In case you missed it – and where have you been these past six years? – America is a Christian nation. We are (it says here) worthy descendants of the Puritans who landed on these shores in the 17th century, seeking the freedom to establish a community that worshiped God as its people saw him. Or else. We are told that the path to prosperity, in this world and the next, is blazed with Rules such as Thou Shalt Not Drink. Through which you can be sound, in body and in mind, and be presentable to both your Maker and your Broker.

So here I am, driving down the road, sober and whole and poor, wondering how come prosperity passed me by, and listening to Marketplace on the radio. And suddenly, to my Mayflower-on-my-mother’s-side horror, they’re telling me that the keys to riches are drunkenness and brain damage.

Drunkenness, you ask? I sure as hell did. Well, some academic type somewhere compared the incomes of people who had cast out Demon Rum with those who had come to a reasonable bargain with it. And found that the bargainers earned, on average, some 20% more than the teetotalers.

Seems that the really important stuff you need to get ahead – introductions, hot business tips, blackmail material – is not found in the cubicle but at the tavern, the cocktail party, the 19th hole. When people are elbow to elbow, thus are more likely to run into you (hopefully without spilling their martini or yours) and, because of those martinis, more likely to talk to you.

This was not news that I wished to hear. I, who was nearly 30 before drinking anything with alcohol in it except the occasional teaspoon of cough syrup, and who, even today, will have, like, a beer a month. But it did go a long way to explain how come Prohibition never worked.

Living memories of the time when We the People of These United States formally banned the manufacture, importation, and consumption of alcoholic beverages are now few, and getting fewer. But anyone who knows who Al Capone is, or has read (rather, perhaps, I should say “has had assigned�, in this era of the pre-packaged book report, available online for a nominal fee) The Great Gatsby, has at least heard about it.

That period between 1919 and 1933 when the USA passed one constitutional amendment banning booze and then another one unbanning it. By 1933, teetotalling America was mired in the Great Depression, with millions out of work and the wages of most everybody else in sharp decline.

Perhaps Franklin Roosevelt knew what that academic would find out more than eighty years later: to steer your career, you really need a beer. Or maybe a gin and tonic.

It’s not like we never before had evidence that Prohibition is really a dumb idea. Way back in 1851, even, a wave of booze-banning laws passed state legislatures. They were called “Maine laws� because the first one was passed right where I’m sitting now. (Note to Dude and Dude fans: They did make it to Maine, but they’ve been sulking ever since and aren’t talking, even to me.) By 1858, most of the Maine laws had been repealed – again, while the nation was in the throes of an economic crisis.

OK, you say, praise the Federal Reserve Board and pass the scotch. But what about that brain damage? Yep, more academic studies. This time by a whole school of people. Call themselves neuroeconomists. No, that doesn’t mean they’re crazy. Any more crazy than any other economist. Hey, you try holding down a career in a field called �the Dismal Science� and see how long you stay sane.

Actually, these neuroeconomist folk are trying to do something pretty cool. Understand how we make business decisions, not in terms of all those incomprehensible graphs and equations, but in terms of how human brains operate. As if that’s easier.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, I was surrounded by people – my father, for instance – who thought there was something seriously wrong with the brains of dudes who were making money. They had a screw loose. Or several. If they had a conscience, you needed a microscope to find it. “That guy would sell his grandmother if he thought he could make a buck�.

We now know enough about the conscience to know that the emotions associated with it – like, the fear of being found out by your good Christian friends – result from activity in particular spots within the brain. One of the ways we know this is by studying people who lack things like “fear of being found out�. And discovering that such people have a blank spot – what the neurophysiologists call a “lesion� – in precisely that part of the brain that controls fear.

So the neuroeconomists, in order to find out how (say) fear affects the average person’s ability to make sound economic decisions, selected two groups of people. One with normal brain function (and consciences), the other with lesions in those parts of the brain associated with fear. And they gave each group the same sized pile of cash and tracked how they managed it.

Guess which group made the most money? Ayup. The ones with brain damage. The ones who would sell Grandma south if it was the dollar-profitable thing to do. Because they have - can have – no fear of what the Puritans would say about it if they found out.

See you at the bar …

   - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.