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"I would say that learning this material ... has lifted some of the
existential weight from me. Things aren't as bad as they are
trumpeted to be. In fact, they're quite a bit better, and they're
getting better, and so we're doing a better job than we thought.
There's more to us than we thought. We're adopting our
responsibilities as stewards of the planet rapidly. We are moving
towards improving everyone's life." --Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond
Order: 12 More Rules for Life Think the world is getting worse?
You're wrong: the world is, for the most part, is getting better.
But 58 percent of people in 17 countries that were surveyed in 2016
thought the world is either getting worse or staying the same
rather than getting better. Americans were even more glum: 65
percent thought the world is getting worse and only 6 percent
thought it was getting better. The uncontroversial data on major
global trends in this book will persuade you that this dark view of
the prospects for humanity and the natural world is, in large part,
badly mistaken.World population will peak at 8 to 9 billion before
the end of this century as the global fertility rate continues its
fall from 6 children per woman in 1960 to the current rate of 2.4.
The global absolute poverty rate has fallen from 42 percent in 1981
to 8.6 percent today. Satellite data show that forest area has been
expanding since 1982. Natural resources are becoming ever cheaper
and more abundant. Since 1900, the average life expectancy has more
than doubled, reaching more than 72 years. Of course, major
concerns such as climate change, marine plastic pollution, and
declining wildlife populations are still with us, but many of these
problems are already in the process of being ameliorated as a
result of the favorable economic, social, and technological trends
that are documented in this book.You can't fix what is wrong in the
world if you don't know what's actually happening. Ten Global
Trends Every Smart Person Should Know will provide busy people with
quick-to-read, easily understandable, and entertaining access to
surprising facts that they need to know about how the world is
really faring.
"For centuries, the ivory towers of academia have echoed this
sentiment of multitudinous ends and limited means. In this
supremely contrarian book, Tupy and Pooley overturn the tables in
the temple of conventional thinking. They deploy rigorous and
original data and analysis to proclaim a gospel of abundance.
Economics--and ultimately, politics--will be enduringly
transformed." --George Gilder, author of Life after Google: The
Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy Generations
of people have been taught that population growth makes resources
scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued,
"The world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's
natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently
needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources . . .
[a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030." But is that true?
After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods, and
services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found
that resources became more abundant as the population grew. That
was especially true when they looked at "time prices," which
represent the length of time that people must work to buy
something. To their surprise, the authors also found that resource
abundance increased faster than the population--a relationship that
they call "superabundance." On average, every additional human
being created more value than he or she consumed. This relationship
between population growth and abundance is deeply counterintuitive,
yet it is true. Why? More people produce more ideas, which lead to
more inventions. People then test those inventions in the
marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of
that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that
overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of
living. But large populations are not enough to sustain
superabundance--just think of the poverty in China and India before
their respective economic reforms. To innovate, people must be
allowed to think, speak, publish, associate, and disagree. They
must be allowed to save, invest, trade, and profit. In a word, they
must be free.
"For centuries, the ivory towers of academia have echoed this
sentiment of multitudinous ends and limited means. In this
supremely contrarian book, Tupy and Pooley overturn the tables in
the temple of conventional thinking. They deploy rigorous and
original data and analysis to proclaim a gospel of abundance.
Economics--and ultimately, politics--will be enduringly
transformed." --George Gilder, author of Life after Google: The
Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain EconomyGenerations
of people have been taught that population growth makes resources
scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued,
"The world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's
natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently
needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources . . .
[a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030." But is that
true?After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods,
and services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley
found that resources became more abundant as the population grew.
That was especially true when they looked at "time prices," which
represent the length of time that people must work to buy
something.To their surprise, the authors also found that resource
abundance increased faster than the population--a relationship that
they call "superabundance." On average, every additional human
being created more value than he or she consumed. This relationship
between population growth and abundance is deeply counterintuitive,
yet it is true.Why? More people produce more ideas, which lead to
more inventions. People then test those inventions in the
marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of
that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that
overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of
living.But large populations are not enough to sustain
superabundance--just think of the poverty in China and India before
their respective economic reforms. To innovate, people must be
allowed to think, speak, publish, associate, and disagree. They
must be allowed to save, invest, trade, and profit. In a word, they
must be free.
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