May
17
The book, The Improving State of the World, by Indur M. Goklany, published in 2007, provides a foundation for those who wish to know how the quality of life compares to the past. It is valuable for kids who wish to have a rudder and some facts to understand how much better conditions are today than the old days. It's valuable for adults as it provides a complete menu of the reasons that the world is so much better today due to trade, and economic development and technology, and how this has improved our environment. It's valuable for scientists in that it debunks specious arguments against modernity so rampant and accepted today that they threaten to prevent future progress. It's valuable for investors in that it provides a backdrop to understand the forces and conditions that have led to the incredible profusion of increased wealth and 10,000-fold per century returns that long-term investors have been visited with and that they can expect to be enhanced in the next century.
This book is the latest, most complete, and modern update to a long line of optimistic works that started with Julian Simon's The State of Humanity and continued with Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. It contains data updated through 2005 in almost every area where the quality of life or the environment can be measured.
It starts with a quote from Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, typical of the bleak view of the world propagandized by Dickens, comparing a 19th century industrial town, where not a blade of grass was seen to grow unfavorably to Hades. It ends with a paean to the good that trade can accomplish: "trade is part of the web of institutions necessary for helping to satisfy the needs and wants of a large and mobile affluent global population while limiting environmental impacts. Such trade in good, services, ideas, and knowledge enhances economic growth, helps diffuse technology worldwide, ensures efficient movement for food, natural resources and capital from surplus, reduces pressures on marginal lands and other natural resources."
Chapter two presents 6 tables and 18 figures showing that any way you measure it, human well being has improved almost everywhere in the world. This includes longevity, education, hours worked, health, access to sanitation, safe water, infant mortality, and nutrition. The main source of the improvement has been the increased wealth that has enabled improved technology to better life.
Chapter 3 shows that globalization has reduced poverty in all countries and that the gap between the high income and low income countries has been decreasing because of globalization and mainly due to trade and information transfer. Within countries, the gap between rural and urban welfare has been decreasing. "The poor are better off because they have benefited from the technologies developed by the rich, and their situation would have been further improved" had there been more globalization, and less subsidies and import barriers
Chapter 4 contains the main original contribution of the book. Its main theme is a cyclical theory of take off due to technology that explains why human well-being has improved more in the past two centuries ever before.
The first thread in the argument is that human well-being is a direct function of the increases in income over time. Also, it argues that the higher the income in a country, the higher the well-being.
The second thread is that additional income gives more benefits to human well-being at the lowest levels of wealth.
Finally with great leaps and little empirical data and completely faulty statistical methodology of how not to use regressions, Goklany comes up with his grand theory of cyclical benevolent circles. "Progress in human well-being in the past two centuries was sustained if not put into motion by a cycle consisting of the mutually reinforcing co evolving forces of economic growth, technological change, and free trade. A self-explanatory diagram of the main linkages is contained in his box 4-1.
The rest of the book shows how technology and improved income improves the environment mainly through more efficient use of cropland.
The book has the facts and figures, and the rudiments of analyses that provide the most modern framework available for documenting the improving state of the world.
Finally, in spite of many areas where the authors reach is much greater than his grasp, especially his use of regression methods, and adjustment for where the state of human welfare would be without rises in income and technology, this is an excellent and relatively current book that I highly recommend. I bought copies for each of my seven children and all of my colleagues at the office.
Comments
Archives
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- Older Archives
Resources & Links
- The Letters Prize
- Pre-2007 Victor Niederhoffer Posts
- Vic’s NYC Junto
- Reading List
- Programming in 60 Seconds
- The Objectivist Center
- Foundation for Economic Education
- Tigerchess
- Dick Sears' G.T. Index
- Pre-2007 Daily Speculations
- Laurel & Vics' Worldly Investor Articles