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Comment by ivanjermakov | Hacker News Reader

Spending money is what drives the economy. No diverse expensive healthcare software means thousands of employees don't get paid and don't spend earned money within the economy.

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When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Goodhart's law.

That's broken window fallacy.

"Broken windows" is not a fallacy. The common belief that it's a fallacy is a fallacy.

"Broken windows" indeed can stimulate the economy and improve the lives of people. But not _always_.

How can it stimulate the economy? That's just lack of consideration of cost of opportunity. Hospitals paying for more of similar software is hospitals not paying for something else that could actually improve care.

"Broken windows" can help to jumpstart a stalled economy, that exists in a state of depressed spending. In modern economies, this state is immediately apparent when the interest rate goes down to near zero.

E.g. the US in 2008. Or Europe and the US in 1930.

The fallacy is not that it doesn't create work or money circulation, it's that you are taking money and forcing it to be spent badly. The $100 someone spends on a windows you broke would've spent better spent on literally anything. And if it's not being spent, there's a reason for that as well.

But what if the reason for not spending is that other people are also not spending?

Remember, "your spending is my income".

How does exactly "breaking windows" improve the lives of people?

By creating work that needs to be done, and thus forcing people to start spending.

To bring things back to the original point, there's always a way for health centers to spend money improving patient care. They could hire more nurses and give the existing ones more sleep, for example. In the context of the analogy, a broken window is diverting resources from the broken plumbing and refrigerator motor instead of creating an incentive to spend where none existed.

I think you're right. At the end of the day it just makes healthcare more costly without real benefit.

Money is always spent on something, economy is about how to spend it efficiently

So hospitals in Copenhagen buy Epic EHR to stimulate the economy of Wisconsin?

Efficiency also drives growth, by avoiding waste.

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