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A review by kimball_hansen
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
4.0
4.5 stars. A very, very good book. Especially if you want to learn about history. For example, the author's example of how much it'd cost (in time) to produce an hour of reading light today vs in the 1800's and even ancient times. This part was a lot of fun to read. This is a great book to know why we're so blessed to live in these last days. If you're not feeling grateful to be alive today after reading this book then no amount of medication can help you and you can't be helped. This books needs a revision in 5 - 10 years.
It had a similar style as [b:Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind|23692271|Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind|Yuval Noah Harari|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1420585954s/23692271.jpg|18962767]. So read that one too if you haven't already.
Let's go to my notes:
Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological evolution.
Prosperity is simply time saved which is proportional to the division of labor. The more human beings have diversified as consumers and specialized as producers the better off the human race has been or ever will.
The true measure of something's worth is the hours it takes to acquire it. Falling consumer prices is what makes rich people, deflation of asset prices does not. It's because the true metric of prosperity is time: the increase in the amount of goods or services you can earn with the same amount of work.
Healthcare and education are the only things that cost more now in hours worked than it did in the 1950's. Read [b:An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back|31253737|An American Sickness How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back|Elisabeth Rosenthal|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474748641s/31253737.jpg|51910639] to learn more.
Cooking enabled hominids to trade gut size for brain size.
Cooking helps human beings to swap different kinds of food and that got them bartering.
Fire is hard to start but easy to share; the same with cooking. The time spent in cooking is subtracted from the time spent in chewing. If you've read [b:The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor|22609354|The Dorito Effect The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor|Mark Schatzker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430942604s/22609354.jpg|42099356] you'll learn that we barely even chew our foods anymore.
The division of labor between men and women is what helped our species to progress. Now the feminists are undoing that with their equality "want to become men" cry. Dang you,
Ricardo's law is the law of the trade.
Human cultural progress is a collective Enterprise and it needs a dense collective brain.
Routine kindness does not make the news because it is so commonplace. That's why we just hear about the negative things in news. Also another reason not to think those bad things are commonplace. Because they aren't.
When the market economy booms so does philanthropy.
Agriculture diverts the labor of other species to providing services for human beings. Farming is the extention of specialization in exchange for other trades.
The wastefulness of irrigation is a product of the low price of water.
Empires and governments in general tend to be good things at first and bad things the longer they last. They provide things to flourish and trade is easier but then they employ more elites which take more income and interfere with the Commoners' lives and make more rules. Government is a monopoly and brings inefficiency and stagnation. The City of Plano is starting to seem familiar with this...
Trade transforms potatoes into computers. Who wouldn't want to have such a machine?
Ironically, economic growth becomes sustainable when it relies on non-renewable, non-organic power. Some renewable sources of energy run out because they replenish too slowly (timber, cropland, peat, water wheels).
Chinese had poor success with their iron age for a while because they didn't use coal as a form of energy so the price of iron was a lot higher than an England and China became stagnant.
The great religions all needed empires with which to flourish - Buddhism and China, Christianity withing the Roman, and Islam within the Arab.
The most fundamental feature of the modern world since 1800 (more profound than flight, websites, nuclear weapons, radio, science, health), is the continuing discovery of increasing returns. The more you prosper the more you can prosper, the more you invent the more inventions become possible.
There is no equilibrium in nature. There is only constant dynamism. Take that Global Warming lovers. We don't live on a P-word planet.
The 1800's was transporting people (trains, bikes, and cars) the 1900's was transporting information (telephone the web). With the exception of airplanes and the telegraph, of course.
Plato deplored writing as a destroyer of memorizing. Just like how we deplore kids for texting and shortening their phrases and words to just letters. So maybe it's not that bad as we think.
Pessimists have all the headlines but optimists are almost always right.
He missed talking about mental health. All the disorders, depression and anxiety. Life is better yes, but more people are miserable like this video.
Famine lies with government policies not population pressure like Venezuela or Africa. Japan has a very dense population yet how come they don't have famine? That's what I thought.
Makes me wonder if bees really are going extinct like people are afraid of. Prolly not.
I remember the stupid mad cow disease scare. What a crock.
Good institutions cannot be imposed from above they must evolve from below.
It had a similar style as [b:Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind|23692271|Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind|Yuval Noah Harari|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1420585954s/23692271.jpg|18962767]. So read that one too if you haven't already.
Let's go to my notes:
Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological evolution.
Prosperity is simply time saved which is proportional to the division of labor. The more human beings have diversified as consumers and specialized as producers the better off the human race has been or ever will.
The true measure of something's worth is the hours it takes to acquire it. Falling consumer prices is what makes rich people, deflation of asset prices does not. It's because the true metric of prosperity is time: the increase in the amount of goods or services you can earn with the same amount of work.
Healthcare and education are the only things that cost more now in hours worked than it did in the 1950's. Read [b:An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back|31253737|An American Sickness How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back|Elisabeth Rosenthal|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474748641s/31253737.jpg|51910639] to learn more.
Cooking enabled hominids to trade gut size for brain size.
Cooking helps human beings to swap different kinds of food and that got them bartering.
Fire is hard to start but easy to share; the same with cooking. The time spent in cooking is subtracted from the time spent in chewing. If you've read [b:The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor|22609354|The Dorito Effect The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor|Mark Schatzker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430942604s/22609354.jpg|42099356] you'll learn that we barely even chew our foods anymore.
The division of labor between men and women is what helped our species to progress. Now the feminists are undoing that with their equality "want to become men" cry. Dang you,
Ricardo's law is the law of the trade.
Human cultural progress is a collective Enterprise and it needs a dense collective brain.
Routine kindness does not make the news because it is so commonplace. That's why we just hear about the negative things in news. Also another reason not to think those bad things are commonplace. Because they aren't.
When the market economy booms so does philanthropy.
Agriculture diverts the labor of other species to providing services for human beings. Farming is the extention of specialization in exchange for other trades.
The wastefulness of irrigation is a product of the low price of water.
Empires and governments in general tend to be good things at first and bad things the longer they last. They provide things to flourish and trade is easier but then they employ more elites which take more income and interfere with the Commoners' lives and make more rules. Government is a monopoly and brings inefficiency and stagnation. The City of Plano is starting to seem familiar with this...
Trade transforms potatoes into computers. Who wouldn't want to have such a machine?
Ironically, economic growth becomes sustainable when it relies on non-renewable, non-organic power. Some renewable sources of energy run out because they replenish too slowly (timber, cropland, peat, water wheels).
Chinese had poor success with their iron age for a while because they didn't use coal as a form of energy so the price of iron was a lot higher than an England and China became stagnant.
The great religions all needed empires with which to flourish - Buddhism and China, Christianity withing the Roman, and Islam within the Arab.
The most fundamental feature of the modern world since 1800 (more profound than flight, websites, nuclear weapons, radio, science, health), is the continuing discovery of increasing returns. The more you prosper the more you can prosper, the more you invent the more inventions become possible.
There is no equilibrium in nature. There is only constant dynamism. Take that Global Warming lovers. We don't live on a P-word planet.
The 1800's was transporting people (trains, bikes, and cars) the 1900's was transporting information (telephone the web). With the exception of airplanes and the telegraph, of course.
Plato deplored writing as a destroyer of memorizing. Just like how we deplore kids for texting and shortening their phrases and words to just letters. So maybe it's not that bad as we think.
Pessimists have all the headlines but optimists are almost always right.
He missed talking about mental health. All the disorders, depression and anxiety. Life is better yes, but more people are miserable like this video.
Famine lies with government policies not population pressure like Venezuela or Africa. Japan has a very dense population yet how come they don't have famine? That's what I thought.
Makes me wonder if bees really are going extinct like people are afraid of. Prolly not.
I remember the stupid mad cow disease scare. What a crock.
Good institutions cannot be imposed from above they must evolve from below.