Carlo Maria Cipolla (1922-2000) was an Italian economic historian. Year 1922 ( MCMXXII) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. 2000 ( MM) was a Leap year that started on Saturday of the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. Economic history is the study of how economic phenomena evolved in the past He was born in Pavia, where he got his academic degree in 1944. Pavia (pronounced Pavìa,) the ancient Ticinum, is a town and Comune of south-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 35 km south Year 1944 ( MCMXLIV) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar.
Through his study of economic history, he showed a keen interest in the causes that prompted specific economic and social situations during history, instead of focusing on facts and figures. He was noted as well for his work on overpopulation and his essays on human stupidity. Overpopulation refers to a condition where an Organism 's numbers exceed the Carrying capacity of its Habitat. Stupidity (also called fatuity) is the property a Person, action or Belief instantiates by virtue of having or being indicative
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Biography
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 the history of economics. Subsequently he studied at the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics. The London School of Economics and Political Science, more commonly referred to as The London School of Economics or LSE, is a specialist college of the
Cipolla obtained his first teaching post in economic history in Catania at the age of 27. Catania ( Greek: &ndash Katánē; Latin: Catăna and Catĭna; Arabic: This was to be the first stop in a long academic career in Italy (Venice, Turin, Pavia, Pisa and Fiesole) and abroad. Venice ( Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venesia or Venexia) is a city in Northern Italy, the capital of the Pisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. Fiesole is a town and Comune of the Province of Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany, on a famously scenic height above 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. Year 1953 ( MCMLIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of grants for international educational exchange for scholars educators graduate Year 1957 ( MCMLVII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar) The University of California Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major research university located in Berkeley Two years later he obtained a full professorship. Cipolla was welcomed as a member of many prestigious academies and in 1995 received the Balzan prize. Year 1995 ( MCMXCV) was a Common year starting on Sunday. Events of 1995 The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organisations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities natural
Allegro ma non troppo
Cipolla's most popular work is a collection of two tongue-in-cheek essays on economics, first published in 1988 with the title Allegro ma non troppo ("Happy but not by too much" or, as in music, "Quickly, but not too quick").
The first essay, The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity, explores the controversial subject of stupidity. Stupidity (also called fatuity) is the property a Person, action or Belief instantiates by virtue of having or being indicative 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. In Sociology, a group can be defined as two or more Humans that interact with one another accept expectations and obligations as members of the group and share a The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) is a Sicilian Criminal Secret society which is believed to have first developed in the mid-19th century A military-industrial complex (MIC is a concept commonly used to refer to Policy relationships between Governments national Armed forces, and industrial
These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:
- Always and inevitably each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
- The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
- 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.
- 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.
- A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person there is.
As is evident from the third law, Cipolla identifies two factors to consider when exploring human behaviour:
- Benefits and losses that an individual causes to others. Behavior or behaviour (see spelling differences) refers to the actions or Reactions of an object or Organism, usually
- Benefits and losses that an individual causes to him or herself.
By creating a graph with the first factor on the x-axis and the second on the y-axis, we obtain four groups of people:
- Intelligent people (top right)
- Vicarious / Naive people (bottom right)
- Pillagers (top left)
- Stupid people (bottom left)
The second essay, The role of spices (and black pepper in particular) in Medieval Economic Development, traces the curious correlation between spice import and population expansion in the late Middle Ages, postulating a causation due to a supposed aphrodisiac effect of black pepper.
Works
- Studi di Storia della Moneta (1948)
- Mouvements monétaires dans l'Etat de Milan (1951)
- Money, Prices and Civilization (1956)
- L' avventura della lira (1958)
- Storia dell'economia italiana: Saggi di storia economica (1959)
- Economic History of World Population (1962)
- Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (1965)
- Clocks and Culture (1967)
- Literary and Development in the West (1969)
- The economic decline of empires (1970)
- European culture and overseas expansion (1970)
- Economic History of Europe (1973)
- Faith, Reason, and the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany (1977)
- The technology of man: A visual history (1980)
- Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth Century Italy (1981)
- The Monetary Policy of Fourteenth Century Florence (1982)
- Allegro ma non troppo (1988)
- Between Two Cultures: An Introduction to Economic History (1992)
- Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000-1700 (1994)
External links
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