Pride Comes Before A Fall

It is easy to believe that things are getting worse. Famous newspaper figures such as John B. Bogart, Amos Cummings, Charles A. Dana, and Alfred Harmsworth all liked to explain what news was by using the maxim: "If a dog bites a man that's nothing; but if a man bites a dog, that's news." The point of the maxim is that people do not buy a newspaper to read about everyday events. They pay because they are interested in the unusual. Competition drives the news industry to give its customers what they want. The result is that the headlines are full of stories about crime, war, disease epidemics, natural disasters, political failings, and so on. All of which push us towards pessimism. In 2017, when Pew Research asked Americans whether life today is better than in the past, and it is no surprise that most said it was worse: 41% to 37%.

What is missing from our news are the good news stories. However, if you search for it, the good news is there. In 2011, Steven Pinker published a book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he presented a massive amount of data that showed violence had declined. From our hunter-gatherer past to the present, the trend was clear. People could not believe Pinker's figures; they contradicted common sense. The 20th century had two world wars, cold war proxy conflicts, and terrorism; surely we are getting more, not less violent. Pinker argued that the facts say otherwise. Yes, more people died in the two world wars than in any other previous conflicts. However, the world's population has been increasing. To ensure a fair comparison, Pinker measured violence relative to population size. He pulled together data from many sources. There was so much that his book grew to over 1,000 pages. With so many figures, critics inevitably question how he handled some of the data and its significance. However, their comments only affect a fraction of the total data. As Robert Jervis pointed out, "The trends are not subtle — many of the changes involve an order of magnitude or more."

Matt Ridley is another author who thinks we are too pessimistic. To make the point, the cover of his 2010 book The Rational Optimist shows a picture of a half-empty glass of water. The goal of his book was to help us see the glass as half full rather than half empty. His central argument is that trade has changed our lives for the better. This process started a very long time ago. Archaeological evidence shows that early humans were trading long before we transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Researchers have found obsidian weapons and flakes in the Sibilo Road Site, southern Kenya, that are at least 200,000 years old. What makes these finds particularly interesting is that the nearest obsidian sources are 25 km, 140 km, and 166 km away. Therefore the obsidian must have been transported to where it was found. This data suggests that early humans living in the Sibilio Road Site probably exchanged goods with others to obtain the raw obsidian and then use it to make the weapons and flakes that the archaeologists found.

Long-distance trade has been part of human life ever since it started. It became so ingrained in everyday life that most people did not give it much thought until Adam Smith. Smith gave trade the central role in his book The Wealth of Nations. He maintained that self-interest and the free trade of goods and services created many benefits. To illustrate how you could get social good from self-interest, Smith gave his famous example of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker. The butcher’s motivation is simple. He prepares and sells meat so that he has the money to feed his family and himself. The same applies to the brewer and the baker. The result of their self-interest is that others have meat, drink, and bread to buy. Each exchange may be motivated by self-interest, but the result is mutual benefit.

Smith went further and argued that free trade encouraged people to specialize and innovate. Another example he used was a pin factory. In Smith’s time, pin-making was a complex, slow process, and traditionally one man would make each pin. To appreciate the effect of specialization, imagine there were two factories. In the first, pin-making was divided into eighteen distinct operations, and one man specialized in each. In the second factory, the same number of men followed the old ways, and each man made his pins from start to finish. Smith claimed that the first factory would make many more pins per day.  Both factories had the same labor costs, so the first factory could sell its pins at a lower price than the other factory and make a good profit.

Similarly, Smith saw that the free market encourages innovation. People pursuing self-interest want to find new ways to increase their competitiveness and profits. For example, it would make sense for the owner of the pin factory to be thinking about improvements. New ideas about streamlining or automating the process would be attractive. At first, he would gain from the increased profits. However, in time his competitors would catch up, and competition would drive down prices. In the end, competition pushes the benefits of the innovation to the customer and the cycle continues. Smith described how three forces of self-interest, specialization and innovation came together in free trade to create an unintended but significant benefit to society.

Adam Smith knew that the market economy could also create inequality. However, he did not think that this was automatic but instead thought it resulted from people distorting the market. Irrespective of whether Smith was correct or not, history shows that some people become incredibly wealthy. All around the world, the story is the same. The history books are full of accounts of the wealth of Kings, Sultans, and Emperors. You can read about their palaces, servants, art collections, and so on. Despite these facts, Ridley claimed that trade enables today's moderately well-off to live better than the kings of history. Louis XIV (1638 - 1715), the Sun King of France, is still famous today for his wealth and opulent lifestyle. He was the absolute monarch of France and could tax and spend the wealth of his country.

As you might expect, Louis and his court lived a life of extreme luxury, extravagance, and high fashion. A single meal "took a staggering 498 people to prepare" and offered Louis and members of the royal family a choice of forty dishes. Today, a moderately prosperous American or European cannot afford to live in a palace or eat off gold and silver tableware. But Ridley points out that amazingly, she can have more than 498 people help prepare her meals and have more choice than Louis's forty dishes. An average American supermarket has something like 40,000 different items for sale. Each product embodies the work of many people. So when you buy a preprepared meal or the ingredients for a meal, you could be purchasing the labor of not 498 but hundreds of thousands of people and maybe more. The supermarket has supply chains that span the world. You can buy fruits and vegetables that Louis did not know existed. Almost all the king's ingredients were grown in the palace's kitchen garden or the Versailles region. The exception was fish, which came from the coast. As a result, the king's menu had to be seasonal and dominated by local foodstuff. A modern shopper's choice is almost limitless. If you fancy Japanese or perhaps Mongolian cuisine and your local supermarket cannot help, you can go to a specialty restaurant, grocer, or order from the internet.

Medicine is another area where we are much better off today. In the 19th century, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had the best medical care in the world. But given a choice between Victoria's doctors and your average local doctor today, you are much better off with your local doctor. Medicine in the Victorian age was little better than than it had been at the end of the Middle Ages. Doctors thought that miasma caused many infectious diseases like typhoid. Their treatment was bed rest, strengthening foods, and if that did not work, then they might offer laudanum and bloodletting. They were wrong on both counts. Miasma did not cause infection, and their treatments were virtually useless. When the Queen's husband, Prince Albert, caught typhoid, he was treated with bed rest and strengthening food. It did not work. William Jenner diagnosed that Albert had typhoid fever on 9 December 1861, and five days later, Albert died. He was only 42. In stark contrast, today, you are very unlikely to catch or die of typhoid. We know that typhoid is caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi, good water hygiene prevents it, and your local doctor can prescribe antibiotics to cure it.

Although she lived a long life, Queen Victoria's risk of early death was higher than her husband’s. Childbirth was dangerous, and the Queen gave birth to nine children. Historians estimate that between 1800 and 1850, the British maternal mortality rate for home and hospital deliveries was 1 in every 200 live births (5 per 1,000). This figure does not show how much more dangerous hospital births were compared to home births. At Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, the average mortality rate was 29.6 per 1,000 between 1857 and 1879. As a result, most women chose to give birth at home. What makes the 19th century's maternal mortality rate so shocking is how preventable it was. It did not require expensive medicines or procedures. What was needed was good hygiene, like thorough handwashing. It took time for clinical hygiene practices to be developed and to spread. In England and Wales, the high mortality rate continued into the 1930s and then quickly fell. Geoffrey Chamberlain said that the principal reason for the fall was "conquering infection." Modern medicine has continued to make childbirth safer. In 2017, the US death rate had fallen to 17.3 per 100,000 live births (0.173 per 1,000). The rate is even lower in some other countries. Since the Victorian era, the fear of dying during childbirth in developed countries has faded. New mothers' health care today is much, much better than Queen Victoria's.

Today you might not have the money to commission new music, art, and plays as past monarchs did. However, the range of high-quality entertainment available to you is much greater than any historical king. You can watch a colossal range of broadcast content and streaming services at home. If you want to see live performances, again, the choice is vast. Theater, opera, music, and other venues are all available. You may not be able to collect art like a king or queen. However, you can buy high-quality reproductions, or you can go and see much of the best art in art galleries and museums. All things considered, there is a strong argument that life is better today than it has ever been.

Matt Ridley compared the Sun King and modern Americans and Europeans. This period spans a gap of over 300 years. In China, there has been an equally dramatic change, but it spans just two generations. Back in 1979, the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, started a radical economic reform program. What followed was a period of rapid growth. Many Chinese have seen their world change in just one working life span. In 1979 most Chinese people worked on the land. Only 18.6 percent of the population lived in an urban area. Farm work was backbreaking and poorly paid. By comparison, life in Chinese cities was a little better. The difference was attractive enough to convince hundreds of millions of people to migrate. By 2017, 58% of the Chinese population was urban. Deng's reform program did not just trigger an urban migration. It also resulted in staggering economic growth. From 1979 to 2010, the economy grew on average by 9.91% each year. This growth changed the lives of many people. A 2019 report by the US Congressional Research Service concluded that China's economic growth since 1979 had raised an estimated 800 million people out of poverty. Now hundreds of millions of Chinese people live better than the Sun King.

In 2017, economists at PWC predicted that "the world economy will more than double in size between now and 2050, far outstripping population growth." If so, there will be even more people living better than the kings of the past. Is this picture too good to be true? Are we blinded by pride in our achievements and are about to experience a fall? Steven Pinker was optimistic about the decrease in violence. However, he struck a note of caution and pointed out that there was no guarantee that the downward trend would continue. Although the rate of violence has gone down, the potential to kill more people has gone up. Today’s weapons are much more deadly than our ancient ancestor’s spears and stone knives. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union had something like 40,000 nuclear warheads and the USA approaching 25,000. Just one atomic bomb can destroy a city, and the world only has around 4,000 cities (of 100,000 people or more). Pinker observed that war obeys a power-law like earthquakes. Small low power earthquakes are common. Were as, high-power earthquakes are very rare but vastly more destructive. So although another world war might be unlikely, it could be unimaginably harmful.

The philosophy of Yin and Yang maintains that many things contain the seed of their own destruction. Perhaps the world's economic growth might cause its fall. Martin Jacques wrote in 2012 that if Chinese people had the same level of car ownership as Americans, "it would have 1.1 billion cars." Currently, the whole world only has 800 million. The Chinese people's 1.1 billion cars would "use 99 million barrels of oil a day," which is more than the 2006 total world production of 84 million barrels. These are huge numbers because China has a large population. However, the United Nations forecast that India's population will be even larger by 2050. So why should not India’s people have as many cars as Americans? It is difficult to imagine what would happen if an affluent China and India consumed the world's resources at the same rate as the West has in the past; let alone Africa and the rest of the world.

We have good reason to be proud of our achievements. However, is increasing affluence going to be the cause of our downfall? Do we have the resources, knowledge and shared purpose to solve the problems we face?