The Rational Optimist

About the book

Book author: Matt Ridley

The book is about how we are actually wealthier, happier, more peaceful, less hungry et cetera now than at any point in history. We learn how this has happened throughout history, and how there have always been pessimist belittling this very progress, but yet progress always prevails. We should be optimistic instead.

Reflection and takeaways

I liked this book, but it was quite repetitive for ~200 out of the 360 or so pages of content (not sources). My favourite part of it is the quote of the first chapter.

“On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” Thomas Babinton Macaulay

Really, all of the book can be packed into this one sentence.. However, there are some concepts and and ideas which I liked and will attempt to summarize. It’s nothing ground-breaking.

The first is what is treated in the quote above – people have always thought things are going to end. We should not listen to the nagging doomsday prophets – for they have always existed and until today, yet we are still here, doing better than ever. Admittedly, things are not perfect, just better, and certainly can be done even better. The triumph card is change. You might predict that we will run out of paper|oil|X, at some point, but that will just force innovation to invent some other alternative through market forces. It will sound like a doomsday prophecy then, but will likely not happen.

This change property is facilitated through 3 things: trade, specialization and sex of ideas. The little magic trick is simple: some good fisherman can spend his day fishing, and trade his catch for clothes by some good tailor. In the end, the tailor gets lots of quality fish, and the fisherman gets quality clothes, and maybe a better fishing net. There is some fish left over for the good fisherman’s neighbour, who is a good carpenter. He listens to the fisherman’s ideas and with his background can create a better fishing rod from learning how it is done in practice. The fisherman didn’t lose anything by telling the carpenter of his idea, and the carpenter didn’t lose anything by applying his knowledge and ideas to the good fishermans idea. The extra output of fish makes it cheaper, so the good tailor can now hire the good carpenter to make a loom instead of spending a lot of income to buying fish.

In the end, the result is more clothes, more fish, more output and innovation. Everyone gets richer than yesterday. It would not be feasable for the fisherman to be a tailor and a carpenter too. Moreover, the trade is important. Not all places are suitable for fishing, so living off just the local land makes no sense. Why fish where there is no fish when you can fish where there is loads? Isn’t it crazy that you can read this while drinking coffee from Colombia, in a mug that is made in China, using a brewer that has parts from 10 other countries but sold in a store just next to you? In a sense, you are living a little bit off of everyone’s labor, but the end is result is that coffee costs you $0.1 per cup in beans, the mug cost you $4, and the brewer $50. Building that brewer by yourself and getting an oven to harden the ceramic mug at your own property is just not feasable. Capital and money is lubricant for this process.

The change and new innovations might sound scary – and so people are naturally resistant – but is usually is done for good reasons. You might think GMO crops are bad for the environment, but Ridley argues that the only reason we have tigers left is because GMO crops are more efficient per land part so we don’t have to mow down as much forest. Otherwise there would not be much space left for them.

I was happy to hear that Ridley is “pro-tinkerer” and not immediately “pro-academia” – because tinkering is where most of the idea sex happens. It reminds me of NN Taleb’s books. Ridley also points out that innovation capacity is lost when there is too much bureaucracy. It slows down progress and usually makes institutions become risk-averse. The only way for a really large company to innovate is to buy a smaller company that does.

Innovation is limitless - you can share an idea with someone with someone and still retain it, as I outlined with the carpenter in the story above. Moreover, people actually like to do this. Just look at the free and open software movements. I’m writing this using free tools, on a free operating system, all written by thousands of developers just because they believe in that idea and want to contribute.

“I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the one who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large crowd” John Stuart Mill

I love this quote because it’s true. There have always been doomsday stories. Scares in the media will always be present, in fact it sells better. We go through a lot of them these days.. it used to be about cancer, ozone layers, AIDS, mad cow disease.. we have less cancer, the ozone layer is fixing itself, AIDS is not as prevalent and mad cow disease didn’t really kill many people. Now we have climate change and political divide. I’m not saying don’t care and don’t worry. I’m saying we’ll see where we end up – it’s likely going to be better than you imagine (i.e better than doomsday, but not perfect). The important thing is to not lose track of the overall trend which is positive, which is the point of the book. People who doomsday hard become famous fast, and it doesn’t matter if they are wrong. And we are still here. Ridley says “just don’t try to stop change” and it will likely sort itself out.. I’m more or less agreeing, given historical record. My only worry is AI, because I think it’s a different kind of beast. Oh well.

Why did I pick it

It was among Naval Ravikant’s recommendations in his book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Seemed like a good book with the same theme of Rosling’s Factfulness.

Verdict

3.⁴⁄₅. I got happy from reading it, but it was too repetitive for my taste, which drags the average down a whole point. I am not going to remember even 1/100th of all the small stories about good change in the more repetitive parts.