The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves [Paperback]

A rare book indeed amidst the torrent of tomes focusing on the familiar horsemen of the apocalypse, whether they are of climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, pandemics or our heading towards the singularity.

The author draws his optimism from the well of accumulated human knowledge and ingenuity. He sees humankind's collective brain as a `problem solving machine' and leads the reader engagingly through the bumpy history of cultural, technological and economic development from earliest Palaeolithic trade and proto-agriculture to our present global economy. He shows with just the right amount of statistical and comparative data the main reasons for the astonishing material betterment enjoyed by the masses today in relation to the times of the Sun King Louis XIV, let alone compared to earlier epochs. He shows how trade contributed to the fertility of ideas, how innovation, specialization, mechanization, division of labour, and so forth, coupled with free exchange of ideas and unfettered entrepreneurship are the foundations which make prosperity possible for the greatest number of people. He is highly critical of ideologies promoting self-sufficiency or top-down engineering, whether social or otherwise, and of those wanting to freeze technologies at a certain level, be they in agriculture or elsewhere. He also demonstrates clearly that all the regularly predicted `turning points' or thresholds, supposedly leading to imminent catastrophe in the past, were proven wrong each time and concludes that this will likely be true for the future too.

As long as Matt Ridley stays with a historical narrative, he is on firm ground, and his book could be seen as a good riposte to economist Jeff Rubin, whose "Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller" singles out peak-oil as the harbinger of severe economic adjustments. While Rubin's focus is in my opinion too narrow (see my respective Amazon book review), Ridley's treatment of what he calls "The Great Fears of Today" - Africa, Pandemics, Overpopulation, Climate Change - strikes me as being too nonchalant. He posits that they are either not as significant as they are made out to be, or that they will be overcome with the usual human ingenuity, as have been other challenges in the past. And what is the basis for his confidence? - The simple extrapolation of the technological and economic success story since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution!

The development of the highly technological society and socio-economic environment we have created and live in today is an all too short phenomenon in the human experience and should therefore raise serious questions about it being a valid yard stick for extrapolation into the future. After all, even his avowed optimism does not prevent the author from mentioning a few times, that decline and later disintegration of sophisticated societies and economic systems back into simple economies of self reliance and subsistence for reasons of politics, religion, pandemics, resource exhaustion or local climate change has been observed throughout history. So it could happen again, only on a much larger scale and with more dire consequences, considering today's global interconnectedness and large populations. And that is precisely where the Neo-Malthusians and other doomsayers come in.

Although relegated by him to the margins, Matt Ridley' remarks nevertheless acknowledge that progress of the human species has never been, nor will it likely be in the future, a continuous "bull market". "Rational Optimism" should perhaps be rephrased to "Cautious Optimism" and elaborate a bit more on the inevitable bumps, washouts and landslides to be expected on the road ahead. Either way, this book is well worth reading and pondering about - a scholarly work covering a wide scope and written in very accessible prose.

I was surprised by the scope of this book. I expected a book on improvements in the environment. What I got was a book that touches on biology, genetics, agriculture, commerce and energy. In every topic, Ridley calls forth a collection of important facts to build a big picture view. Although always sensible and moderate, he builds a strong, bold perspective. Throughout, he ties human progress to a few recurring themes. (The most powerful being the exchange of ideas systems that encourage the best in societies.)

I was also impressed by his thoroughness. He anticipated every objection I could muster and more. Then he dispatched my worries with facts and research.

Ridley doesn't just tell us that our world is safer, richer, more comfortable and enjoyable than at any point in history but shows us using lots and lots of evidence. Simply put, it is mandatory reading for fire-and-brimstone preachers, Marxists, G20 protesters, pessimistic geriatrics, anti-tax and anti-regulation Republicans, Anarchists or any other individual who is bizarrely convinced that the quality of life on earth is getting worse and not better. They are wrong and this book proves it in spades. This book dovetails well with Jeffrey Sachs' book "The End of Poverty", which also nicely dispels the myth that the rich are rich at the expense of the poor (in fact, both have seen their lot improve, even if the rich have improved much more so) while also arguing for the realistic goal of eliminating extreme poverty completely. The man's a left-of-center economist that founded The Earth Institute so he's not some bought-and-paid-for corporate lobbyist. As both Ridley and Sachs both show, industrialization, the division of labour, and effectively regulated capitalism truly does work and should be allowed to continue to do so.

Marko from Canada