“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all” – Oscar Wilde. It is a great quote, but some ideas are so dangerous that it might have been better if they had been stillborn. Take that time Mao Zedong got it in his head to exterminate all sparrows in China. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but it ended up contributing to a disaster that killed tens of millions. Following are thirty things about that and other bad ideas from history.
30. A Seemingly-Bright Idea That Turned Out to Be Not So Bright
When Mao Zedong’s communists seized control of China in 1949, they set out to restore the country’s standing and prestige after a stretch of weakness termed “The Century of Humiliations”. Doing so required massive and swift industrialization, to transform a backward agrarian society into a global powerhouse. Other countries had industrialized gradually and started with the accumulation of capital, then spent it on machinery. China had neither money nor time. Its population was rapidly outstripping the available resources, and it was too poor to accumulate enough capital anytime soon for massive industrialization. So Mao decided to mobilize China’s vast population.
The idea was to use labor-intensive means of industrialization that emphasized manpower, of which China had plenty, instead of machinery, of which China had little. Thus was born the Great Leap Forward in 1958, a revolutionary modernization campaign to leapfrog China from a peasant economy into an industrial giant. To kick off the modernization and increase efficiency, “The Four Pests Campaign” was launched, to exterminate flies, mosquitoes, rats, and sparrows. Flies, mosquitoes, and rats spread diseases, and rats ate and ruined grains on top of that. Sparrows were included because they also ate grains and fruits. However, as seen below, exterminating them turned out to be a catastrophically bad idea.