Fear for Sale: The Profits of Doom
Peter Cohan looks at the money gathered by the doom industry. This article merely scrapes the surface, but it is time to recognize that there is profit going to people who are professional nihilists. Their business, whether they are religious zealots like Harold Camping or Glenn Beck, or secular Kookspiricists like Alex Jones and Howard Ruff, is to sell you fear.
So no matter how good things are, these people will tell you the worst angle, and if none exists they will make one up out of blue sky. They live to profit from false predictions of doom, and as Peter points out, once sold the buyers almost always return even after the prediction is falsified.
Let me assure you that I do not think I am anywhere near smart enough to explain why people are willing to sell all their possessions, spend all their money, and gather in public places carrying signs about the end of the world on the strength of Camping’s predictions.
But I do know — after teaching students about business strategy for the last six years — that people who are set in their beliefs are prone to denying data that conflicts with those beliefs. This phenomenon, dubbed confirmation bias about which I’ve written, affects CEOs just as much as people who believe in the Rapture or buy stock in unprofitable biotechnology companies.
That’s why I am confident that most of the people who bet their lives on the Rapture happening last Saturday are delighted that Camping has set a new date. Heaven forbid that any of them should doubt Camping on the strength of his most recent failed prediction.
In sizing up the RIC, let’s start with Camping. His enterprise, Family Radio International (FRI), spent millions of dollars— some of it from donations made by followers — on 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs proclaiming his Judgment Day message, according to AP.
FRI has been around since 1958 and now sports 65 stations across the U.S. It received $80 million in contributions between 2005 and 2009. In 2009, FRI reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of over $104 million — including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.
Next stop on the RIC tour is Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling “Left Behind” novels about the Rapture. He’s sold at least 40 million copies – at $15 a copy that would translate into $600 million in sales. LaHaye appears to view Camping as an upstart competitor — noting that his prediction is “not only bizarre but 100 percent wrong!”