Singer-Songwriter Taylor Swift had three concert dates in Austria cancelled last week when authorities discovered that at least two or three, or possibly more, jihadists had planned a mass killing event outside one of the concerts.
Since promoters were expecting approximately 65,000 people inside the venue, and another 30,000 outside, at each of the three concerts, such a terror attack would have been horrific for the many thousands directly affected, so even though the government said it was certain they had caught all the conspirators, they cancelled the events anyway.
It’s understandable. But was it right?
The jihadists had sought to kill a bunch of non-muslims, to scare the western world out of travel and concert-going, and to cost the free world countless millions of dollars.
Well, law enforcement stopped the killings; and all involved in foiling the plot certainly deserve our compliments for that. But they didn’t stop the terrorists from succeeding at their other goals.
Tens of thousands of fans had travelled, some from the far corners of the earth, to build an Austrian vacation around this concert. Some, no doubt, made the most of their free time after the cancellation by seeing cultural sights like museums and memorials, going to restaurants or cafes, and making their Austrian vacation even more rewarding than in their original plans. But many tried to cancel their trips as soon as they found out; many were let down and unable to enjoy their days in Austria as a result. For everyone who was able to turn this rescheduling into a positive, there were others who suffered a drawback as a result.
One of the greatest stories of the study of economics is the parable of the broken window, first made famous by Frederic Bastiat in 1850, but since then popularized by Henry Hazlitt and other great economists.
At its most basic fundamentals, the story concerns a shopkeeper’s window, which when broken becomes an unexpected expense for the shopkeeper.
Some economists (we would today call them the leftists) cheer the breakage, because now the shopkeeper must spend money on the local glass-fitter, as the window must be repaired. It has created work for the glass-fitter.
Wiser economists (we would today call them the free market or Austrian economists) recognize that there is always a loss to the economy when such damage occurs; in this case, whatever the shopkeeper would otherwise have spent that money on, he now cannot, because he has to buy that new window. Perhaps he was going to take his family out to dinner in the local restaurant; perhaps he was going to take his family to the theatre. Perhaps he was going to give his employees a bonus; perhaps he was going to buy an ad in the local newspaper.
The unplanned expense resulting from that broken window will now cause one or more of those other businesses to lose revenue. Just as our shopkeeper has been denied his intended use of that money, the theatre producers, the restauranteur, the employees, the local paper, will lose out as well.
Anytime something of value is destroyed – in this case, a functioning shop window – other businesses suffer, likely unknowingly. They didn’t know they were going to get that dinner or theatre reservation, that bonus or that ad sale. But they lost it, nevertheless. Enough such losses, and the economy truly suffers.
In the case of the Taylor Swift concert, the news reports don’t talk about these unseen results; today’s reporters don’t usually think that deep through the layers of a story.
The reporters will cheer because the attack was thwarted, and think that alone makes it a win. They might assume that the concert promoters will refund the ticket prices, and be happy to hear that they have. They might also assume some travelers bought vacation insurance, perhaps some will take advantage of that. Many will think that settles it. An event is cancelled, and there’s a refund. No loss.
But there IS a loss, isn’t there? Countless losses.
The promoters were going to have an event; that event is now cancelled and they have to issue refunds. Their profit for the month, maybe for the year, in this case, has evaporated. The venues likely turned down other, less exciting business in favor of the Taylor Swift event; they now have no business for that week. Some of the involved businesses, and some of the affected concertgoers, were insured against cancellation; if so, those insurance companies will feel a loss.
And what of the employees? There are hotels and restaurants, concert venue employees and parking lot attendants, all of whom will lose business because so many of these intended attendees cancelled their vacation. The loss of revenue, the loss of tips, are largely impossible to measure. We will never know how much revenue was lost when these events were cancelled, but we can reason that the number is huge.
And this is because of an economic truth: that life is not a zero sum game.
Money that was going to be spent here won’t just get spent somewhere else; the event itself – the Taylor Swift concert – was going to create money, because the appreciation of the concertgoers would have had a value. Its cancellation will therefore stop that money from being created.
Some people will reschedule, others will not. Some will be scared out of planning such a big vacation and participating in such a huge event ever again. Even without the mass murders taking place that these sick jihadists had intended, so many more of their planned results came true anyway.
What is terror, after all? It isn’t just the obvious loss of life and limb. It’s the act of disruption, the crushing of economic activity, the loss of freedom. It’s the act of scaring people out of going out, keeping people in their home, denying business to the car rental agencies and the taxicabs, the restaurants and bars, the hotels and airlines. And this happened when the concerts were cancelled.
Does this mean that it was a mistake to cancel the concerts, once the jihadists were captured? Not necessarily; we don’t know all the background information that the authorities know, and we may never know. All we know is that it is still a partial win for this enemy, this global jihadist ideology, even without a bomb being detonated, even without a life being lost.
The West must ask ourselves, what can we do to foil this effort; what can we do to rob future jihadists of the opportunity to cause destruction in this way?
The source, the inspiration, is the jihadi philosophy itself. As long as that belief is championed – the insistence that the killing or abuse of non-muslims is a worthwhile method in their pursuit of islamic world domination, to be rewarded with paradise – these methods will continue to be repeated, whether by sophisticated organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS or by “lone wolves,” again and again, continuing to threaten western freedom forever.
Egypt’s General al-Sisi has tried to get the clerics of islam to renounce such methods; our own President Trump has appealed to the secular leaders of the islamic world to do the same. We need more voices, more pressure, in this philosophical battle.
This enemy isn’t just a single group, a single offshoot of a minority religion somewhere. This enemy – this clear and present danger – is a popular motivation in the hearts of a billion people all over the world. The destruction they cause – with both successful and unsuccessful attacks – puts our very way of life in jeopardy.
Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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