Carlo M. Cipolla
The Basic Laws of Human
Stupidity
2011
Table of Contents
Title Page
Publisher’s Note
The Mad Millers to the Reader
Introduction
I—The First Basic Law
II—The Second Basic Law
III—A Technical Interlude
IV—The Third (And Golden) Basic Law
V—Frequency Distribution
VI—Stupidity and Power
VII—The Power of Stupidity
VIII—The Fourth Basic Law
IX—Macro Analysis and The Fifth Basic Law
About the Author, Carlo M. Cipolla
Publisher, il Mulino
Publisher’s Note
Originally written in English, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity was
published for the first time in 1976 in a numbered and private edition
bearing the unlikely imprint of «Mad Millers».
The author believed that his short essay could only be fully appreciated in
the language in which it had been written. He consequently long declined
any proposal to have it translated. Only in 1988 did he accept the idea of its
publication in an Italian version as part of the volume entitled Allegro ma
non troppo, together with the essay Pepper, Wine (and Wool) as the
Dynamic Factors of the Social and Economic Development of the Middle
Ages, also originally written in English and published privately by Mad
Millers for Christmas 1973.
Allegro ma non troppo has been a bestseller both in Italy and in all the
countries where translated versions have appeared. Yet, with an irony that
the author of these laws would have appreciated, it has never been
published in the language in which it was first written.
Thus, almost a quarter of century since publication of Allegro ma non
troppo, this in fact is the first edition that makes The Basic Laws of Human
Stupidity available in its original version.
The Mad Millers to the Reader
The private edition of 1976 was preceded by the following publisher’s note
written by the author himself:
The Mad Millers printed only a limited number of copies of this book
which addresses itself not to stupid people but to those who on occasion
have to deal with such people. To add that none of those who will receive
this book can possibly fall in area S of the basic graph (Figure 3) is
therefore a work of supererogation. Nevertheless, like most works of
supererogation, it is better done that left undone.
For, as the Chinese philosopher said: «Erudition is the source of universal
wisdom: but that does not prevent it from being an occasional cause of
misunderstanding between friends.»
Introduction
Human affairs are admittedly in a deplorable state. This, however, is no
novelty. As far back as we can see, human affairs have always been in a
deplorable state. The heavy load of troubles and miseries that human beings
have to bear as individuals as well as members of organized societies is
basically a by-product of the most improbable—and I would dare say,
stupid—way in which life was set up at its very inception.
After Darwin we know that we share our origin with the lower members of
the animal kingdom, and worms as well as elephants have to bear their
daily share of trials, predicaments, and ordeals. Human beings, however, are
privileged in so far as they have to bear an extra load—an extra dose of
tribulations originated daily by a group of people within the human race
itself. This group is much more powerful than the Mafia, or the Military
Industrial Complex, or International Communism—it is an unorganised
unchartered group which has no chief, no president, no by-laws and yet
manages to operate in perfect unison, as if guided by an invisible hand, in
such a way that the activity of each member powerfully contributes to
strengthen and amplify the effectiveness of the activity of all other
members. The nature, character and behaviour of the members of this group
are the subject of the following pages.
Let me point out at this juncture that most emphatically this little book is
neither a product of cynicism nor an exercise in defeatism—no more than a
book on microbiology. The following pages are in fact the result of a
constructive effort to detect, know and thus possibly neutralize one of the
most powerful, dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and
happiness.
Chapter I
The First Basic Law
The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:
«Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of
stupid individuals in circulation.»1
Figure 1. Take care when cutting a sandwich.
At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer
scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are
one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently
startled by the fact that:
people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out
to be unashamedly stupid.
day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s
activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and
unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most
improbable moments.
The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical
value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any
numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the
following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a
population by the symbol σ (Greek sigma).
1
The compilers of the Testament were aware of the First Basic Law and they paraphrased it when
they asserted that «stultorum infinitus est numerus» but they indulged in poetic exaggeration. The
number of stupid people cannot be infinite because the number of living people is finite.
Chapter II
The Second Basic Law
Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian
approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a
perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists
especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of
scientific data and formulations that all men are naturally equal and if some
are more equal than others, this is attributable to nurture and not to nature.
I take an exception to this general view. It is my firm conviction, supported
by years of observation and experimentation, that men are not equal, that
some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by
nature and not by cultural forces or factors.
Figure 2. In the wrong hands, Paddle-ball can be dangerous.
One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid
set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by
an act of Providence.
Although convinced that fraction σ of human beings are stupid and that they
are so because of genetic traits, I am not a reactionary trying to reintroduce
surreptitiously class or race discrimination. I firmly believe that stupidity is
an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed
according to a constant proportion. This fact is scientifically expressed by
the Second Basic Law which states that:
«The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of
any other characteristic of that person.»
In this regard, Nature seems indeed to have outdone herself. It is well
known that Nature manages, rather mysteriously, to keep constant the
relative frequency of certain natural phenomena. For instance, whether men
proliferate at the Northern Pole or at the Equator, whether the matching
couples are developed or underdeveloped, whether they are black, red,
white or yellow, the female to male ratio among the newly born is a
constant, with a very slight prevalence of males. We do not know how
Nature achieves this remarkable result but we know that in order to achieve
it Nature must operate with large numbers. The most remarkable fact about
the frequency of stupidity is that Nature succeeds in making this frequency
equal to the probability σ quite independently from the size of the group.
Thus one finds the same percentage of stupid people whether one is
considering very large groups or one is dealing with very small ones. No
other set of observable phenomena offers such striking proof of the powers
of Nature.
The evidence that education has nothing to do with the probability σ was
provided by experiments carried on in a large number of universities all
over the world. One may distinguish the composite population which
constitutes a university in five major groups, namely the blue-collar
workers, the white-collar employees, the students, the administrators and
the professors.
Whenever I analysed the blue-collar workers I found that the fraction σ of
them were stupid. As σ’s value was higher than I expected (First Law),
paying my tribute to fashion I thought at first that segregation, poverty, lack
of education were to be blamed. But moving up the social ladder I found
that the same ratio was prevalent among the white-collar employees and
among the students. More impressive still were the results among the
professors. Whether I considered a large university or a small college, a
famous institution or an obscure one, I found that the same fraction σ of the
professors are stupid. So bewildered was I by the results, that I made a
special point to extend my research to a specially selected group, to a real
élite, the Nobel laureates. The result confirmed Nature’s supreme powers: σ
fraction of the Nobel laureates are stupid.
This idea was hard to accept and digest but too many experimental results
proved its fundamental veracity. The Second Basic Law is an iron law, and
it does not admit exceptions. The Women’s Liberation Movement will
support the Second Basic Law as it shows that stupid individuals are
proportionately as numerous among men as among women. The
underdeveloped of the Third World will probably take solace at the Second
Basic Law as they can find in it the proof that after all the developed are not
so developed. Whether the Second Basic Law is liked or not, however, its
implications are frightening: the Law implies that whether you move in
distinguished circles or you take refuge among the head-hunters of
Polynesia, whether you lock yourself into a monastery or decide to spend
the rest of your life in the company of beautiful and lascivious women, you
always have to face the same percentage of stupid people—which
percentage (in accordance with the First Law) will always surpass your
expectations.
Chapter III
A Technical Interlude
At this point it is imperative to elucidate the concept of human stupidity
and to define the dramatis persona.
Individuals are characterized by different degrees of propensity to socialize.
There are individuals for whom any contact with other individuals is a
painful necessity. They literally have to put up with people and people have
to put up with them. At the other extreme of the spectrum there are
individuals who absolutely cannot live by themselves and are even ready to
spend time in the company of people whom they do not really like rather
than to be alone. Between these two extremes, there is an extreme variety of
conditions, although by far the greatest majority of the people are closer to
the type who cannot face loneliness than to the type who has no taste for
human intercourse. Aristotle recognized this fact when he wrote that «Man
is a social animal» and the validity of his statement is demonstrated by the
fact that we move in social groups, that there are more married people than
bachelors and spinsters, that so much wealth and time is wasted in fatiguing
and boring cocktail parties and that the word “loneliness” carries normally a
negative connotation.
Whether one belongs to the hermit or to the socialite type, one deals with
people although with different intensity. Even the hermits occasionally meet
people. Moreover, one affects human beings also by avoiding them. What I
could have done for an individual or a group but did not do is an
opportunity-cost (i.e. a lost gain or loss) for that particular person or group.
The moral of the story is that each one of us has a current balance with
everybody else. From action or inaction each one of us derives a gain or a
loss and at the same time one causes a gain or a loss to some one else.
Gains and losses can be conveniently charted on a graph, and Figure 3
shows the basic graph to be used for the purpose.
The graph refers to an individual—let us say Tom. The X axis measures the
gain that Tom derives from his actions. On the Y axis the graph shows the
gain that another person or group of persons derive from Tom’s actions.
Gains can be positive, nil or negative—a negative gain being actually a
loss. The X axis measures Tom’s positive gains to the right of point O and
Tom’s losses to the left of point O. The Y axis measures the gains and
losses of the person or persons with whom Tom dealt respectively above
and below point O.
Figure 3. The basic graph. Any action can be broken down into losses or gains for self, versus losses
or gains for others. The relative degree of such gains and losses determines in which quadrant of the
graph (H, I, B, or S) an individual falls.
To make all this clear, let us make a hypothetical example and refer to
Figure 3. Tom takes an action which affects Dick. If Tom derives from the
action a gain and Dick suffers from the same action a loss, the action will be
recorded on the graph with a dot which will appear in the graph somewhere
in area B.
Gains and losses may be recorded on the X and Y axis in dollars or francs,
if one wants, but one has to include also psychological and emotional
rewards and satisfactions as well as psychological and emotional stresses.
These are intangibles and they are very difficult to measure according to
objective standards. Cost-benefit analysis can help to solve the problem,
although not completely, but I do not want to bother the reader with such
technicalities: a margin of imprecision is bound to affect the measurement
but it does not affect the essence of the argument. One point though must be
made clear. When considering Tom’s action one makes use of Tom’s values
but one has to rely on Dick’s values and not on Tom’s values to determine
Dick’s gains (whether positive or negative). All too often this rule of
fairness is forgotten and many troubles originate from failure to apply this
essentially urbane point of view. Let me resort once again to a banal
example. Tom hits Dick on Dick’s head and he derives satisfaction from his
action. He may pretend that Dick was delighted to be hit on the head. Dick,
however, may not share Tom’s view. In fact he may regard the blow on his
head as an unpleasant event. Whether the blow on Dick’s head was a gain
or a loss to Dick is up to Dick to decide and not to Tom.
Chapter IV
The Third (And Golden) Basic Law
The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that
human beings fall into four basic categories: the Helpless, the Intelligent,
the Bandit and the Stupid. It will be easily recognized by the perspicacious
reader that these four categories correspond to the four areas H, I, B, S, of
the basic graph (see Figure 3).
Figure 4. Top Left: Clever Dick has found a way to turn a profit from his ailing pigs. Helpless Tom,
by willingly buying such a pig, creates a gain for Dick but a loss for himself.
Top Right: A healthy pig changes hands for what both parties agree is a fair price, a gain for both.
This win-win situation places both Tom and Dick in the Intelligent quadrant.
Bottom right: Tom is a bandit and by threatening violence, gains a pig at Dick’s expense. A win for
Tom, but an equivalent loss for Dick.
Bottom left: Stupid Tom bumbles into a ladder, causing Dick to fall, and a brick to fall onto his own
head. A clear loss for both parties—this puts Tom firmly into the S quadrant.
If Tom takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to Dick,
Tom’s mark will fall in field H: Tom acted helplessly. If Tom takes an
action by which he makes a gain while yielding a gain also to Dick, Tom’s
mark will fall in area I: Tom acted intelligently. If Tom takes an action by
which he makes a gain causing Dick a loss, Tom’s mark will fall in area B:
Tom acted as a bandit.
Stupidity is related to area S and to all positions on axis Y below point O.
As the Third Basic Law explicitly clarifies:
«A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person
or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even
possibly incurring losses.»
When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational
people instinctively react with feelings of scepticism and incredulity. The
fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and
understanding unreasonable behaviour. But let us abandon the lofty plane of
theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life. We all recollect
occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and
our loss: we had to deal with a bandit. We also recollect cases in which a
fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and our gain: we had to deal
with a helpless person.2
We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an
action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do
indeed occur. But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are
not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life. Our daily life
is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy
and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable
action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed
gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody
knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature
does what he does. In fact, there is no explanation—or better there is only
one explanation: the person in question is stupid.
2 Notice the qualification «a fellow took an action». The fact he took the action is decisive in
establishing that he is helpless. If I took the action which resulted in my gain and his loss, then the
judgement would be different: I would be a bandit.
Chapter V
Frequency Distribution
Most people do not act consistently. Under certain circumstances a given
person acts intelligently and under different circumstances the same person
will act helplessly. The only important exception to the rule is represented
by the stupid people who normally show a strong proclivity toward perfect
consistency in all fields of human endeavours.
From all that proceeds, it does not follow that we can chart on the basic
graph only stupid individuals. We can calculate for each person his
weighted average position in the plane of Figure 3 quite independently from
his degree of inconsistency. A helpless person may occasionally behave
intelligently and on occasion he may perform a bandit’s action. But since
the person in question is fundamentally helpless most of his action will
have the characteristics of helplessness. Thus the overall weighted average
position of all the actions of such a person will place him in the H quadrant
of the basic graph.
The fact that it is possible to place on the graph individuals instead of their
actions allows some digression about the frequency of the bandit and stupid
types.
The perfect bandit is one who, with his actions, causes to other individuals
losses equal to his gains. The crudest type of banditry is theft. A person
who robs you of 100 pounds without causing you an extra loss or harm is a
perfect bandit: you lose 100 pounds, he gains 100 pounds. In the basic
graph the perfect bandits would appear on a 45-degree diagonal line that
divides the area B into two perfectly symmetrical sub-areas (line OM of
Figure 5).
Figure 5. Most bandits fall into area BS and rarely into BI. Most stupid people are clustered on the Y
axis below point O.
However the «perfect» bandits are relatively few. The line OM divides the
area B into two sub-areas, BI and BS, and by far the largest majority of the
bandits falls somewhere in one of these two sub-areas.
The bandits who fall in area BI are those individuals whose actions yield to
them profits which are larger than the losses they cause to other people. All
bandits who are entitled to a position in area BS are bandits with overtones
of intelligence and as they get closer to the right side of the X axis they
share more and more the characteristics of the intelligent person.
Unfortunately the individuals entitled to a position in the BI area are not
very numerous. Most bandits actually fall in area BS. The individuals who
fall in this area are those whose actions yield to them gains inferior to the
losses inflicted to other people. If someone kills you in order to rob you of
fifty pounds or if he murders you in order to spend a weekend with your
wife at Monte Carlo, we can be sure that he is not a perfect bandit. Even by
using his values to measure his gains (but still using your values to measure
your losses) he falls in the BS area very close to the border of sheer
stupidity. Generals who cause vast destruction and innumerable casualties
in return for a promotion or a medal fall in the same area.
The frequency distribution of the stupid people is totally different from that
of the bandit.
While bandits are mostly scattered over an area, stupid people are heavily
concentrated along one line, specifically on the Y axis below point O. The
reason for this is that by far the majority of stupid people are basically and
unwaveringly stupid—in other words they perseveringly insist in causing
harm and losses to other people without deriving any gain, whether positive
or negative.
There are however people who by their improbable actions not only cause
damages to other people but in addition hurt themselves. They are a sort of
super-stupid who, in our system of accounting, will appear somewhere in
the area S to the left of the Y axis.
Chapter VI
Stupidity and Power
Like all human creatures, stupid people vary enormously in their capacity
to affect their fellow men. Some stupid people normally cause only limited
losses while others egregiously succeed in causing ghastly and widespread
damages not only to one or two individuals but to entire communities or
societies. The damaging potential of the stupid person depends on two
major factors. First of all, it depends on the genetic factor. Some individuals
inherit exceptional doses of the gene of stupidity and by virtue of
inheritance they belong from birth to the élite of their group. The second
factor which determines the potential of a stupid person is related to the
position of power and consequence which he occupies in society. Among
bureaucrats, generals, politicians and heads of state one has little difficulty
in finding clear examples of basically stupid individuals whose damaging
capacity was (or is) alarmingly enhanced by the position of power which
they occupied (or occupy). Religious dignitaries should not be overlooked.
The question that reasonable people often raise is how and why stupid
people can reach positions of power and consequence.
Class and caste were the social arrangements which favoured the steady
supply of stupid people to positions of power in most societies of the preindustrial
world. Religion was another contributing factor. In the modern
industrial world class and caste are banished both as words and as concepts
and religion is fading away. But in lieu of class and caste we have political
parties and bureaucracy and in lieu of religion we have democracy. Within a
democratic system, general elections are a most effective instrument to
insure the steady maintenance of fraction σ among the powerful. One has to
keep in mind that according to the Second Basic Law, the fraction σ of the
voting population are stupid people and elections offer to all of them at
once a magnificent opportunity to harm everybody else without gaining
anything from their action. They do so by contributing to the maintenance
of the σ level among those in power.
Chapter VII
The Power of Stupidity
It is not difficult to understand how social, political and institutional power
enhances the damaging potential of a stupid person. But one still has to
explain and understand what essentially it is that makes a stupid person
dangerous to other people—in other words what constitutes the power of
stupidity.
Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable
people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behaviour.
An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s
actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still
rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not
intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing
you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on
your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you
can predict it. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty manoeuvres and
ugly aspirations and often can build up your defences.
With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the
Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no
advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times
and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and
why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual
you are completely at his mercy. Because the stupid person’s actions do not
conform to the rules of rationality, it follows that:
one is generally caught by surprise by the attack;
even when one becomes aware of the attack, one cannot organize a
rational defence, because the attack itself lacks any rational
structure.
The fact that the activity and movements of a stupid creature are absolutely
erratic and irrational not only makes defence problematic but it also makes
any counter-attack extremely difficult—like trying to shoot at an object
which is capable of the most improbable and unimaginable movements.
This is what both Dickens and Schiller had in mind when the former stated
that «with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much» and the
latter wrote that «against stupidity the very Gods fight in vain».
Chapter VIII
The Fourth Basic Law
That helpless people, namely those who in our accounting system fall into
the H area, do not normally recognize how dangerous stupid people are, is
not at all surprising. Their failure is just another expression of their
helplessness. The truly amazing fact, however, is that also intelligent people
and bandits often fail to recognize the power to damage inherent in
stupidity. It is extremely difficult to explain why this should happen and one
can only remark that when confronted with stupid individuals, often
intelligent men as well as bandits make the mistake of indulging in feelings
of self-complacency and contemptuousness instead of immediately
secreting adequate quantities of adrenaline and building up defences.
One is tempted to believe that a stupid man will only do harm to himself but
this is confusing stupidity with helplessness. On occasion one is tempted to
associate oneself with a stupid individual in order to use him for one’s own
schemes. Such a manoeuvre cannot but have disastrous effects because:
it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the essential nature of
stupidity and;
it gives the stupid person added scope for the exercise of his gifts.
One may hope to out-manoeuvre the stupid and, up to a point, one may
actually do so. But because of the erratic behaviour of the stupid, one
cannot foresee all the stupid’s actions and reactions and before long one
will be pulverized by the unpredictable moves of the stupid partner.
This is clearly summarized in the Fourth Basic Law which states that:
«Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of
stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly
forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to
deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a
costly mistake.»
Through centuries and millennia, in public as in private life, countless
individuals have failed to take account of the Fourth Basic Law and the
failure has caused mankind incalculable losses.
Chapter IX
Macro Analysis and The Fifth Basic Law
The consideration on which the previous chapter ends is conducive to a
macro-type of analysis in which, instead of considering the welfare of the
individual, one considers the welfare of the society, regarded in this context
as the algebraic sum of the individual conditions. A full understanding of
the Fifth Basic Law is essential to the analysis. It may be parenthetically
added here, that of the Five Basic Laws, the Fifth is certainly the best
known and its corollary is quoted very frequently. The Fifth Basic Law
states that:
«A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.»
The corollary of the Law is that:
«A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.»
The formulation of the Law and its corollary is still of the micro-type. As
indicated above, however, the Law and its corollary have far reaching
implications of a macro-nature.
The essential point to keep in mind is this: the result of the action of a
perfect bandit (the person who falls on line OM of Figure 5 or Figure 6
below) is purely and simply a transfer of wealth and/or welfare. After the
action of a perfect bandit, the bandit has a plus on his account which plus is
exactly equivalent to the minus he has caused to another person. The
society as a whole is neither better nor worse off. If all members of a
society were perfect bandits the society would remain stagnant but there
would be no major disaster. The whole business would amount to massive
transfers of wealth and welfare in favour of those who would take action. If
all members of the society would take action in regular turns, not only the
society as a whole but also individuals would find themselves in a perfectly
steady state of no change.
When stupid people are at work, the story is totally different. Stupid people
cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own
account. Thus the society as a whole is impoverished.
The system of accounting which finds expression in the basic graphs shows
that while all actions of individuals falling to the right of the line POM (see
Figure 6) add to the welfare of a society; although in different degrees, the
actions of all individuals falling to the left of the same line POM cause a
deterioration.
Figure 6. Individuals above and to the right of the diagonal line POM create net benefits for society.
Individuals below and to the left cause net losses to society. Individuals on the line POM are
“perfect”—losses they cause match gains.
In other words the helpless with overtones of intelligence (area HI), the
bandits with overtones of intelligence (area BI) and above all the intelligent
(area I) all contribute, though in different degrees, to accrue to the welfare
of a society. On the other hand the bandits with overtones of stupidity (area
BS) and the helpless with overtones of stupidity (area HS) manage to add
losses to those caused by stupid people thus enhancing the nefarious
destructive power of the latter group.
All this suggests some reflection on the performance of societies.
According to the Second Basic Law, the fraction of stupid people is a
constant σ which is not affected by time, space, race, class or any other
sociocultural or historical variable. It would be a profound mistake to
believe the number of stupid people in a declining society is greater than in
a developing society. Both such societies are plagued by the same
percentage of stupid people. The difference between the two societies is that
in the society which performs poorly:
the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members
to become more active and take more actions;
there is a change in the composition of the non-stupid section with a
relative decline of populations of areas I, HI and BI and a
proportionate increase of populations HS and BS.
This theoretical presumption is abundantly confirmed by an exhaustive
analysis of historical cases. In fact the historical analysis allows us to
reformulate the theoretical conclusions in a more factual way and with more
realistic detail.
Whether one considers classical, or medieval, or modern or contemporary
times one is impressed by the fact that any country moving uphill has its
unavoidable σ fraction of stupid people. However the country moving
uphill also has an unusually high fraction of intelligent people who manage
to keep the σ fraction at bay and at the same time produce enough gains for
themselves and the other members of the community to make progress a
certainty.
In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is still
equal to σ; however in the remaining population one notices among those in
power an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity
(sub-area BS of quadrant B in Figure 6) and among those not in power an
equally alarming growth in the number of helpless individuals (area H in
basic graph, Figure 3). Such change in the composition of the non-stupid
population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the σ fraction
and makes decline a certainty.
And the country goes to Hell.
As a young man, Cipolla wanted to teach history and philosophy in an
Italian high school, and therefore enrolled at the political science faculty at
Pavia University. Whilst a student there, thanks to professor Franco
Borlandi, a specialist in Medieval economic history, he discovered his
passion for economic history. Subsequently he studied at the Sorbonne and
the London School of Economics.
Cipolla obtained his first teaching post in economic history in Catania at the
age of 27. This was to be the first stop in a long academic career in Italy
(Venice, Turin, Pavia, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Fiesole) and
abroad. In 1953 Cipolla left for the United States as a Fulbright fellow and
in 1957 became a visiting professor at the University of California,
Berkeley. Two years later he obtained a full professorship.
One of Cipolla’s works is a collection of two tongue-in-cheek essays on
economics, circulated (in English) among friends in 1973 and 1976, then
published in 1988 (in Italian) under the title Allegro ma non troppo
(“Forward, but not too fast”, “Happy but not too much”, from the musical,
“Quickly, but not too quick”).
The second essay, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, explores the
controversial subject of stupidity. Stupid people are seen as a group, more
powerful by far than major organizations such as the Mafia and the
industrial complex, which without regulations, leaders or manifesto,
nonetheless manages to operate to great effect and with incredible
coordination.
ISBN 978-88-15-23381-3
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