“A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.” -Carlo M. Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Your analysis is wanting in two respects. Its least deficiency lies in conflating stupidity of actions with stupidity of people. Cipolla is defining the latter, not the former; and there is every reason to believe that people disposed towards injuring themselves will inevitably injure others. More importantly, you might want to test your notion that “what constitutes gain and loss is subjective” against the headlines in today’s newspapers, before acting upon it to the detriment of everyone involved.
The scope of disagreement among reasonable people in regard to what constitutes gain and loss, is limited by objective economic criteria. No man is debarred from becoming an ascetic renunciate, provided that he abstains from imposing his notions of spiritual wealth as the sole metric of communal well-being. And when it comes to common goods, a broad and enduring consensus supports the application of conventional economic benchmarks in the determination of public gains and losses.
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