Matt Ridley - The Rational Optimist: Everybody is working for everybody else

Part 1 of Matt Ridley's rationally optimistic guide to life, the planet and the future of humankind

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• matt ridley
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• progress
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[soylentgreenb]

@Baprener The world median person eats ~1/3 more calories and has ~3 times higher income than 1950.

[davemuscato]

@janosabel You said: "50 years ago, a worker on an average wage could afford to buy a whole house (with 4 floors) with 10 years worth of pay."

What is your source for this?

[writetoalex]

Sure, everyone works for everyone else. We're all equal now, right? Wrong. Not everyone one is rewarded equally for the work we do for each other. This glosses over the massive inequalities that exist. And the fact that those inequalities are getting bigger.

[infinityand0]

The reason why our lives are so much better than they were is because of cheap energy. When that goes away, things will change for the worse. You can just hope and dream that something is going to come along and replace the resources for cheap energy that we have, but that's just wishful thinking. We are no witnessing strains on this energy, and it is getting more expensive. We're more than half way through the low hanging fruit right now

[Missyplemon]

I don't agree with it! Matt just see the "bright side" of specialisation of labour sine Industrial Revolution! All the examples in the MV are just the examples from RICH countries of the first world!

[SeanG200]

Posted: r-pt[dot]net

[Broooose]

but now the food is jacked up with msg, High fructose corn syrup, genetically modified, and riddled with pesticides. 100 years ago ALL food was organic. The better measurement was the true cost of getting good nutrition. 1/3 americans are obese and their cancer rates are 7th in the world. Oh, and that nuke plant, care to show how the radioactive plume for fukishima exposed the entire N hemisphere to radioactive isotopes. iodine-131 and caesium-134/137 gimme some more- how's that for progress

[hughc023]

Always good to hear the voice of optimism, in a world where the media thinks that the only news is bad news. . .

[BrockAtkinson]

@janosabel Ridley talks about this in his book; land is one of the only things that has gone up in price. There are multiple reasons for this, but an informative book to read on this is Economic Facts & Fallacies by Thomas Sowell. Basically everything else has gone down (food, water, tools, entertainment and so on).

There are some other minor goods have also gone up in price (movie tickets, popcorn etc), but those are luxury items, not essential items. And we are willing to pay for them.

[janosabel]

@davemuscato

Personal recollection + experience. The house (perfectly habitable) I referred to above was bought for £6,000 when average pay was around £800 pa. The same house now has a market value of around  a million pounds. Admittedly, computers cost a few hundred instead of millions and Hi-Fi or other gadgetry (had they existed) would have been only for millionaires.

Today, some friends of ours, both working health professionals, had to move to Northumberland to find affordable family home.

[janosabel]

@noiseshapes

Have you red the book How to Lie With Statistics? The other day the World Bank, or some other bunch of robber barons, was making out that three out 4 Africans are in the middle class.