Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Chapter 1. Do‐Gooders Gone Bad

All reformers are bachelors.

George Moore

It is a shame that the world improvers don't set off some signal before they go bad, like a fire alarm that is running out of juice. Maybe some adjustment could be made. Instead, the most successful of them—such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler—actually gain market share as they get worse. Their delusions are self‐reinforcing, like the delusions of a stock market bubble; the higher prices go, the more people come to believe they make sense.

The do‐gooders who never catch on, of course, are hopeless from the get‐go. Take poor Armin Meiwes. The man thought he had a solution to the problems of poverty and overpopulation. He was, no doubt, discussing his program with Bernard Brandes just before the two cut off Brandes’ most private part and ate it. Then, wouldn't you know it, Brandes died, either as a result of blood loss from the butchering or as a consequence of Meiwes slitting his throat. And then the press made a big stink about it, branding Meiwes the “Cannibal of Rotenburg.” But Meiwes was not merely a pervert; he was an activist.

“We could solve the problem of overpopulation and famine at a stroke,” said he, according to testimony in the Times of London. “The third world is really ripe for eating.” But wait, a fellow omnivore thought he saw a flaw in Meiwes’ utopia: “If we make cannibalism into the norm, then everyone will start eating each other and there will be nobody left.” “That's why I'm not ...