Back to Basics Again

This post is (again) somewhat influenced by Rosling but additionally Ridley's How Innovation Works, Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and Smil's Numbers don't Lie. The problem is obvious: many recent events have been surprising from almost any historical perspective. There has been a military conflict in Europe since February 2022 despite that fact that its cost to Russia has been (this far) very high compared to its gains. Governments normally want to avoid costly, unpredictable affairs. There is a military conflict in Palestine, too, as a result of a coordinated terrorist attack by Hamas on mostly civilians October 2023. The rationale of this action is even more difficult to understand given that the Hamas leaders probably knew Israel's response is going to be strong enough to incapacitate Hamas.¹

Does this mean that everything we thought we knew about historical development was wrong? There may have been a general trend of peace and prosperity for a while. But in addition to Ukraine and Palestine, Haiti is almost in a state of war, and things do not look very good in Myanmar, either. Some European countries that have been democratic with strong institutions are now turning autocratic. And from a different perspective, many people fear that social order could collapse due to artificial intelligence.

Since there are disruptions, are there some trends that we could still rely on? Like Rosling, let's start with population and poverty.

The figure is from https://pip.worldbank.org/home. $2.15 per day is (as of 2024) considered the limit of absolute poverty. Obviously, both the number and proportion of people living in absolute poverty has been decreasing a lot. In 1980 about 40% of the world population lived in absolute poverty, now about 9.2%.

Once a large majority of people becomes less poor, there are positive consequences as Rosling indicates. Children can go to school. People can afford basic healthcare and better food and sanitation. It is even possible (I don't think Rosling wrote this) that people become more social and more interested in improving their environment. Moreover, the World Bank statistics indicate that there are much less homicides in rich and middle income countries than in low income countries.

But this is where optimistic thinking may have let us down. Many scholars thought that more wealth would automatically mean more democracy and less wars.² Maybe this has never been automatic. Economic and political trends have made most of Europe, much of Asia, much of South America and some of Africa much nicer than they were, say, 60 years ago.³ Did we just get lucky? Did the postwar institutions just "get things done"? Did we just (most often) manage to elect the right people to govern  states/countries/international organizations?⁴ Did we somehow manage to develop exactly the right kind of technology when it was needed, and that drove both the economy and the society?

To be continued, I hope ..

1 Harari assumed in 21 Lessons that both the Ukrainian and Palestine conflicts would remain frozen.

2 Harari stated in Sapiens that it would be unthinkable to have a conflict between two wealthy countries because it is too costly.

3 I'm excluding North America not because I think things have gotten worse there but because it was already quite rich and stable 60 years ago.

4 Ridley would probably say that our postwar wealth and peace was because of innovative companies, not governments. But companies need laws and institutions in order to functions.