The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

This is a little embarrassing, but right now, right in front of you, millions of ideas are having sex. They might be having it right inside this Amazon review page. I know, freaky, right? According to author Matt Ridley, the secret of humans' success is exchange, and while trade in physical objects is a big part of that, the exchange of ideas is really the thing that has kept this whole civilization thing moving forward for the last 10,000 years or so, and especially in the last 200 years. And when it comes to ideas having sex, the Internet is the ultimate "swingers' club."Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves" is quite a bit more serious than that first paragraph makes it sound, but it does describe a key point. He says, "Without trade, innovation just does not happen. Exchange is to technology as sex is to evolution. It stimulates novelty." Another key thing that exchange and trade allow is specialization. Self-sufficiency sounds good in theory (and in practice if you are in a basic survival situation), but when it comes to growth, prosperity, and happiness (all closely linked), specialization means more of everything for everybody. If multiple people in a community have different skills and products, and if exchange is allowed, everyone has the potential to benefit from the knowledge and output of everyone else. Ideas are especially valuable in part because sharing an idea is like lighting a candle for someone else - now you both have a lighted candle (or an idea of how to do something better). When knowledge is shared in a community, it becomes something like a "collective brain." And when the community expands to include the entire world, interconnected by vast transportation networks and with the Internet as its central nervous system, you can have the wild orgy of exchange of ideas, goods, and services that we call the modern world.Ridley spends most of the book in a chronological journey through the development of civilization, from the first inklings of exchange and specialization some 200,000 years ago (when we really diverged from other species including our close cousins the apes), through expanded barter systems, to the development of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Of course climate stability had a lot to do with that as well, but an interesting point is that trade is what really made agriculture interesting and worthwhile. There was also the development of energy sources, from human power (including slavery, unfortunately), to animal power, to various forms of "current solar" energy (water power, wind power, burning wood, etc.), to various forms of "stored solar" (coal, oil, natural gas). There are more steps, but it's clear that the modern world is based to a great extent on exchange and specialization, including free trade and the free exchange of ideas. These have in turn produced a wide range of innovations in social systems and technology and led to the astounding prosperity that most (but of course not all) people in the world enjoy today. Ridley points out that while Louis XIV used some 498 servants to prepare his meals, a modern person of average means has many more people working for him or her (mostly indirectly and on a shared basis) to make easily available food, clothing, medicines, transportation, entertainment, and everything else that we take for granted in modern life. In this sense the average person today is richer than a king in the seventeenth century.But if things are so great and getting better all the time, why are so many people so pessimistic about the present and the future? Ridley doesn't have a good explanation for this, though he knows he's fighting from a minority position (optimists must be naive!), and he shows that it has always been so. People were fretting over "peak coal" in 1830, and convinced that things had improved so much in the previous half century that there could be no place to go but down. But of course the rest of the nineteenth century was in fact a golden age of technological and social development. Things like slavery and child labor declined not so much because people became nicer, but because energy sources and manufacturing methods made them less necessary (or you could say affordable).The Rational Optimist is not really an ideological work. While there is a strong sense that Ridley believes that markets generally work better than governments (especially corrupt governments like many in Africa), he's not saying that governments are not necessary. He's certainly a strong proponent for free trade and individual rights, which are strongly correlated with a sense of well-being or "happiness." He also believes that things will continue to get better, even for Africa, as long as we keep moving forward in terms of trade and openness. Although anything can happen including terrorism, crazy governments, natural disasters, etc., his optimism is based on considerations of history and of how things really work, not on wishful thinking or on some belief that prosperity is humanity's right or destiny. It's more or less what we do.I personally tend toward optimism myself, and this book has given me a lot to think about including many reasons for optimism that I hadn't thought about before. I highly recommend this book.

Ridley's thesis is that the key to prosperity lies in economic growth, and that economic growth is caused primarily by innovation fueled by the exchange and mating of ideas. As long as ideas are allowed to move freely they will inevitably mate, mutate, and produce innovations that will drive economic growth and improve the quality of life:"The perpetual innovation machine that drives the modern economy owes its existence not mainly to science (which is its beneficiary more than its benefactor); nor to money (which is not always a limiting factor); nor to patents (which often get in the way); nor to government (which is bad at innovation). It is not a top-down process at all. Instead, I am going to try now to persuade you that one word will suffice to explain this conundrum: exchange. It is the ever-increasing exchange of ideas that causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the modern world."Why is Ridley a "rational optimist"? Because, in his words, he has "arrived at optimism not through temperament or instinct, but by looking at the evidence". As Ridley sees it, throughout history, when the free exchange of ideas has been hampered by natural disasters, disease, war, wrong-headed government policy and monopolistic business practices, the result has been a reverse in development and a regression of health and happiness. Despite these periods of regression, Ridley remains optimistic that the world will continue to get better as long as we ensure that society remains open. Recent developments in communication technology have only accelerated what Ridley sees as an already robust atmosphere for ideational mating. This, combined with the progress already achieved in medicine, agriculture, and human rights gives him more hope than not that as a global society we will avoid the many catastrophic predictions making the rounds.Overall, the book was quite enjoyable. Ridley spares no sacred cows and marshalls logical and empirical evidence to make his point--whether he is eviscerating the organic farming and climate change movements or patent rights. He traces over 200,000 years of human history to make the case that we are, on balance, far better today than we have ever been. This isn't to gloss over the many problems that persist. Rather, Ridley freely admits the issues we face while arguing that the past should give us confidence that these issues will also be overcome. History has shown us that when ideas are allowed to freely move about and reproduce with each other, society is able to drastically improve itself and solve seemingly intractable problems. I would have liked to see more explicit discussion of ideational "mating", rather than it's sprinkling through various chapters, but overall the point is well taken. My biggest peave with the book is Ridley's treatment of government.Ridley is clearly not a "big government" advocate, and that is a totally reasonable position. The idea that innovation and economic growth is primarily driven by bottom-up activity versus top-down planning and decree is correct. However, at many points in the book, Ridley seemingly fails to adequately wrestle with the fact that much of the progress he lauds is a by-product of optimal government policy, not despite it.For example, when discussing how the country of Botswana could have developed at an incredible rate despite facing many of the same crushing obstacles as other perpetually underdeveloped African states, Ridley succintly notes that the main difference was that Botswana had "good institutions":"In particular, Botswana turns out to have secure, enforceable property rights that are fairly widely distributed and fairly well respected. When Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues compared property rights with economic growth throughout the world, they found that the first explained an astonishing three quarters of the variation in the second and that Botswana was no outlier: the reason it had flourished was because its people owned property without fear of confiscation by chiefs or thieves to a much greater extent than in the rest of Africa. This is much the same explanation for why England had a good eighteenth century while China did not."I agree whole heartedly with Ridley's emphasis on property rights. Here, he is following such eminent economic historians as Douglass North (whom he cites) by emphasizing that good institutions are critical to shaping the economic outcomes we hope to achieve. However, Ridley goes on to argue that property rights cannot simply be imposed from above by government, but must evolve from the bottom-up. The bottom-up evolution of institutions and the importance of government are not mutually exclusive or at odds. Optimal property rights, particularly those that allow for robust exchange in an impersonal economy, must at some point be formalized and enforced through fully functioning legal and court systems. Additionally, they must be codified in a such a way where they can be changed if necessary to improve their efficiency and functionality. The only way to formalize such rules, ensure their proper enforcement, and allow for occasional "tweaking" is to have in place a government system that is at once robust in it's authority and responsive enough to citizens to minimize the abuse of property rights (e.g. through the creation of a rentier class). In other words, liberal Democracy. This is not to say that governments are optimal or do not, in some cases, harm innovation and economic growth (surely they do). Rather, the point is that the dynamics that Ridley so covets cannot flourish despite government, but rather require "good" governments and institutions that can facilitate free idea exchange and commerce.

Poor print quality

Matt Ridley is one of modern civilization's most preeminent thinkers and writers on the subject of human progress, growth, industrialization and history. In this work, Ridley delivers an extremely compelling argument for the history of human progress, and its underlying origins. I highly recommend this book, both the physical hardback copy, which is well proportioned and of excellent quality; and the audiobook which is well narrated and most enjoyable.“On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” - Thomas Babington Macaulay, via the Matt Ridley in The Rational Optimist.

日本語版がよかったので購入。ボリュームがありつつも、飽きがこない話題が続いて何度でも読みかえしたい内容です。他の著作も読んでみたい。

The history of mankind augers well for future optimism! Ridley is more than a glass half full type of personality and gives a thorough explanation of how the world will survive all the current doomsayers, purely because of the enduring nature of humans to evolve and prosper.

Ridley articulates with skill and erudition a vision of human society that is in my view accurate but which at present is not politically correct. He has assembled his evidence well and i think he gets most things right