The Rational Optimist - bookrastinating.com

Paperback, 480 pages

English language

Published Nov. 20, 2011 by Harper Perennial.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-145206-2

Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors.The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really …

Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors.The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.The Rational Optimist will do for economics what Genome did for genomics and will show that the answer to our problems, imagined or real, is to keep on doing what we've been doing for 10,000 years – to keep on changing.

8 editions

speljamr reviewed The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley

Review of 'The Rational Optimist' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Is the world slowly slipping into chaos? Were things truly better in the past? Is poverty taking hold in more places? According to Matt Ridley these assertions are simply not true, although you wouldn't know it from watching the news. Through his research he has found the opposite to be true: we are all richer today than our ancestors; we have more comforts today than even the recent past; we are healthier and living longer; and the future looks like things will continue to get even better.

Mr. Ridley does not insinuate that society does not have problems to solve, but that we will likely solve them and prosperity will continue to grow. This book carefully goes through several facets of modern society, such as food production, monetary wealth, and scientific and industrial progress, and shows how they measure up with the past. In no case could the author find …

Is the world slowly slipping into chaos? Were things truly better in the past? Is poverty taking hold in more places? According to Matt Ridley these assertions are simply not true, although you wouldn't know it from watching the news. Through his research he has found the opposite to be true: we are all richer today than our ancestors; we have more comforts today than even the recent past; we are healthier and living longer; and the future looks like things will continue to get even better.

Mr. Ridley does not insinuate that society does not have problems to solve, but that we will likely solve them and prosperity will continue to grow. This book carefully goes through several facets of modern society, such as food production, monetary wealth, and scientific and industrial progress, and shows how they measure up with the past. In no case could the author find us in a worse position today than those who lived before us. He even takes on global warming and how it may impact our future. I suspect this section will anger a few, but it should certainly give one something to ponder carefully.

The author clearly takes an optimistic approach to the future, as the book's title suggests. This book will challenge even the most stringent pessimist, though I am sure that it will not make the doomsayers go away; how else could we sell news? I have to admit to a bit of an optimistic outlook even prior to reading this book, but after reading Mr. Ridley's work I am now officially in the Rational Optimist camp. There are certainly things that could make the future more bleak than today, but I am convinced that these things are so rare that there is good reason to believe that we will meet the challenges of tomorrow head on and continue to prosper.

I believe this book is a must read for anyone interested in, or studying, economics. Those interested in human progress or futurism should also find it of interest.

Mr. Ridley provides plenty of notes and additional reading material in the back of the book; I expect it will give me a list for much future reading.