One of the reasons dire predictions fail is because alarmists have raised legitimate concerns, and people, through technology and governmental regulations, have taken steps to mitigate the problems. There are times when the book takes on an alarmist tone, seemingly warning that dire consequences for the world can be expected if people listen to alarmists. It provokes thought, and that makes it a worthy book in my mind. That does not make the optimists right, but the poor track record of pessimists should at least give one pause.'Īlthough I cannot agree with every point Matt Ridley makes in this book, it does indeed give one pause. 'Optimists are dismissed as fools, pessimists as sages, by a media that likes to be spoon-fed on scary press releases. Oddly, although they are most often wrong, pessimists are usually more highly regarded than people who see a more optimistic (and realistic) future. The future ends up better.not only better than the one the alarmists predicted but better than at any time in the past. There have always been those who predict dire futures and proclaim with confidence that the end is near, but they've most always been wrong. He goes on to show that once our ancestors learned to trade with one another, human prosperity (collectively) began to grow rapidly (relatively speaking) and is likely to continue to do so (on average, over the long run), despite what present day naysayers and doom mongers may say. The short answer to the question implied by the subtitle (according to the author) is specialization and the exchange of goods, services, and ideas. ©2010 HarperCollins Publishers (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers Read more The Rational Optimist will do for economics what Genome did for genomics and will show that the answer to our problems, imagined or real, is to keep on doing what we've been doing for 10,000 years – to keep on changing. In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.

Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous. The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories vitamins clean water machines privacy the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Today there are more than six billion, and 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained, and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. Over 10,000 years ago, there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. The Samuel Johnson Prize Shortlist Nominees 2011

Matt ridley rational optimist