“The Unseen” is the concept, associated on The Bob Zadek Show with the 19th-century French political theorist and economist Frédéric Bastiat, that economic reasoning must count not only the visible effects of an action but the effects that would have occurred had the action not been taken. Bastiat’s insight, as summarized by Mike Munger, is that politicians, journalists and most people focus on the seen — the things that can be observed, and so are said to work — while economics requires attention to the unseen: the things that would have happened if the course of action had not been taken Is Environmentalism a Religious Movement? (2023). The concept is invoked on the show both as a tool of economic analysis and as a recurring theme, with Bob Zadek describing it as one of the show’s recurring themes and Charlie Deist, filling in as host, treating it as the frame for evaluating pandemic policy.
The broken window
Munger recounts the origin of the idea in a French newspaper suggestion that a broken window is a benefit because it creates jobs: the glazier must make glass, and the person who installs the window has work he would not otherwise have had. Bastiat’s reply, in Munger’s telling, was to consider the unseen. The shopkeeper had to spend money buying the glass and paying someone to install it, and those two people would have been doing something else; three people therefore used up resources — money, glass and time — that would have been used for something else that will never be seen. Munger states that the idea that breaking stuff to create jobs works is pervasive throughout society, and that he was provoked to remember Bastiat by how frequently the environmental movement makes exactly the same flawed argument about creating new jobs, adding that “We have learned nothing since 1855” Is Environmentalism a Religious Movement? (2023).
Deist gives the same parable in the pandemic context, describing Bastiat as the 19th-century French political theorist and economist who wrote about the seen versus the unseen. In his telling, the miscreant kid who throws a rock through the window is said to boost economic activity because the glazier must replace the window and this starts a circular flow of spending through the economy — but this neglects that the shopkeeper has less money in his pocket to spend on other, more productive things Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
The seen and unseen costs of lockdown
Deist applies the framework directly to COVID-19 reporting, saying that the same fallacy appears every day: the seen costs — the visible costs of people dying and getting sick — are on the front page every day, while awareness of the unseen is only beginning to grow. He identifies the unseen in the pandemic as the postural issues and the effects of keeping people indoors for months on end from a baseline of already very sedentary lifestyles, which he says can have devastating effects and are where policymakers need to turn their attention in making trade-offs. He also describes a deference to unelected health officials who are not necessarily looking at the big picture because their whole career has been about identifying infectious diseases, comparing them to an astronomer who has a solar eclipse in his home country Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
The episode’s guest, Ron Jones, a physical educator and historical kinesiologist, supplies the concrete measure of the unseen physical cost. He says that if the 1930 standards for physical fitness testing are applied to the athletic child today, that child tests around the 30th percentile compared with the 1930s, and asks whether a child in the 30th percentile of math, reading or science would be acceptable. He reports putting his own son, an athletic basketball kid, through the vertical leap and finding he tested at the 30th percentile. Jones attributes much of this to technology, arguing that technology is often invented to solve a problem of previous technology and is not the end-all solution, and he issues what he calls a warning shot over the bow for everyone rushing to technology as the savior for education today Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
Jones extends the unseen to psychological effects, noting that there was great concern over the public’s emotional state in 1918 after just four or five weeks of lockdowns, with people described as literally losing their minds after four, five or six weeks of restrictions, shutdowns and quarantines. He contrasts that with four, five or six months going into a year, and says the psychological impacts will be deep and that in some ways it will take decades to get through this, if we get through it. He also argues that staying inside and not going outside will make things worse, and that the overall effect on the immune system of everything happening must be considered beyond COVID alone Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
Trade-offs and the problem of proportion
Deist frames the policy question as one of proportional response, invoking the suggestion attributed to Governor Cuomo and other policymakers that if actions save even one life they will be worthwhile, and saying that following that principle ends in a very different kind of world than rationally assessing the appropriate balance. He notes that Bob Zadek’s book Essential Liberty: Finding Freedom in a Post-COVID World collects interviews with thinkers from economists to public policy makers on the question of a proportional response Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
Deist also draws a parallel between technology created to solve a problem created by earlier technology and government policy, describing a patchwork of laws and regulations intended to remedy a failure of previous regulation. He asks Jones where silver linings might come from outside the public school system, noting that obesity and sedentary lifestyle diseases are an epidemic that threatens us just as much as something like the national debt. Jones answers that there is an opportunity in the chaos to deal with root causes of poor health, citing a morbidly obese population and extremely poor movement skills tied to cognitive skills, a connection he says goes back to ancient Greece. He criticizes physical education that consists of children aimlessly walking around the track, and says charter schools have potential because they are jumping out of the standard way of doing it, though he directs criticism at them for being behind the curve on health and PE Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
The 1918 precedent
Jones draws several lessons from the 1918 flu pandemic. He notes that under the umbrella of hygiene, which included fresh air and ventilation, schools a hundred years ago were already talking about fresh air, and that parks were developed places with libraries and physical education teachers who taught children how to play, with free play but also technical instruction. He says cities ended up closing many of those places, and describes a photograph of people in San Francisco packed into a park with their children, though he does not have the specific date. He also notes that some cities that locked down experienced a larger spike afterward, while cautioning that it can be hard to tease out cause and effect Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
On efficacy, Jones says there is still debate among experts who study epidemiology and the history of pandemics about the efficacy of masks and social distancing, and that at a 2006 conference he referenced, panel experts were not quite sure the distancing was that effective. His conclusion is that it is not one strategy or a couple: if it is going to work, all of them must be done at the same time and very quickly. He contrasts the speed of 1918 leaders, who came together and implemented decisions within 24 hours — sometimes 48 — with limited technology and no cell phones or internet, against the American response he observed. He notes that Utah shut the whole state down, including church services, and that cities shut churches while leaving saloons open, which he found were providing cheap meals to industrial laborers in tenement housing. He also says the disease was called a hit-and-run disease, lasting two to six weeks, and that it did not have an economic impact in terms of a severe recession or depression, with an amazing period of growth for 10 years until the Great Depression Back to School: A History Lesson from the 1918 Pandemic (2020).
Across episodes
The two episodes treat the same concept at different points and in different domains rather than developing it. In the 2020 episode, Deist and Jones apply the seen-versus-unseen frame to pandemic lockdowns, counting physical fitness, psychological harm and foregone activity as the unseen costs. In the 2023 episode, Munger applies the same frame to environmental policy, identifying the unseen as the alternatives foregone when resources are consumed, and Zadek closes the show by observing that Munger had ended where they began, with Bastiat and the unseen, calling the engines burning, the CO2 and the particulate going into the air the classic Bastiat unseen Is Environmentalism a Religious Movement? (2023). The excerpts show no change in the concept itself between the earlier and later treatment; what changes is the policy domain to which it is applied.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the full title or publication details of Bastiat’s work, nor the date or place of its writing beyond Munger’s reference to 1855. They do not give the name of any bill, the holding of any case, or the amendment any case turned on. The 1918 material is presented through Jones’s reading of archival documents, and the excerpts do not identify those documents or the 2006 conference by name. The episode excerpts also do not include Bob Zadek’s own questioning in the 2020 episode, which was hosted by Charlie Deist in his absence.