The Rational Optimist
How Prosperity Evolves
by Matt Ridley · first published 2010
51% recommend46% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Data-backed case that trade, specialization, and exchange drive prosperity and that living standards, health, and food supply keep improving; suits readers who feel doomy about the news and want a broad, optimistic view.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors.The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Yet, b
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…Live Prosperously 4) Your Money or Your Life 5) I Will Teach You to Be Rich (relevant to you at your age) 6) Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, and How to Correct Them (short and sweet) 7) The Rational Optimist (not specifically about personal finance but a great read about behavior) Hope this helps, and if you ever want to discuss personal finance in more detail feel free to reach out, love helping!
on “Ask HN: A good book about personal finance?” ↗The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. Debatable but opened up a new perspective for me.
on “Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?” ↗It is a good book, Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist" is better written, and less Polyanna. Nassim Taleb argued successfully against his previous "Better Angels"book
on “The PowerPoint Philosophe: Waiting for Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment” ↗…is that there will keep being more to understand, and that as an individual you will keep understanding a smaller and smaller proportion of it. I enjoy perpectives from Matt Ridley about this (eg The Rational Optimist book) and his Ted talk[2]. A nice tidbit is that King Louis XIV of France had about 500 people preparing meals for him each night. You can go to town and have the same, with far better food and service…
on “People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard” ↗Folks like Stephen Pinker (Enlightenment Now), Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist), and Max Roser (Our World in Data) have done a compelling job of presenting data that shows poverty has decreased substantially in recent generations.
on “Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong (2019)” ↗…history of the big breakthroughs in micro-biology. I'm a developer, but this book was a page turner that really opened my eyes to to how cells operate, perform logic-like functions, and communicate. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley * Ridley's basic thesis is that specialization and trade are the primary means of the betterment of the human condition, and he has a lot of thought provoking ways…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books of 2010?” ↗Just saw this on the comments on VB: "Can't imagine why they are one of the poorest countries on earth." Agreed ! I would add this relevant idea by Matt Ridley from The Rational optimist (http://amzn.to/KvuK4S) :- As long as human exchange and specialization are allowed to thrive somewhere, then culture evolves whether leaders help it or hinder it, and the result is that prosperity…
on “A Skype call in Ethiopia will now get you 15 years in prison” ↗…more globalisation, only let "local" win when it does by the same measures, and have more trade and hence specialisation. As a bonus, more prosperous humans tend to have fewer children. Matt Ridley's Rational Optimist has a lot more detail about prosperity, trade and specialisation. Here is a Ted talk to get you going http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.htm...
on “Context is everything” ↗Might be slightly tangential, but reading the post reminded me of Rational Optimist[1], a book about how key parameters of our lives are improving despite constant global pessimism. (e.g. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down)…
on “The $3500 Shirt – A History Lesson in Economics” ↗How do you define sustainability? Various metrics suggest human society has a likely chance of sustaining its most important trajectories: http://radicaloptimism.org/wiki/Human_Society See also The Rational Optimist by Ridley, The Improving State of the World by Goklany, etc.
on “The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion” ↗The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. Presents a compelling case for being optimistic that economic growth really will keep making the world continually better on average, and in particular explores the reasons why the contrary…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗I like the book "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley which covers a broad range of topics like these. Some observations are quite surprising, for example using coal and then oil for energy replaced huge amounts of manual labor and might…
on “I made a smart watch from scratch” ↗You should read the book "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley. Happy Holidays.
on “A Stanford Professor Says Juul Stole Her Anti-Vaping PowerPoint Slides” ↗If you like these books I'd highly recommended two more. Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. More from Less by Andrew McAfee.
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?” ↗When I read The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, I found it really interesting to read the history of fossil fuels. Basically whale oil and trees were replaced by coal mining - which saved whales and trees! And if I recall the coal…
on “What if carbon removal becomes the new Big Oil?” ↗