Carlo M. Cipolla - The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity: The International Bestseller

CARLO M. CIPOLLA (19222000) was an Italian economic historian, Fulbright Fellow and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Cipolla was elected as a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 1989 and awarded the International Balzan Prize for Economic History in 1995. He also held honorary degrees in Italy and Switzerland.

His classic treatise The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity has sold more than half a million copies worldwide in over ten languages.

When I start at the top left corner of a page in The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, I have the feeling of reading a satire. Ten lines into it, some doubts erupt could this be serious? When I reach the bottom right corner, I am certain it must be a serious work of scholarship in economic analysis. Then, upon turning the page, the cycle starts again, thankfully, because economics is boring (by design) and this is playful, hence fun to read.

The Basic Laws asserts that 1) there will always be more stupid people than you think, 2) the proportion of stupid people is invariant to intellectual, social or geographic segmentation. The ratio will be the same among Nobel Prize winners as it will be among a selection of tax accountants (except I am sure that there must be a higher prevalence among laureates of the pseudo-Nobel in economics). I will leave the remaining laws to avoid spoiling the read this is a very short book.

By the time my eyes reach the bottom right corner, and I realise this is not a joke, the following ideas pop into my head. First, the author has a formal axiomatic definition of what stupid means: someone who harms others without procuring any gain for himself or herself in contrast to the much more predictable bandit who gains something from harming you. As such, stupid persons can cause a lot of damage unlike bandits, they have no interest in the survival of the system because they do not benefit from their stupidity. Second, the laws here are real laws, as far as economic laws are concerned, no less rigorously obtained than Adam Smiths three laws, the law of diminishing return, Okuns law, or some such thing you forget about seconds after taking the final exam. (By contrast, I promise that you will remember Cipollas laws forever.)

Finally, one wonders: why is there a constant proportion of stupid people, invariant to time, place, geography, profession, body mass index, degrees of separation from the Queen of Denmark, and professional rank? The solution of the mystery may lie in the Italian title of Cipollas work, Allegro ma non troppo. Fast, but not too fast. Could it be that Mother Nature (or God, whatever your theology) wants to put a brake on things, reduce the speed of progress, slow down the growth of your employer, prevent GDP from an exponential rise so the economy doesnt overheat? So She created the stupid person acting against both his and the collective interest to do just that?

A masterly book.

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, more than a quarter of a 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 private edition of 1976 was preceded by the following publishers 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 () 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.

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 organised 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 neutralise one of the most powerful, dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and happiness.