Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, the 19th-century French economist and legislator, had a semi-famous essay titled “Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas” (”What is seen and what is not seen”). In it, he introduces the parable of the broken window,1 illustrating what we now call opportunity cost: a shopkeeper’s window is smashed by his careless son, and the sympathetic neighbors agree that at least it brings some work to the glazier.
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