The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.s.)

Matthew White Ridley, the fifth Viscount Ridley, is a member of the British aristocracy. His family has been contributing to British intellectual and political life for generations. He is the ninth Matt Ridley to serve in the British parliament; his great grandfather Sir Edwin Lutyens was the architect who designed New Delhi in the 1920s; his great, great, great, great grandfather Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, created the Golden Retriever breed. He is married to the neuroscientist Professor Anya Hurlbert. They have two children and live on the family estate at Blagdon near Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Matt achieved a first class honours degree and a DPhil in zoology then worked for The Economist for nine years as a science writer, Washington correspondent and American editor. Nowadays, he writes regular columns for the Wall Street Journal and The Times. Matt Ridley has written six books: The Red Queen, about the evolution of sexual reproduction; The Origins of Virtue, which examines human trust and virtue, and how our instinct for social exchange enables us to reap the benefits of co-operation; Genome: the autobiography of a Species in 23 chapters; Nature via Nurture, how humans are free-willed yet motivated by instinct and culture; a biography of Francis Crick, the discoverer of the genetic code; and The Rational Optimist, about how prosperity evolves. In all, his books have sold over a million copies. In The Rational Optimist, Ridley argues that our prosperity is due to our willingness to trade with strangers. This enables the division of labour; it permits us to specialize, to work on things we are good at. That encourages us to innovate, to make tools and machines and processes that make our production more efficient. We trade ideas too; we learn skills from experts; we build on what has gone before; a communal intelligence develops. Prosperity increases exponentially. Trading relationships depend on trust and building reputations. If you can be trusted then more people will deal with you. Where trade flourishes, so do other virtues. Creativity and compassion were most evident in the great commercial cities of the past; it is the same today. Ridley contrasts the retreat of civil virtues under totalitarian regimes. There is increasing urbanization as people move to the cities where they can trade and be prosperous. Cities also provide more opportunity for interactions; innovators can meet and share ideas. Ridley is scathing about the pessimists such as Paul Ehrlich who are forever forecasting doom and gloom and never apologize when their predictions do not eventuate. He says that the pessimists always assume lineal continuation of current trends; they fail to take human innovation into account. Ridley’s intellect enables him to present challenging ideas in readily accessible language. His journalistic training shows, too. His text is replete with interesting and relevant statistics, stories and anecdotes. For example: The average South Korean lives 26 more years and earns 15 times what he did in 1955. It cost 4700 hours of work to buy a Model T Ford in 1908; a much superior car can be purchased today for 1000 hours work. In USA, in 1915, one-third of agricultural land was used to feed 21 million horses; tractors have freed this land for productive use. China’s highly coerced (one-child) birth rate decline since 1955 (from 5.59 to 1.73) is almost exactly mirrored by Sri Lanka’s largely voluntary one over the same period (5.70 to 1.88). Ridley describes our current situation as follows: Human beings are not only wealthier, but healthier, happier, cleaner, cleverer, kinder, freer, more peaceful and more equal than they have ever been. This is because the source of human innovation is, and has been for 100,000 years, not the individual inspiration through reason but collective intelligence evolving by trial and error resulting from the sharing of ideas through exchange and specialization. The secret of human prosperity is that everyone is working for everybody else. The prologue to the Rational Optimist , When Ideas Have Sex became a 16-minute TED conference talk and is available on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than 2 million times. The Rational Optimist won the Hayek Prize 2011 and the Julian Simon award in 2012. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of life and prosperity.

I can't do better that repeat Steven Pinker's endorsement from the dust jacket: " A delightful and fascinating book, filled with insight and wit, which will make you think twice and cheer up." It's also filled with historical insights into human psychological and social evolution from prehistory through the present day. This book is in fact the latest in a long line of lonely books explaining why spontaneous order (unconscious and unplanned) works so amazingly well, and bravely speaking out against the dominant pessimism that always reigns. Ridley cites these authors liberally: Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Hayek, Julian Simon, Bjorn Lomberg. Since all these men are heroes of mine, I needed little convincing. I am already a committed optimist. But a part of me is deeply pessimistic. That's because as always, the dominant view of the elites and the media everywhere is global pessimism. Political "leaders" everywhere believe the opposite of what this book teaches. And they mostly push for well intended but misguided policies that will guarantee that bad outcomes occur. John Holdren, Obama's chief science advisor, will not read this book, but he believes passionately the exact opposite of everything it explains. Matt Ridley understands all this, and his frustration with counterproductive policies (like Biofuels) is clearly stated. But the question is "Why are humans so intent on pessimism?" As someone fairly expert in evolutionary psychology, I was hoping Ridley would shed some light on this. A related question is "Why do humans prefer top down hierarchies to spontaneous order." My own hypothesis goes something like this: For hundreds of thousands of years, (and before trading occurred) our prehistoric ancestors evolved in small tribal bands, in desperate scarcity, and in constant total war with other tribes, deadly animals, and a harsh environment. In such a situation, a tribal band must operate with the discipline of a combat army. Survival was completely dependent on rigid conformity, obedience to authority, and the assumption that everything that moves is a potential threat motivated by conscious intent. Only in the last few hundred years have some civilizations allowed the spontaneous order of billions of individual decisions to generate far greater benefit than top down systems do. But our primitive past is so deeply imbedded in our mental genes, that most people still believe in gods, "great" leaders and/or socialism. My only other quibble with Ridley concerns his bias for markets but against financial markets which he sees as corrupt or exploitative. He is correct to see a difference, but he needs to read more Hayek to understand why. The answer is that financial markets are built on anti market foundations: fiat money printed by governments to serve political ends and price fixing of interest rates by central banks which loan money to banks at favored rates not given to others. This leads to markets distortions, mispriced risk, malinvestment, fraud and periodic bubbles.

Does a wonderful job of explaining why many focus on pessimism and why we shouldn’t. Ridley paints the realistic picture of why life on earth with our fellow humanity has done and will continue to do amazing things.

Matt Ridley é editor de ciência da Economist e explica lindamente, com muitos dados e informações históricas, como a humanidade está indo muito bem. O autor traz uma explicação interessante para o desenvolvimento físico, social e cultural do ser humano: a divisão do trabalho e o comércio. Boa leitura para começar o ano animado/a.

llego bien

El libro que los estatistas, totalitarios, activistas climáticos, ingenieros sociales y agoreros varios no quieren que leas.

Dans cet essai très documenté, Matt Ridley explique le développement économique à partir des comportements humains, sa thèse étant que par rapports aux autres animaux, l’homme est le seul à montrer des comportements d’échange et de spécialisation, ce qui a conduit notre espèce à démontrer des capacités d’adaptation hors normes et à trouver des solutions innovantes à tous les obstacles rencontrés jusqu’à présent, même dans les milieux les plus hostiles. L’espèce humaine à réussi à s’imposer et à dominer la planète grâce à la spécialisation et au commerce, ainsi que par la fertilisation croisée des idées. Plusieurs grandes étapes ont été nécessaires mais passer de l'utilisation d'énergie «musculaire » à d’autres sources a permis, difficilement et par étapes successives, à venir à bout de l'esclavage (qui existe toujours, mais au moins plus de manière légale) tout en élevant petit à petit le niveau de vie. Pour commercer et se libérer de l’économie de subsistance (donc de la pauvreté), il faut surmonter d’abord la peur innée de l’Autre. Une société basée sur des échanges (la fameuse « Société des Inconnus » de Paul Seabright) permet la division du travail, encourage à innover, à fabriquer et à échanger des outils, des machines et des processus qui rendent notre production plus efficace. Nous échangeons des idées aussi et nous acquérons des compétences tout en construisant, sur la base des idées et des technologies qui nous ont précédés, une intelligence et un savoir-faire communs. Ridley n’a pas de mots trop durs contre les pessimistes tels que Paul Ehrlich, qui ne cessent de prédire le malheur et la morosité et ne reviennent jamais sur leurs propos lorsque leurs prédictions alarmistes ne se matérialisent pas. Selon lui, les pessimistes basent leurs projections sur des tendance à court terme dont ils font des projections linéaires, sans tenir compte des évolutions et ruptures dues à l'innovation humaine. Le livre regorge de données historiques chiffrées, de faits et d'anecdotes pertinentes. Quelques exemples : - Actuellement, le Sud-Coréen moyen vit 26 ans de plus et gagne 15 fois son salaire de 1955. - L’achat d’une Ford modèle T en 1908 coûtait à 4’700 heures de travail; de nos jours, une voiture bien plus luxueuse peut être achetée pour 1’000 heures de travail. - Aux États-Unis, en 1915, un tiers des terres agricoles était utilisé pour nourrir 21 millions de chevaux, occupés à divers travaux, en ville et à la campagne; le progrès technique (tracteurs, engrais) a libéré ces terres pour une utilisation plus efficace. - En Chine, après 50 ans d’une politique de l’enfant unique extrêmement contraignante, le taux de natalité est passé de 5,59 à 1,73 enfants par femme. Durant la même période, avec une politique libérale de développement, le Sri Lanka, grâce à une amélioration du bien-être matériel de sa population, est parvenu à un résultat quasi identique (passant de 5,70 à 1,88 enfants par femme) sans mesure autoritaire du gouvernement. Riche de nombreuses informations et basés sur des faits avérés, ce livre se lit très facilement, on reconnaît le journaliste à l'aise dans la compilation et dans la communication. Vous l’aurez peut-être deviné, Matt Ridley est libertarien et… favorable au Brexit. ^^ Le prologue de The Rational Optimist, "When Ideas Have Sex", est devenu une conférence TED de 16 minutes, disponible sur YouTube. Ridley y donne un petit cours d’économie plein d’humour dans lequel il cite avec à propos les deux pères de l’économie classique, Adam Smith et David Ricardo. Et pour finir, la citation de La Richesse des Nations, de Adam Smith, en exergue du livre : "The division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts."