Prince Charles and the basic laws of stupidity

All this recent attention to Charles’ amazing letters and unconstitutional meddling made me think quite a lot about STUPIDITY. Thus I came across the writings of Carlo Maria Cipolla who seemed to have thought deeply about human stupidity. He described “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” and viewed stupid people as a group of individuals who are more powerful by far than even major organizations. I liked his approach; it made me think of Prince Charles, strangely enough.

It might be interesting, I concluded, to analyse Charles’ actions against Cipolla’s 5 laws.

Here are Cipolla’s 5 basic laws of stupidity:

1. Always and inevitably each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
3. A person is stupid if they cause damage to another person or group of people without experiencing personal gain, or even worse causing damage to themselves in the process.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people; they constantly forget that at any time anywhere, and in any circumstance, dealing with or associating themselves with stupid individuals invariably constitutes a costly error.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person there is.

How does Charles measure up against these criteria, I ask myself? Let’s go through the 5 ‘laws’ one by one.

1)

Charles is just a ‘study of one’, so this point is irrelevant as far as he is concerned. However, he surrounds himself with yes-men of the Dixon-type (I have blogged about him here and here and here), and this evidence seems to confirm this point at least to a certain degree.

2)

Charles had a good education, he is rich, he has influence (just read my previous post on how he made his influence felt in Exeter), and he has many other characteristics which make him unlikely to appear stupid. So, this point seems to be spot on.

3)

Read my previous post and you will agree that this ‘law’ applies to Charles quite perfectly.

4)

Yes, I did underestimate Charles influence. In particular, I did not appreciate the importance and impact of the KNIGHTHOOD STARVATION SYNDROME.

5)

I think that this is a valid point. His ‘black spider memos’ reveal that he is obsessed with integrating bogus treatments into the NHS to the inevitable detriment of public health. And what could be more dangerous than that?

CONCLUSION: FROM THIS BRIEF ANALYSIS, IT SEEMS AS THOUGH THE ‘FIVE BASIC LAWS OF STUPIDITY’ ARE CONFIRMED BY THE ACTIONS OF PRINCE CHARLES