All social science' schools have a common assumption: self-interest is the central variable explaining human behavior in society. In contemporary societies a second variable is turning increasingly relevant when one is willing to explain social outcomes: policymakers' technical and emotional incompetence. Incompetence policymakers, who fail to choose the alternative more consistent with their own objectives, even when interests were neutralized, always existed. But now, that an increasing number of social outcomes are dependent on government policy, competence has turned strategic.