Crazy Rich
Are Americans successful because they're nuts? By Daniel Gross

Are Americans rich because they're nuts?

That's the thesis of a new book, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, by John D. Gartner, a psychotherapist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. America may be the dominant force in the global economy because we're a nation made of somewhat Crazy Eddies—gonzo businessmen and -women who may be genetically predisposed to take big-time risks.

It sounds right. Creativity and genius have often been linked to mental illness. Many virtuoso painters, composers, and architects are a little kooky. Why not entrepreneurs? Gartner identifies "hypomania" as a benign form of madness—manic without the depressive. Here's how they present: "Hypomanics are brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas. They think, talk, move, and make decisions quickly. Anyone who slows them down with questions 'just doesn't get it.' " They find it hard to sit still, channel their energy "into the achievement of wildly grand ambitions," feel a sense of destiny, "can be euphoric," have a tendency to overspend, take risks, and act impulsively, and with poor judgment. They are "witty and gregarious" and possess a confidence that makes them charismatic and persuasive. It sounds a lot like Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape and animating character of Michael Lewis' The New New Thing. Or like President Bush.

<NOEMBED></NOEMBED><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT>Gartner concludes that many of the components of the archetypal American character—optimism, entrepreneurial energy, religious zeal—fit the hypomanic profile. Perhaps, he posits, this nation of immigrants has a gene pool of hypomanics. Immigration may select for it. After all, who else would be eager to embark on a dangerous journey, convinced he could make it in the New World? As a result, Gartner writes, Americans may be "culturally and genetically predisposed to economic risk."

Gartner sets out to prove his case not through contemporary case studies or the aggregation of vast quantities of data, but through brief, lively studies of key hypomanics from five different centuries. Christopher Columbus, the "messianic entrepreneur," had divine ambitions. Some of the first settlers of the United States were "protestant prophets"—John Winthrop of Massachusetts and Roger Williams in Rhode Island. Alexander Hamilton fearlessly charged British positions at Yorktown and wrote The Federalist papers in a series of all-nighters. His hypomania "was an essential ingredient in his accomplishments. And his accomplishments were an essential ingredient in the creation of America." Andrew Carnegie, the hypomanic steel baron, feverishly built up an industrial empire and then spent the rest of his life trying to change the world. More recent hypomanics might include movie-studio moguls David Selznick and Louis B. Mayer, and geneticist Craig Venter, who founded Celera and set off a race to decode the human genome.

It's a fun read. But Gartner's diagnosis overlooks the more rational factors that were crucial to the settling of America and the construction of our unique economic and business culture. The British Protestants who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the 17^th century came for God, but they also came for the cod. And the timber and the tobacco. By the time John Winthrop arrived in Massachusetts, non-dissenting settlers—economic opportunists, not prophets—had been farming and trading in Jamestown, Va., for more than 20 years.

Immigrants like Hamilton, Carnegie, and David Selznick's parents may have been hypomanic. But whether you were a landless peasant in Ireland in the 1840s, a Jewish cobbler in Russia in 1910, or an Indian computer programmer in the 1980s, the decision to move to America made profound economic sense. America had cheap land in abundance. The opportunities—if occasionally overblown—were real. So was the infrastructure that provided for the rule of law, capital markets, and the protections of minority rights.

In fact, practicality and realism have coexisted with messianism and utopianism in the American experiment from the very beginning. Benjamin Franklin was almost certainly hypomanic by Gartner's reckoning, but he was also one of the most relentlessly practical Americans of the 18^th century. The U.S. economy has been distinguished by hypomanic booms and busts and by the creative destruction that lies at the heart of entrepreneurial capitalism. But it's also distinguished by durable systems and institutions that are emblematic of our distinct style of managerial capitalism—the Federal Reserve and the New York Stock Exchange, our telecommunications networks, and Procter & Gamble. Such institutions are not the work of flamboyant geniuses but of tons of thoughtful, far-sighted, and average Americans.

To put it another way, hypomanics instigate, but they rarely build institutions that outlive them. The necessary counterpart to the hypomanic Henry Ford was Alfred P. Sloan, who built General Motors. Andrew Carnegie could never have monetized his fortune were it not for the constantly rationalizing financier J.P. Morgan. In every generation, cooler-headed executives and entrepreneurs enter a field after a burst of creativity and build businesses and fortunes by imposing the discipline and order the creators may have lacked. Steve Jobs of Apple (who certainly has hypomanic tendencies) is an innovator who has become a billionaire, made long-term investors wealthy, and helped spread the personal computer revolution. But the same can also be said of the preternaturally well-adjusted Michael Dell.

Executives who chew the scenery may suck up attention, revolutionize industries, and symbolize American capitalism. But they're not particularly good for companies' long-term health, as Harvard Business School professor Rakesh Kurana's argues in his book Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs. No country produces as many turnaround artists, bankruptcy specialists, and temporary CEOs as America does.

The late 1990s Internet boom was the golden age of hypomanic CEOs. But how many of their companies still survive? Perhaps the most prominent and successful Internet executive is eBay's distinctly unhypomanic Meg Whitman. So, yes, Gartner is right that hypomanic first movers matter a lot, and that we need a few more. But we shouldn't forget the huge contributions of the more sober-minded folks who follow behind and pick up the pieces.

Related in Slate

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Hypomania may be related to another, less helpful, form of financial risktaking—stock speculation by novice dummies. "The Book Club" examined this particularly American delusion in its discussion of American Sucker. Tim Carvell pointed out that you don't necessarily need to be a success to succeed. Also, while geniuses may have made America great, they also need grant money; David Plotz examined the qualifications for a MacArthur genius grant.

What did you think of this article? Join the Fray, our reader discussion forum POST A MESSAGE   READ MESSAGES Remarks from the Fray: Immigration can create interesting self selection effects �?One needs some independent evidence that qualities like risk-taking may have a large genetic component, before giving credence to theories attributing the fruits of American capitalism to selective breeding. Gross's article fails to mention a most important factor �?size. No other industrial nation comes close to the United States in population base, and this obviously plays a significant role in both the visibility of American prosperity and its contributory factors �?The question is whether America produces more economic mavericks per capita than other industrialized nations �?Further, stories of the economic demise of Europe are vastly exaggerated. The truth is that industrialized western Europe is not too far behind the U.S in per capita incomes (about 25% poorer), the gap is narrowing over time, and a large part of it is attributable to longer working hours of the American labor force as opposed to a productivity difference. The simplest refutation of the genetic selection theory lies in pointing to other settler countries �?Australia and Canada, whose economic levels match that of Europe. The fact that these nations have about one-tenth the population of the U.S should strike anyone as salient. Historically, American economic pre-eminence, and its leadership in technological and economic innovation, really took off in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was fueled by industries such as automobiles, as they became revolutionized by mass production techniques (e.g. the assembly line introduced by Henry Ford). Mass production confers economies of scale, and its advantages can be reaped only if producers have access to large markets. Britain's industrial revolution in the nineteenth century relied on markets created by colonialism. America's growth in the twentieth had the luxury of tapping into millions of consumers within its own borders. Gartner's genetic selection argument hardly survives Occam's razor. Perhaps it is an unwitting tribute to hypomania, doctor? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- In short: take a country that has an overabundance of untapped natural resources, a population that is nowhere near overpopulated, natural defenses in the form of large Oceans allowing isolation from conquest, a "puritan work ethic" that drives people who have no additional needs to work themselves to the bone anyway, and an "American dream" that pushes people that have needs to work themselves harder and more diligently than any system ever devised in history... Please note that this BS "hypomania" has symptoms that can largely be seen to be derivative of the last two reasons given for our prosperity... The American dream combined with the lingering puritan work ethic... a pragmatic culture laid down for centuries, has developed one of the most tireless economic forces in history... We in America work on average about 500 hours per year more than our counterparts in Europe, and we have better natural resources to boot. It isn't a mystery, and trying to fabricate some fantastic genetic superiority that we in America must possess over other countries is just one more step in our recent mad race toward fascism. I reject even considering this without proof, so let's look at the evidence provided: we can look at a few dreamers of the past and show evidence of symptoms that the author made up in the first place... symptoms that are more or less synonymous with symptoms for "entrepreneur"... Well, looks like I can file this "scientific" theory with cold fusion and hydrogen fuel cells...