of maintaining the current level of energy consumption using solar power, but in this case, I am thinking more of those who argue the expense rather than the impossibility of converting.

When faced with the question of costs, or even when they are not questioned, but are trying to make green energy seem a hard-headed economically viable option, the proponents of solar, wind and other green energy sources will argue that the costs of conversion, as well as all the expenditures on new technological research will be a boon to the economy, by "creating jobs".

And in this way the greens revert back to the same fallacies Bastiat demolished well over a century ago. Yes, if we have to take all our coal and gas and oil using industries and retool them to use solar or wind or geothermal energy, it WILL create a lot of jobs and spur a lot of "economic activity". If we were to burn down every one of our 20 largest cities it would as well, but no one is arguing that will make us rich.

Nor is that all. Even if we disregard the simple fact that all that money going into retooling to use solar energy rather than coal or oil is a total loss, money spent simply to get back to where we are already, there is still a net loss. How so? Well, simply put there is a reason we use petrochemicals rather than "green energy". Whether from convenience, cost, availability, concentrated power, whatever, the choice was made for a reason. If we convert to solar, we will need to make additional changes to work around whatever solar shortcomings convinced us to use fossil fuels. Either we will have to invest in overcoming those shortcomings, if possible, or accept operating at a greater cost for lower efficiency.

In other words, not only does the green argument make the absurd assertion that spending money to maintain the status quo will somehow make us rich, they actually argue that spending money to replace the status quo with something worse will benefit us. That is even more absurd that the broken window argument. At least in the broken window argument the shop owner gets a window back, if the greens hard their way, he would replace his window with wet newspaper and still call it a blessing.

Yet somehow, people buy into this argument.

Once again, I find myself wondering why we can find time to force school children to do volunteer work, find time to teach them all sort of extraneous subjects, tolerance, diversity, and so on, yet we manage to graduate generation after generation without the most basic grasp of either economics or logic.

Then again, if we trusted economic education to the schools we would probably be even worse off. So perhaps it is better that they don't try.