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A review by askheidi
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
1.0
Worst read of 2020 by far. The book starts with an interesting, if obvious, premise: the world is better off than at any point in history, and the primary reason for that is that society is the totality of the human experience.
As another reviewer, Koen, puts it far better than I could: Author Matt Ridley “goes off into a surprisingly shameless historical revisionism in support of unfettered free enterprise and against any kind of government regulation...What he does not do, however, is make any sort of case that these upward trends will continue indefinitely.”
If you need to know if this book is for you, let me save you some time: he thinks climate change is a grab for research dollars and was a chairman of Northern Rock in the years leading up to its bank run - you know, the very sector that could have done with some of that horrible government regulation.
Truly a slog, punctuated with very occasional bursts of actual interesting historical anecdotes but there are better books that can describe the history of innovation.
As another reviewer, Koen, puts it far better than I could: Author Matt Ridley “goes off into a surprisingly shameless historical revisionism in support of unfettered free enterprise and against any kind of government regulation...What he does not do, however, is make any sort of case that these upward trends will continue indefinitely.”
If you need to know if this book is for you, let me save you some time: he thinks climate change is a grab for research dollars and was a chairman of Northern Rock in the years leading up to its bank run - you know, the very sector that could have done with some of that horrible government regulation.
Truly a slog, punctuated with very occasional bursts of actual interesting historical anecdotes but there are better books that can describe the history of innovation.