Hazlitt’s rule as stated on the show
The phrase “the seen and the unseen” is attributed on The Bob Zadek Show to Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, described as a little tract that puts forward an ironclad rule of economics. As the rule is summarized in the episode, every policy and every action has the most visible costs and benefits, and then there are the unintended consequences and the hidden costs. Hazlitt is said to go through every area of the economy showing how what might sound good on paper carries undesirable unintended consequences Not Enough Bricks (2019).
The rule is introduced in the context of a discussion of the Green New Deal, which is presented as the perfect illustration of Economics in One Lesson. The framing is that the most direct way to turn the United States into a dysfunctional petro-state might be something like the Green New Deal, because picking winners and losers at the central level produces all the wrong incentives Not Enough Bricks (2019).
Solyndra and the accounting that is not done
The concrete case offered for the unseen side of the ledger is Solyndra, described as a solar company that received a federal loan of about $500 million that it could not pay back. The company went bankrupt because its cylindrical solar panels were too expensive to maintain and did not generate as much electricity as a standard flat panel. The episode’s point is that the project looked great on paper—a cylindrical solar panel presented as innovation—and that government officials with no background in technology or engineering heard from some people that this was the future, did not do the full accounting, and ended up with a large unpaid loan Not Enough Bricks (2019).
The argument is then extended to what is described as getting this on steroids: new debt for towers of power and solar concentrating fields in the middle of the desert, all of it sounding good and backed by government propaganda, but producing in the end an economy far less efficient, one that requires far more fossil fuels just to build and maintain it than what the free market would normally develop Not Enough Bricks (2019).
A further unseen cost is raised by Mark Joffe, identified in the episode as a senior analyst at Reason who writes about public sector credit and transportation issues. Joffe notes that one reason Solyndra and some other companies had trouble was low-cost solar panels coming from China, and that the Trump administration had recently increased tariffs on those. His question is why, if solar energy is thought to be a solution, the United States would not take every discounted solar panel China wants to subsidize Not Enough Bricks (2019).
Guidance, mandates, and the decision that is yours
The same distinction between visible intention and hidden cost structures a later episode on vaccines and what is called the totalitarian principle. Bob Zadek’s framing is that information passed down by the CDC is information, but when it comes from the government and is coupled with emergency powers assumed by the overwhelming majority of governors, mayors, county executives and the like, the recommendation gets converted to a mandate Vaccines & the Totalitarian Principle (2021).
The comparison drawn is with the physician’s office. A sensitive physician, Zadek says, offers a recommendation, explains what the patient loses by not following it, and then says the decision is yours—and that last element, the decision is yours, is missing from the dynamic under discussion. What began as guidance became a mandate when officials adopted it, and in the process the personalization of what is best for me, given that everybody’s circumstances are different, got lost in the mix Vaccines & the Totalitarian Principle (2021).
Zadek then puts the counterfactual directly: would it have produced a profoundly worse overall result, the same, or a better one, if government had said here is what we know, it will be constantly changing, here is the best information we have, deal with it, and you make a decision about going out or going to work, eating at a restaurant, wearing a mask, being on a plane, going on vacation Vaccines & the Totalitarian Principle (2021)?
The word “overall result” is flagged as significant. The episode notes that the CDC, living in what is described as its mandated silo, is not designed and not supposed to make economic decisions, only healthcare and epidemiological ones. The question is therefore posed at the level of the overall result: how it would have differed if more decision-making were given at the individual and physician level rather than at the mandated government level Vaccines & the Totalitarian Principle (2021).
Across episodes: the same test, two settings
The excerpts show the seen-and-unseen rule argued in two episodes with no development between them. In the earlier treatment, the unseen costs are fiscal and technological: an unpaid federal loan to Solyndra, tariffs that raise the price of cheap imported panels, and the fossil-fuel inputs required to build and maintain a centrally directed energy system. In the later treatment, the unseen cost is the loss of individualized judgment when guidance becomes mandate, with the CDC’s silo and the emergency powers of governors and mayors named as the mechanism. The earlier episode’s argument is advanced by the host and by Mark Joffe; the later episode’s framing is the host’s, put as a question to Dr. Jeffrey Singer. What changes is the domain, not the rule.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the title, date, or holding of any case, nor do they identify any statute or amendment by name. They do not give the founding date or first publication of Economics in One Lesson, nor Hazlitt’s full argument beyond the summary quoted here. The later episode’s excerpt breaks off at the guest’s name, so Dr. Jeffrey Singer’s own account of the seen and unseen costs of lockdowns is not available in these sources.