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A review by tbauman
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
3.0
I liked many of the points this book made supporting its central thesis. The world is getting better in a lot of ways, and pessimism is often blown out of proportion in the media.
The central thesis itself is flawed, though. His basic argument is that everything is getting better, and it probably won't get worse. Matt Ridley does effectively argue that things are getting better, but along the way he also mentions a bunch of times things failed to get better, and he doesn't make any attempt to explain why this won't happen again. He briefly mentions the black death and how great it was for economic development in the long run, for example. This might be true, but we definitely would consider another black death a very bad event if it happened next year, and I suspect that Matt Ridley would too. His explanation for why nuclear armageddon hasn't happened is, basically, who knows. His argument against government funding of science makes basically no attempt to deal with the many examples of technologies that private companies probably wouldn't have had the incentive to develop--most notably, the Internet. I didn't find his dismissal of global warming convincing, especially since at the end he suggests a fairly conventional solution: tax carbon and reduce taxes on wages. Other unconvincing arguments quickly devolved into "there were markets at this time, therefore markets were the primary cause of human development."
This isn't to say that I hated the book. The majority of the pages I read I agreed with. I particularly liked the chapter on early human trade, which opened my eyes to a new aspect of human development. Although the idea isn't his, it's fascinating to think that the industrial revolution may never have happened had cotton not been made cheap by American slavery. (This is actually a huge argument against Ridley--the world would be a much worse place today if the industrial revolution had never happened. If the situation in England had been slightly different--worse property rights, no Enlightenment, no cheap cotton, no coal--the world would probably be that much worse place.) I also liked the chapters on energy and health.
The reason for human success is not simple. Markets are of course a very important part of human success, but simply saying "markets are the only cause of human development" has so many obvious flaws that you can only argue it by ignoring contrary evidence. I much prefer books that weaken their thesis in favor of making a more defensible argument to books like this one.
The central thesis itself is flawed, though. His basic argument is that everything is getting better, and it probably won't get worse. Matt Ridley does effectively argue that things are getting better, but along the way he also mentions a bunch of times things failed to get better, and he doesn't make any attempt to explain why this won't happen again. He briefly mentions the black death and how great it was for economic development in the long run, for example. This might be true, but we definitely would consider another black death a very bad event if it happened next year, and I suspect that Matt Ridley would too. His explanation for why nuclear armageddon hasn't happened is, basically, who knows. His argument against government funding of science makes basically no attempt to deal with the many examples of technologies that private companies probably wouldn't have had the incentive to develop--most notably, the Internet. I didn't find his dismissal of global warming convincing, especially since at the end he suggests a fairly conventional solution: tax carbon and reduce taxes on wages. Other unconvincing arguments quickly devolved into "there were markets at this time, therefore markets were the primary cause of human development."
This isn't to say that I hated the book. The majority of the pages I read I agreed with. I particularly liked the chapter on early human trade, which opened my eyes to a new aspect of human development. Although the idea isn't his, it's fascinating to think that the industrial revolution may never have happened had cotton not been made cheap by American slavery. (This is actually a huge argument against Ridley--the world would be a much worse place today if the industrial revolution had never happened. If the situation in England had been slightly different--worse property rights, no Enlightenment, no cheap cotton, no coal--the world would probably be that much worse place.) I also liked the chapters on energy and health.
The reason for human success is not simple. Markets are of course a very important part of human success, but simply saying "markets are the only cause of human development" has so many obvious flaws that you can only argue it by ignoring contrary evidence. I much prefer books that weaken their thesis in favor of making a more defensible argument to books like this one.