His entertaining account of how such pessimism is always in fashion-whether the subject is overpopulation, genetic engineering, Y2K, or global warming (he thinks we’ll all end up living on a slightly hotter but richer planet)-also predicts that today’s pessimists will ignore his message. Too often, this overwhelming success has been ignored in favor of dire predictions about threats-like cancer. Our lives have improved dramatically-in terms of lifespan, nutrition, literacy, wealth, and other measures-and he believes that the trend will continue. There have been constant predictions of a bleak future throughout human history, but they haven’t come true. The second key idea in the book is, of course,“rational optimism”.

Gains from exchange and specialization certainly rank up there with the most important economic ideas of all time. Ridley’s key concept is gains from exchange, which make possible gains from specialization, which in turn make possible technological innovation.

He recites colorful stories of successive waves of traders-Ukrainians (who traded for Black Sea shells and Baltic amber as long as 18,000 years ago), Phoenicians, Mongols, Arabs, and Italians, who brought early globalization. Ridley does synthesize a great deal of material, spinning the history of humanity from the stone axe to the computer mouse. Matt Ridley argues for markets as the dominant source of human progress. The proponents too often seem to confirm this accusation by over-promising and under-proving what the market can do. Opponents accuse proponents of blind faith in the Miracle of the Market. The word “market” tends to set off a religious war. He dares the human race to embrace change, be rationally optimistic, and strive for an improved life for all people.

Ridley believes it is probable that humanity will be better off in the next century than it is today, and so will the ecology of our planet. Ideas needed to meet and mate for culture to turn cumulative, and “there was a point in human pre-history when big-brained, cultural learning people for the first time began to exchange things with each other and that once they started doing so, culture suddenly became cumulative and the great headlong experiment of human economic progress began.” Participants in the exchanges improved their lives by trading food and tools. The book is about the rapid and continuous change that human society experiences, unlike any other animal group. Science journalist Ridley believes there is a reason to be optimistic about the human race and he defies the unprecedented economic pessimism he observes.

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley