[Graeme]

Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ong before “sustainable” became a buzzword, intellectuals wondered how long industrial society could survive. In “The Idea of Decline in Western History,” after surveying predictions from the mid-19th century until today, the historian Arthur Herman identifies two consistently dominant schools of thought.

The first school despairs because it foresees inevitable ruin. The second school is hopeful — but only because these intellectuals foresee ruin, too, and can hardly wait for the decadent modern world to be replaced by one more to their liking. Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”?

Good books all, and so is the newest addition to this slender canon, “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley. It does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.

Our progress is unsustainable, he argues, only if we stifle innovation and trade, the way China and other empires did in the past. Is that possible? Well, European countries are already banning technologies based on the precautionary principle requiring advance proof that they’re risk-free. Americans are turning more protectionist and advocating byzantine restrictions like carbon tariffs. Globalization is denounced by affluent Westerners preaching a return to self-sufficiency.

But with new hubs of innovation emerging elsewhere, and with ideas spreading faster than ever on the Internet, Dr. Ridley expects bottom-up innovators to prevail. His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

[Homesteader]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '[')b]Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

[americandream]

There is innovation and there is innovation, like everything else in life. We could innovate ourselves into American Idol, The Taliban, life in a virtual world of instant gratification and other forms of widespread idiocy or the sort of high civilisation that gives rise to philosophy, art and moderation. Innovation is no more a holy grail than is say, democratic freedom. To think otherwise is to avoid that which is right before your eyes.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '[')b]Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ong before “sustainable” became a buzzword, intellectuals wondered how long industrial society could survive. In “The Idea of Decline in Western History,” after surveying predictions from the mid-19th century until today, the historian Arthur Herman identifies two consistently dominant schools of thought.

The first school despairs because it foresees inevitable ruin. The second school is hopeful — but only because these intellectuals foresee ruin, too, and can hardly wait for the decadent modern world to be replaced by one more to their liking. Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”?

Good books all, and so is the newest addition to this slender canon, “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley. It does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.

Our progress is unsustainable, he argues, only if we stifle innovation and trade, the way China and other empires did in the past. Is that possible? Well, European countries are already banning technologies based on the precautionary principle requiring advance proof that they’re risk-free. Americans are turning more protectionist and advocating byzantine restrictions like carbon tariffs. Globalization is denounced by affluent Westerners preaching a return to self-sufficiency.

But with new hubs of innovation emerging elsewhere, and with ideas spreading faster than ever on the Internet, Dr. Ridley expects bottom-up innovators to prevail. His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')is prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', 'I') can't tell who is the bigger nutcase: The Talented Dr. Ridley, or the NYT reviewer.

[dbruning]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')quot;the environment improves and wilderness expands"

[whataboutbob]

It actually started quite promisingly. We should all be aware that apocalyptic demagoguery is all-too common in peak oil and environmental circles. As are excited debates on "collapse" and (the juicy part) of what might succeed it - most of which remind me of teenagers giddy at the prospect of there being no authority around with their parents go on holiday.

The realities of PO are sobering but unexciting. It won't mean fighting in the streets; it won't mean the collapse of the old order and the up-springing of an anarchist/primitivist utopia. It will mean a lot of hardship, more wars, more poverty and those in power carrying out increasingly audacious crimes in order to cling onto power.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whataboutbob', 'T')he realities of PO are sobering but unexciting. It won't mean fighting in the streets; it won't mean the collapse of the old order and the up-springing of an anarchist/primitivist utopia. It will mean a lot of hardship, more wars, more poverty and those in power carrying out increasingly audacious crimes in order to cling onto power.

[whataboutbob]

You're right, I shouldn't have spoken in such absolute terms. I have no idea what the future will bring.

I should have said that it's unlikely that widespread social collapse will happen as a result of the end of cheap oil alone. Of course, as you point out, if multiple crises hit (and there are enough building for this to be a consideration), then predictions are less certain.

My unscientific opinion however is that we're in for a series of social shockwaves, rather than a civilisation-ending moment.

[Pops]

I guess if we are discussing Ridley's opinion we should look at his performance:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')idley was non-executive chairman of Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, earning £300,000 a year,[7] having joined the board in 1994. His father had been chairman for from 1987 to 1992 and sat on the board for 30 years.[8]

In the ten years from 1997 Northern Rock grew its earnings per share by a compound 17%[9] and donated £190m to good causes through a covenant of 5% of pre-tax profits to a charitable foundation, established when Ridley was on the board[10].

In September 2007 Northern Rock became the first British bank since 1878 to suffer a run on its finances at the start of the credit crunch. It was forced to apply to the Bank of England for emergency liquidity funding, following problems caused by the US subprime mortgage crisis.[11] Matt Ridley resigned as chairman in October 2007, having been blamed in parliamentary committee hearings for not recognizing the risks of the bank's financial strategy and thereby "harming the reputation of the British banking industry."[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley

[americandream]

Graeme,

I have to say that I don't reckon I have met anyone who overfloweth with such vain hubris as I find with you.

I don't think any so-called doomsayer in his right mind is against innovation and creativity. Frankly very few reasonable humans are apart from the religious fruitcakes who are invariably driven by religious hocus pocus or some other irrational nonsense.

Theres a difference between taking issue with a social economy that produces a surfeit of built in obsolescence, an obsolescence that threatens to overwhelm the global order, as a NATURAL FUNCTION of that social economy, (in the same way that your pissing is a natural function of your living), and embracing innovation that truly serves to uplift us as a species of ascendent "once were monkeys".

To deride those concerns, instead posting this half assed hoopa is , I reiterate, clear evidence of gross hubris which we have a surfeit of in these days of biblical tragedy such as the mammoth plastic islands and mega oil spills and I am SICK of you people.

[Graeme]

Would you like to share with us your vision of utopia?

[americandream]

One would presume that you would cover the critical issue I raised before asking me for clarity on my marxist understanding of history (which I have given on more moccasions than I care to count but you evidentl;y don't bother to read or don't have the wit to contemplate):

Anyway, as I was saying. How is your fairy glen of technofixtopia going to deal with the pissing orgy of obsolete waste that capitalism naturally exudes, and I reiterate my very pertinent point that said pissing is a natural function of said capitalist order of profit by frenzied buying and selling?

I have yet to see you address that, a fact which despite all the recycling calls over the decades, gets progressively worse each year as the next disposable widget lands in our stoes.

If you cannot give me a satisfactory reply that clearly demonstrates the convergence of technology, capitalism and obsolescence in one orgasmic singularity of green greed, so much the vogue in these days of crisis capitalism, I call on you to stop posting this half baked clap trap.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'W')ould you like to share with us your vision of utopia?

[Graeme]

It's not my vision, it's Matt Ridley's. In your utopia/dictatorship, are you in favour of censorship? Won't you allow other points of view?

[americandream]

OK. I now challenge you to regularly post articles and commentaries that examine the exent of the leakage (hidden but socialised costs) from the capitalist production/consumption cycle, factors in those leakage costs into overall production costs so as to determine their relationship with fair value (the reasonable point at which a unit cost of purchasing an item is exceeded by a unit cost of engaging ones labour in its sale) and does so at each stage of the mitigations you contemplate to convice us that there will always be sufficient excess to warrant an extraction of surplus and warrant your faith in technotopian capitalism, or not; so as to show us that you are truly embarked on fact finding the ideal social economy and are not another unthinking cheerleader for capitalism.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'I')t's not my vision, it's Matt Ridley's. In your utopia/dictatorship, are you in favour of censorship? Won't you allow other points of view?

[americandream]

My belief incidentally is that a full and transparent costing of capitalism's hiddens (the cost to the commons of the loss of the Gulf as a resource, for example, will require to be valued and extracted from the company, immediately and the sector, as a future overhead) will ultimately destroy all surplus, even that which still lies massively available in China and India, to the degree that it MUST fail. I have done my homework and have NO DOUBT. Have you done yours?

[Graeme]

The subject of the thread is Matt Ridley's optimism and "how prosperity evolves". Not everybody agrees with him. Surprise. Surprise. That is our nature. We all have different opinions. Matt Ridley, I just discovered , has a PhD in Zoology from Oxford. Not the best qualifications for a banker! Here is a review published in the New Scientist.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')iz Else, associate editor

I'm on the way to a smart hotel in Soho, London, to meet Matt Ridley, the aristocratic zoologist-turned-journalist who has become one of the UK's foremost science writers. He has a new book out with the daring title The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves.

I use the word "daring" advisedly. Ridley's message is one of undiluted optimism: the world is getting better and better, it has been doing so for hundreds of years, and will continue to do so. Nothing stands in his way, not even global climate change, which he dismisses in his book as one of the "two great pessimisms of today".


Everyone likes an optimist, but an idealistic optimist can be a dangerous friend. So if you read The Rational Optimist, do so with your wits about you. The phrase to bear in mind is the one ignored by so many of the rash, over-optimistic bankers who lost so much of other people's money: "Past performance is no guide to the future."