" --- A stupid person is someone who causes damage to another person, or a group of people, without any advantage accruing to himself (or herself) -- or even with some resultant self-damage. (We shall come back to this, because it is the pivotal concept of the Cipolla Theory.) -- "
The author ignores the fact that some groups of stupid people are so dangerous that they must be damaged, even if the immediate [or long term] result is self damage at no gain.
the author doesn't ignore that, necessarily.
long-term profit IS still profit.
There is no individual/self profit in dying to defend liberty, -- for instance.
It isn't so much "dying" as it is "killing". The founders knew that the ony way to be free of the king was to kill the Kings minions. It wasn't that they were all that keen to die, but that they would rather risk death than live as slaves.
We are pretty much right back to that point again.
ah. that gets into whether the human capacity for tribal affiliation and symbolic valuation should be considered "stupid"
that might be beyond the scope of this paper.