this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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broken window fallacy
Just to add a little explanation to those who don't get it: the man-hours spent by people working for then Twitter now X as well as resources used, uktimatelly for producing no wealth, could've instead been spent for something that did produce wealth.
Same amount of input money either way, but one produces wealth (in the economic sense of the word rather than merelly monetary) and the other just wastes manpower and resources.
There has been value generated by Twitter that will outlive it though.
They established and refined an interface that other ventures like blue sky and mastodon are utilizing, and they delivered open source frameworks like Bootstrap will long outlive Twitter, and have brought value to the broader web development ecosystem.
I was just explaning the concept of a "broke window falacy" (funilly enough without using the actual example that gave the name to it) and how work merelly being done is not a gain and can actually be a loss because of the opportunity cost (i.e. the people and the resources could otherwise have been used in something that actually produced something).
Also I was just thinking about the Musk-era Twitter rather than the entire Twitter timeline.
Consider whether Twitter was stifling some other growth. If you buy and burn down an advertising billboard, letting light into a market garden--perhaps that is beneficial.