![]() ![]() He is suspicious of the role of government in promoting progress. First, Ridley is clearly leans libertarian. So Ridley has written the book that conforms to almost all my prior beliefs - although he arrives at his conclusions by routes I probably wouldn't go. My training in both demography and history has taught me to be weary of any talk of "better days or golden ages" - as I appreciate lower child mortality, the spread of democracy, and expanded access to education. The story is one technology driven change towards lower mortality, lower fertility, better nutrition, and better health. The mental architecture that I place new learning is built around a narrative of progress. This book is almost too perfectly aligned with my core beliefs that the story of the world is one of progress. If that sounds promising to you, you will find plenty of material here to bolster your hopes and inform your views of where we should be going from here. The author makes a strong case for rationalism and it is a nice, but not inevitable, outcome that rationalism leads to optimism. It won't be an easy exercise for many because it leads the author takes a contrarian view on many currently fashionable topics including world trade, alternative energy, genetically modified food, global warming, etc. We all want to make the world a better place and surely the most effective way to do so is to assess, rationally and without ideology or dogma, what has worked in the past as a guide to what might work in the future. I wish my activist friends would read this book and re-assess the focus of their concerns. The reasons why are intriguing and the analysis draws from a broad range of economics, history, science and technology. His conclusion, which is very convincingly argued: the human condition has improved dramatically by almost any measure and there is every reason to expect it will continue to do so. The author does this, not by ignoring the many very real problems that we face, but by taking a broad historical perspective. This book will make you feel more optimistic about the prospects for humankind than you might have thought possible. Acute, refreshing, and revelatory, The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better. It ends with a confident assertion that thanks to the ceaseless capacity of the human race for innovative change, and despite inevitable disasters along the way, the 21st century will see both human prosperity and natural biodiversity enhanced. This bold book covers the entire sweep of human history, from the Stone Age to the Internet, from the stagnation of the Ming empire to the invention of the steam engine, from the population explosion to the likely consequences of climate change. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair. The habit of exchange and specialization, which started more than 100,000 years ago, has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. ![]() But they have been saying this for 200 years. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper population growth is slowing Africa is following Asia out of poverty the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before. Food availability, income, and life span are up disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Brooks argues that we must now seize the opportunity afforded by today’s changing economic geography to transform attitudes towards inequality and to develop radical new approaches to addressing global poverty, as the alternative is to accept that impoverishment is somehow part of the natural order of things.Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. The End of Development provides a compelling account of how human history unfolded differently in varied regions of the world. ![]() ![]() Brooks puts the case that international inequality was moulded by capitalist development over the last 500 years. This accessible and illuminating volume shows how the wealth of ‘the West’ and poverty of ‘the rest’ stem not from environmental factors or some unique European cultural, social or technological qualities, but from the expansion of colonialism and the rise of America. Why did some countries grow rich while others remained poor? Tracing the long arc of human history from hunter gatherer societies to the early twenty first century, Andrew Brooks rejects popular explanations for the divergence of nations. ![]()
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