The Dark Triad’s Negative Externality—Generational Tyranny

Negative Externality: Transaction spillover, a cost not transmitted through prices that is incurred by a party who did not agree to and was not part of the transaction.

When a large air carrier suffers a loss the National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB] conducts a thorough investigation to determine the “probable cause”.  It then recommends what procedures should be adopted to preclude the same catastrophe from happening again.

While many consider this to be a “gravestone mentality” it is far better than what we have with economics—which is nothing.  The same morons who crashed the economy in 2008 are still flying the line.  Psychopathic Economics has been studying to determine the probable cause of our economic crash.

While we haven’t released a formal “Blue Book” on the crash of Flight 2008 we’re resolved that Capitalism has been replaced with Corporatocracy.  That is the “how” they (the Dark Triad) did it.  It is not the “why”.

The “why this came about” comes from within the Dark Triad itself and from the predisposed psychopathic tendencies that are an integral and inherent fiber of a corporation.

The Dark Triad is comprised of: Machiavelliasts, psychopaths and narcissists.  The documentary The Corporation can be viewed in the article “Why We Are Totally Finished” (which is up to 150,000 reads).  The Corporation clearly reveals that corporations are predisposed to exhibit psychopathic characteristics.  The scope of Corporations was limited by charter 150 years ago.  They were formed to do a specific public good—like build a bridge.

After the Civil War corporate lawyers argued that the Fourteenth Amendment afforded people equal rights.  They filed 288 cases, former slaves filed 18.  The courts gave corporations “people status”.  Soulless entities whose legal DNA puts profit above all else—even its fellow citizens.  As a result they exhibit all the traits of a psychopath: A callous unconcern for the feeling of others, they are incapable of maintaining enduring relationships, they posses an incapacity to experience or feel guilt and they fail to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior.

I’d argue, and did, about the “lawful behavior aspect.”  Quite frankly, Corporatocracy allows corporations to obliterate any laws by using their former C.E.O.’s who revolve out of the boardroom and land in high positions of “our” government.  I’d go so far as to say that they are such strong manipulators that they can twist the law or change it—so breaking it becomes unnecessary.  That is really a conniving characteristic thought out by the  Machiavelliast and carried out by the psychopath and the narcissist.

On September 11, of 2011 the movie I Am Fishead was released, a huge hat tip of appreciation to Jess over at Jesse’s American Cafe’ whose fine blog covered this.  In I Am Fishead at about the 23:00 point, Dr. Robert Hare dropped the bomb: For the first time in history Fortune 100 companies had large numbers of high level executives analyzed to determine if psychopaths existed.  It was the first empirical study of this sort that was able to use a well validated measure of psychopathy with a lot of high level executives.

What blew us away at Psychopathic Economics was the Dr. Hare mentioned 8 or 9 of the 203 had extremely high scores.  Stop right there.  Let’s do the math.  If you sample our population you’ll find 1 percent of it is comprised of psychopaths.  If you sample just women it’ll be 1/2 a percent.  Just men?  About 1 1/2 percent.

Eight or nine is between 4 and 5 percent.

Psychopathic Economics interviewed Dr. Daniel N. Jones Ph.d, Dr. Hare’s postdoctoral researcher and the podcast I think you’ll find amazing.  Perhaps the most fascinating thing was how new the study of psychopathy is.  Dr. Jones says, “It’s amazing and baffling to me that we are almost starting now to ask these questions“.  Which prompted me to ask just how long ago it was that psychopaths were identified.  Dr. Jones explains, “Hervey M. Cleckley and Robert Hare both kind of fed off each other.  It was really late 1970s early 1980s before we really kind of had any working conception of what a psychopath really was.”

Generational Tyranny

Startlingly fast considering the history of the corporations versus the working conception of what a psychopath is.  Yet, in that short time look at the amount of Generational Tyranny that was caused by the Dark Triad’s negative externalities: Unemployment is 22.5%; 47 million Americans are on food stamps; our children have been saddled with even more debt which went to bailing out insolvent institutions who deserved to fail; prime foreclosures now rival subprime foreclosures; home prices are through the first floor and will be subterranean soon; 25% of kids age 18-34 live in mom and dad’s basements; 46% of kids 18-24 have no job; 12% of homes are vacant; there are schools just for homeless children; tent cities have sprung up; and 60 Minutes now runs stories of children living in cars with their unemployed parents.

The podcast discussing the Fortune 100 psychopathy study with Dr. Jones is here.

Psychopathic Economics Interview: Psychopath Study Conducted at Fortune 100 Companies

The most interesting points of the interview I found to be:

• 0:48 Dr. Babiak felt it would also be appropriate to screen for psychopathy, in this particular instance, as an informative measure.
• 1:43 One thing we know about people individuals high in psychopathy, through the literature, they don’t think there is anything wrong with them—it’s just the rest of the world that is screwed up.
• 1:52 If they run into problems it is not their fault.  Or at least that is how they perceive it.
• 2:15 Individuals who scored high in psychopathy were rated as much more effective in their communication skills and their creativity, so these individuals that were actually, we considered toxic people both in society and corporations, were actually evaluated higher than others in their communications skills and creativity.  Which I find to be kind of a scary thing.
• 2:50 Psychopathy is measured by the psychopathy checklist which breaks into four different aspects.
• 3:00 Aspect 1.)  Being a manipulative person or a liar.
• 3:05 Aspect 2.) Callous, kind of a lack of empathy towards others.
• 3:08 Aspect 3.) Impulsivity, or more specifically a lack of impulse control.
• 3:15 Aspect 4.) Antisocial behavior, some kind of breaking rules, whether it be social rules or legal rules.
• The first two aspects were particularly related to positive overall outcomes in the sense that they were evaluated as more effective leaders and communicators.  They were more creative.
• 3:44 But what these first two aspects giveth, the second two aspects taketh away.  Evaluations were lower, productivity was lower and their ability to work with others.
• 4:10 Depending on the short or long checklist you consult, you get 4 to 5 percent of these executives that were interviewed meeting the threshold criteria for being a psychopath.
• 4:50 NONE of the CEO’s met the threshold for psychopathy!!!  It was really the up and comers, vice presidents, senior managers, middle managers.
• 5:50 There is actually a cluster of traits that we refer to as, “The Dark Triad of Personality” called Machiavellianism, Psychopathy & Narcissism.
• 6:50 When you get these 3 together in an organization it is a particularly toxic outcome because they feed off each other’s unethical behavior.
• 7:15 Asocial Offenders and Antisocial Offenders.  Asocial Offenders are introverts, socially awkward, unable to communicate.  Antisocial Offenders gets along quite well impersonally.  It’s just they Antisocial Offender has no regard for rules.
• 14:50 There research reports estimating anywhere between $160,000,000,000.00 to $600,000,000,000.00 annually are pumped out of our economy as the result of corporate.

Here are some resources for further reading, or if you are with a corporation some sites you can find help at .

A more detailed Skrib summary below, of which some of the following is verbatim, some isn’t, quotes were omitted, please listen to audio as it is far more precise, as I’m an economic blogger, not a transcriptionist ;-).  The summary is merely for those in a rush who want to tune into what is of interest, and also for the search engines to find.  Not only do I think this is fantastic work, but it is a super cause, I truly feel it is something that should be utilized a lot more and am hopeful their work spreads so we can make the world a better place for our kids.

Dr. Robert Hare Ph.D’s website.

Dr. Paul Babiak Ph.D’s website.