Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

We could never have evolved to be rational – it makes you weak. Now, as reasonable people, you’re going to hate me saying this, and I don’t feel good saying it myself. But, for all the man’s faults, I think Donald Trump can solve many problems that the more rational Hillary Clinton simply wouldn’t have been able to address. I don’t admire him, but he is a decision maker from a different mould. For example, both candidates wanted manufacturing jobs to return to the United States. Hillary’s solution was logical – engagement in tripartite trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada. But Donald simply said, ‘We’re going to build a wall, and the Mexicans are going to pay.’ ‘Ah,’ you say. ‘But he’s never going to build that wall.’ And I agree with you – I think it highly unlikely that a wall will be built, and even less likely that the unlucky Mexicans will agree to pay for it. But here’s the thing: he may not need to build the wall to achieve his trade ambitions – he just needs people to believe that he might. Similarly, he doesn’t need to repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement – he just needs to raise it as a possibility. Irrational people are much more powerful than rational people, because their threats are so much more convincing. For perhaps thirty years, the prevailing economic consensus meant that no American carmaker felt they owed any patriotic duty to workers in their home country; had you suggested such a thing in any of their board meetings, you would have bee...