The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley. 

3/5 rating. 

Book #6 of 2020. Read February 3, 2020.

Matt throughout this book makes the argument that while most people seem to believe that the earth is getting worse, almost everything is improving.

I loved this book’s premise. I have long forgone watching the news because 1) it only shows the worst of humanity and panders to shock and awe, and 2) the negative things it reports on are “news” because they are uncommon. Matt did a lovely job of talking about the many ways that today’s world is vastly better than the past – something that is ALMOST universal across peoples and cultures.

My biggest issue with the book was his talk about climate change, as he thinks we just need to keep running full-steam down the tracks and we can figure out things later. This seriously worried me and makes sense from his belief that pure capitalism, and almost no regulations or controls are ideal.

Apart from this, I thought the book was okay. A little disappointing off of what I was expecting.

My favorite quote: “If hunter-gatherers appeared lithe and healthy it was because the fat and slow had all been shot in the back at dawn.”

Quotes:

“On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”

“Averages conceal a lot. But even if you break down the world into bits, it is hard to find any region that was worse off in 2005 than it was in 1955. Over that half-century, real income per head ended a little lower in only six countries (Afghanistan, Haiti, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia), life expectancy in three (Russia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe), and infant survival in none.”

“In 1900, the average American spent $76 of every $100 on food, clothing and shelter. Today he spends $37.”

“As a broad generalisation, the more people trust each other in a society, the more prosperous that society is, and trust growth seems to precede income growth.”

“Random violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare; routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so commonplace. Charitable giving has been growing faster than the economy as a whole in recent decades.”

“Where commerce thrives, creativity and compassion both flourish.”

“‘Rich countries,’ concluded the [World] Bank, ‘are largely rich because of the skills of their populations and the quality of the institutions supporting economic activity.’”

“Human history is driven by a co-evolution of rules and tools. The increasing specialisation of the human species, and the enlarging habit of exchange, are the root cause of innovation in both.”

“While it undoubtedly true that by modern standards the workers who manned the factories and mills of 1800 in England laboured for inhuman hours from an early age in conditions of terrible danger, noise and dirt, returning to crowded and unsanitary homes through polluted streets, and had dreadful job security, diet, health care and education, it is none the less just as undeniably true that they lived better lives than their farm-labourer grandfathers and wool-spinning grandmothers had done. That was why they flocked to the factories from the farms – and would do so again in New England in the 1870s, in the American South in the 1900s, in Japan in the 1920s, in Taiwan in the 1960s, in Hong Kong in the 1970s and in China today. That was why the jobs in the mills were denied to the Irish in New England and the blacks in North Carolina.”

“Besides, once again, people will adapt, as they do today.”

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