POPULAR Y2K DELUSIONS FUELED BY MEDIA.

Byline: James Bemis Commentary

They said the Y2K bug would be catastrophic for corporate America - and it was. Damage estimates for U.S. businesses range from $100 billion to $600 billion. Large numbers of high-level employees were diverted from important tasks to deal with this threatened disaster. The Y2K bug disrupted operations to an unprecedented degree, requiring the employment of highly paid experts.

Wait a minute. Didn't we just pass the Y2K test with flying colors? Wasn't the outcome a complete success?

Not exactly.

One can't help but believe we've just lived through one of the greatest popular delusions of all time. What began as a laughable concern a few years ago was magnified into a reflection of people's darkest fears. Conspiracy theorists claimed President Clinton would declare martial law, apocalypse types swore Armageddon was nigh, and the left-wingers foresaw the return of the Third Reich.

Normally quite rational people hunkered down on New Year's Eve, refused to fly in airplanes, and - incredibly, at the urging of the federal government - stocked up on water, toilet paper and batteries.

Even the ordinarily staid residents of Ventura County weren't immune to Y2K frenzy. Tiny Los Robles Bank crowed that it spent ONLY $60,000 - the annual salary of a loan officer - on this overhyped cause. Local kids got their Christmas vacations extended an extra week by fearful school officials. I shudder to think how much taxpayers' cash was poured into the Y2K ``problem'' from cities throughout Ventura County.

But not only didn't American computers break down, neither did those of even the poorest countries such as Ethiopia and the Sudan, which couldn't afford to pour billions into the pockets of consultants. The few problems that did arise were no more than the usual computer glitches occurring on any given workday.

All this leads to one inescapable conclusion: The whole thing was a very expensive farce.

It's hard to imagine a real Y2K calamity could do much more damage than the imaginary one did. How could this happen?

Well, mass hysteria, it seems, has a long lineage.

In his book, ``Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,'' author Charles Mackay said, ``In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness. We find whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.''

Sound like anyone you know?

We moderns like to think of ourselves as superior to our benighted ancestors, laughing at their excesses and bemoaning their lack of insight. We chuckle at the British during the 1720 South Seas bubble, when the value of that speculative enterprise multiplied a thousand times overnight, or at Holland's tulipmania, reaching its zenith in 1634 when twelve acres of developed land was traded for a single flower.

The truth is, though, we're just as vulnerable to madness and folly as anyone else. Technology hasn't made us less susceptible to mass delusion, but more. In our age of instant media, error and sophistry can spread over the airwaves with the breathtaking speed of a prairie fire, snarling the gullible with an effectiveness that would be the envy of any snake-oil salesman.

This is particularly true when flames are ignited by solemn, self-serving ``experts,'' gale force winds added by a headline-seeking press, and fuel provided by government employees with too much power and too little sense.

The whole phenomenon is best summed up by Mackay again: ``Men, it's been said, think in herds; it is seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.''

P.T. Barnum, claiming there's a sucker born every minute, didn't know the half of it. Our blind faith in ``experts'' makes the cynical circus master seem an incurable optimist. Many fortunes are made - including some new ones by Y2K computer consultants - betting that human nature will never change.