Carlo Cipolla

Carlo M. Cipolla (15 August 1922 – 5 September 2000) was an Italian economic historian. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. As a young man, Cipolla wanted to teach history and philosophy in an Italian high school and therefore enrolled in the political science faculty at the University of Pavia. While a student there, thanks to professor Franco Borlandi, a specialist in medieval economic history, he discovered his passion for economic history. 

He graduated from Pavia in 1944. Subsequently, he studied at the University of Paris 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.

Cipolla produced two non-technical, popular essays that circulated in English among friends in 1973 and 1976 and then were published in 1988, first in Italian, under the title Allegro, ma non troppo ("Forward, but not too fast" or "Happy, but not too much," from the musical phrase meaning "Quickly, but not too quick").

The first essay, "The Role of Spices (and Black Pepper in Particular) in Medieval Economic Development" ("Il ruolo delle spezie (e del pepe nero in particular) nello sviluppo economico del Medioevo," 1973), traces the curious correlations between spice import and population expansion in the late Middle Ages, postulating causation due to a supposed aphrodisiac effect of black pepper.

The second essay, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" ("Le leggi fondamentali della stupidità umana," 1976), 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 military-industrial complex, which without regulations, leaders, or manifesto, nonetheless manages to operate to great effect and with incredible coordination.

Cipolla further refines his definition of "bandits" and "naïve people" by noting that members of these groups can either add to or detract from the general welfare, depending on the relative gains (or losses) that they cause themselves and society. A bandit may enrich himself more or less than he impoverishes society, and a naïve person may enrich society more or less than he impoverishes himself and/or allows himself to be impoverished.

Graphically, this idea is represented by a line of slope -1, which bisects the second and fourth quadrants and intersects the y-axis at the origin. The native people to the left of this line are thus "semi-stupid" because their conduct creates/allows a net drain of societal welfare; some bandits may fit this description as well, although many bandits such as sociopaths, psychopaths, and non-pathological "jerks" and amoralists may act with full knowledge of the net negative consequences to a society that they neither identify with nor care about.